Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present reflections of five early career researchers on the challenges of journal publishing and how to tackle them. Design/methodology/approach The authors attended a participatory workshop on demystifying academic publications. Working individually and in groups the authors shared, discussed, analysed, visualised and ranked perceived challenges and opportunities concerning academic publishing. The authors then delved into the existing literature on the subject. Following their enhanced understanding of the area, the authors reflected on the experience and learnings. Findings Personal confidence relating to the development of a scholarly identity was found to be a critical factor in the attitude towards journal publishing. Supervisory and peer support, accessibility to journal editors, as well as opportunities to reflect on the writing, publishing and peer review processes through participatory workshops and writing groups, were deemed more effective than formal and conventional guidance schemes. Research limitations/implications This work adds to the available literature regarding the issue of academic publishing for PhD students and early career researchers. Originality/value The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of issues surrounding publishing apprehension, by laying out thoughts that are seldom expressed.

Push-out tests (POTs) have been widely exploited as an alternative to the more expensive full-scale bending tests to characterize the behaviour of shear connections in steel-concrete composite beams. In these tests, two concrete slabs are typically attached to a steel section with the connectors under investigation, which are then subjected to direct shear. The results allow quantifying the relationship between applied load and displacements at the steel-concrete interface. Since this relationship is highly influenced by the boundary conditions of POT samples, different experimental setups have been used, where the slabs are either restricted or free to slide horizontally, as researchers have tried to reduce any discrepancy between POT and full-scale composite beam testing. Based on a critical review of various POT configurations presented in the dedicated literature, this paper presents an efficient one-sided POT (OSPOT) method. While OSPOT and POT specimens are similar, in the proposed OPSPOT setup only one of the two slabs is directly loaded in each test, and the slab is free to move vertically. Thus, two results can be obtained from one specimen, i.e. one from each slab. A series of POTs and OSPOTs have been conducted to investigate the behaviour and the shear resistance of headed stud connectors through the two methods of testing. The results of this study than were compared with those of different POTs setups conducted by other researchers. The new OSPOT results show in general an excellent agreement with the analytical predictions offered by both British and European standards, as well as the estimated shear resistance proposed other researchers in the literature. These findings suggest that the proposed one-sided setup could be used as an efficient and economical option for conducting the POT, as it has the potential not only to double the number of results, but also to simplify the fabrication of the samples, which is important in any large experimental campaign, and to allow testing with limited capacity of the actuator.

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