Demidov Champions Interpretive Research Methods
Publishing qualitative work is difficult. Many international journals focus primarily on quantitative methods. Qualitative research is often regarded as "soft science," arbitrary, and lacking rigidity. The language of interpretive writing, in particular, can be difficult to comprehend for more quantitative minded researchers.
The aim of CEU's latest Interpretive Research Forum workshop was to share experiences on how to make qualitative work publishable and accessible to journal editors and other researchers. Andrey Demidov, a former CEU PhD student and current fellow at the University of Amsterdam, spoke candidly about the challenges he has been facing in the intimidating world of getting published as a post-doc.
From the outset, it seemed that Demidov was well-poised to publish without a hitch. After all, he defended his thesis, entitled "'Partnership Principle for Structural Funds in the New Member States: Understanding Contestation Over the EU Requirements,'" with summa cum laude and was confident about the salience of his findings, which he analyzed from a quintessentially interpretivist lens. Through a series of in-depth interviews, his project looked at different actors' perceptions of the EU's partnership principle. What he found was that the partnership principle is about a "contestation game" - that is, actors contested the partnership practices and the meaning of partnership.
In his quest to submit to mainstream journals, Demidov proceeded to write an article based on his core argument.This was not an easy task for an interpretivist critically engaging with the mainstream and demonstrating the salience of meaning. To be convincing, such a task can require a high word count. But in the market of publishing, it is low word count which counts in big ways. In Demidov's own words, the tactic "failed." Reviewers were generally unconvinced about the links he made between interview quotes and his own interpretations. "They essentially questioned that you can actually get into people's heads," said Demidov.
The trouble is, Demidov explained, that journal articles don't allow for the space necessary to "tell the whole story." In just 8,000 words, how can you demonstrate how you arrived at certain conclusions? Surely, you have hundreds of pages of coding and analysis to summarize into a paragraph or two. Reviewers tried to push him to choose between methodological options. One editor, who was more open-minded, requested Demidov to provide a section on how he constructed his meanings. It was an exercise in self-reflective writing, but the reviewers were not convinced. They said his work was "subjective" and "fictional." He also tried to present his work in a way that was clearer to more positivist researchers who tend to think in terms of variables and indicators. Demidov explained that, while these suggestions can be "helpful," they also come at a cost and can be constraining. In other words, you can end up losing time and sacrificing the depth of your analysis.
This rollercoaster of a process made Demidov second-guess "all the work" he had done. He felt de-legitimized. One of his articles was rejected eight times. The good news is that, eventually, Demidov was able to publish an article that presented the core argument of his thesis.
Demidov's story is a sobering reminder about the politics of academic publishing. He has since realized - and was keen to emphasize this to the forum attendees - that failure to get yourself published is not just about you. It also boils down to systemic issues. As he observed, interpretivist research is not as institutionalized. For example, in response to a question from one of the attendees, Demidov explained that journals have several agendas and one can find themselves pitted against these various goals.
Demidov is keen to defend interpretive methods; he said that the method and its adherents deserve to be taken seriously by science. And this raises an important question: what can small forums like CEU's very own Interpretive Research Forum do to bring such qualitative methods into the mainstream? The forum's raison d'etre is to provide an in-house support network among CEU researchers using these methods. Many students and faculty employ some form of interpretive methods. That alone presents great potential to raise visibility. If you haven't already, we strongly encourage you to join the conversation and our community.