Revising our Social Construction Article

The most gratifying moments in the research process occur when submitting a paper, knowing the tremendous effort it took to accomplish. However, the most nerve-wracking part comes when you receive the reviews back from editors. Comments are typically specific, but occasionally they can be general, necessitating changes in sentence structure or underlying ideas. Personally, the most challenging aspect of working on revise and resubmit was sharing and accepting changes regarding the statements made in the research, as I believe they represent findings encountered through the thought process.

After receiving comments from editors, Dr. Dean and I had to revisit the paper to ensure all comments were addressed. We met to map out revisions for our social construction article and created a 34 point revision to do list based on reviewer comments so we can track our progress. However, I find that once you release the initial tension, it becomes easier to work through the comments, and some of them can indeed be helpful (some insanely inappropriate). The next step is writing a revision letter, which includes a detailed list of changes made and/or justification for changes deemed unsuitable. While making changes, I made sure to consider the editors' recommendations but also tried to maintain the original idea without deviating too much from the initial thought.

Even though I have taken part in peer-reviewed journals before, this one seemed to be more personal as it took more than a year to finalize our research and encompassed an insane amount of time spent on coding and ensuring that the content analysis was in line with the interpretations. During this process, I learned things that I had only heard before in class from Dr. Dean; she warned us that it could sometimes be very frustrating to revise a paper. I am immensely thankful to her for teaching me even after finishing my studies at Millikin. From her, I learned what usually takes years of practice to master – but I should admit, both of us were pretty frustrated with the comments but knew we had to address them all in our revision.

Kocha Changelia

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests

Image
For the past few weeks, I have been working on sending Freedom of Information Act (or FOIA) requests to different counties in central Illinois. By sending these requests, we are hoping to receive the jail bookings and arrest data in these counties over the past twenty years as they relate to human trafficking cases. Though most counties accept a letter of request, some have specific forms they require to be filled out in order to receive the information we require. Thus, I have been doing research on each county to determine not only if they have specific forms required, but to determine which office would best be able to fulfill my request, as each request cannot be sent to the same offices in each county. Most State Attorney’s offices are able to help us with our requests, but not all. For some counties, the Sheriff's office holds this information. So, through trial and error, I have worked to send out these requests to whichever office is best suited to help us. Due to the natur
Read more

HTRL Tote Bags

Image
Since our grant is ending this year, the students and I brainstormed a few fundraising ideas to be able to support paid research assistantships in the Human Trafficking Research Lab for future students. We thought tote bags would be a great way to achieve this and so the students and I designed an eye catching bag that would educate people wherever it went. If you donate more $30 to the Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin we will send you one of these tote bags that will support future undergraduate research in the lab and help you raise awareness to human trafficking everywhere you go!  The bags are 100% cotton and printed locally from Oakwood Screen Printing based right here in Decatur, Illinois.  If you would like to donate to the Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin University you can make a donation in three different ways: 1) Make a credit card/debit card/EFT gift online at www.millikin.edu/give . Choose the “Millikin Fund” icon box and write “Human Trafficking Resea
Read more

Human Trafficking Awareness Month Panel Discussion on Education

Image
We just wrapped up our fifth annual Human Trafficking Awareness Month panel discussion at Millikin University and the event was a huge success. Around 40 students, faculty, staff and community members came out before the big snow storm to learn about the intersections of human trafficking education and training. We hosted Matthew Fuller, Human Trafficking Training Specialist at the Center for Prevention of Abuse in Peoria, Cindy Kuro, Prevention Educator from the Set Free Movement-Macon County, and Cheris Larson, Program Manager at Project OZ in Bloomington. The panel discussion focused on the educational opportunities, prevailing pedagogies on human trafficking, challenges to teaching about this hidden crime, and how to combat disinformation through learning opportunities. The panel discussion was sponsored by the Set Free Movement-Macon County and the Department History and Political Science at Millikin University. We are thankful for our wonderful advocates and educators in Central
Read more