It could be someone has dropped out/moved on.

Thanks Suzanne, all good advice for junior academics and there's plenty of good publishers out there. As you say, choose your publisher carefully. I think with the first publisher the issue was the particular series wasn't quite right. That's fair enough. I also had an article rejected partly because the journal is overloaded with articles due to the REF, but accepted pretty quickly by another journal. I'm not really a publisher/journal snob as I don't really give much credence to impact factors (although maybe I should play the game better).

With Hart Publishing I fear I might have stumbled across someone who has let his little bit of power go to his head! As you say, just move on!

Improving Survey Questions of FJ Fowler (out of print, but the library may have it).

Really? That's a great shame, their two courses were fantastic. Helped me no end.

It depends on what sort of publishing of the thesis you do, I think. Making it available in the usual way via the university's electronic repository is not a problem, but I wasn't sure what proofreadmyfile was talking about.

The best thing I did was go on the CASS courses on questionnaire design and survey implementation, run by a super lady from the USA - Pam somebody.

Personally I'd go for funding every time.

It's useful, but not essential. It is really helpful to chat to other researchers in your area, especially if you're at a small dept and no one else at your institution is doing anything similar. "Networking" is useful too.

Yes, the prohibitive cost of conferences is a real deterrent for postgrads. The most irritating thing is the privately run conferences that invite you to present and won't even pay expenses, whilst they are raking it in! But many conferences run by academic societies are not run to make profit as such, it just is an expensive business.

Publishing the thesis online will jeopardise the prospect of future articles based on it.

Getting a paper published is hard. What about your university peers - have they read your paper? That is far more useful than any general blandishments anyone here can offer. Actually, it's more important to be prepared to face any negative reaction than to imagine that the reaction will definitely be positive. If that sounds pessimistic, apologies - but I think all academics have to get used to rejections. It's part and parcel of academia. Just learn from every experience as much as possible. If it's your first submission, get some useful experience without too much risk by going for a less demanding journal.

Of course the decision to publish monograph is a commercial one, I don't think anyone would suggest that there is a right to have your thesis published! Peter Lang doesn't have a very good reputation does it?

I suspect most theses don't get published as monographs, but you definitely need to disseminate your findings. I can't see why it would be a problem having to write the same stuff about your methodology.

The syntax of his posts make them a poor advert for his proofreading services.

I'm wary of suggesting anything that lends itself to tokenism, but does anyone think that academic publishers should have a code of practice for dealing with ECRs?