It is good to know that, in this globally connected world of ever increasing turnover speeds and response times that there is something still stuck in the groove of the nineteenth century: academic publishing timelines! The following are some articles scheduled to appear in early 2013 and when the research on them began:

• “Republika Srpska will have a referendum”: the rhetorical politics of Milorad Dodik. This piece has turned out to be the longest journal article I have ever written. I just completed reviewing 40 pages of proofs. I am very grateful to Florian Bieber for being open to publishing such a piece in Nationalities Papers. After supervising a Masters thesis on the topic by Adis Maksic in 2009 (who became ABD at Virginia Tech in November and is currently in Sarajevo researching his dissertation), we decided to write a joint article on the topic together (which appeared in 2001 in Eurasian Geography and Economics 52, 2, 279-293). The launch of Bosnia Remade stimulated me to continue reading and writing about Bosnian politics, particularly about Dodik’s rhetorical gambits (Carl Dahlman and I met Dodik in Bosnia in 2004, and I met him again in Washington DC). I ended up writing an in-depth history of RS politics since 2005. An initial version was submitted in March 2011, and a revised version submitted in January 2012. Thankfully the RS hasn’t held a referendum in between the paper being accepted and published. But I guess there’s still time!

• Inside South Ossetia: A Survey of Attitudes in a De Facto State. This is a joint piece with Dr John O’Loughlin that is based on our March 2010 research fieldtrip there and subsequent commissioned survey research. I began writing this in the summer of 2011 but it took us over a year to clear time and co-ordinate our schedules sufficiently to finish it. It will appear in Post-Soviet Affairs like the previous piece on Abkhazia, hopefully the first issue of 2013.

• “Cartographic Exhibitionism? Visualizing the Territory of Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh.” I enjoyed writing this piece with Laurence Broers in February-March of this year. We presented it at the ASN 2012, and immediately sent it off for review. It was quickly accepted by Problems of Post-Communism but it is not scheduled to appear in print until May 2013 from what I understand.

The paper Adis Maksic and I also presented at the ASN 2012 was also immediately sent off for review, but I still have not heard back from the journal — now the 8th month of waiting — despite the fact that an editorial assistant at the journal indicated that reviewer comments are in. That was over a month ago! Fortunately the paper is on a historic not current affairs topic.

A paper on Abkhazia, on which I was one of four authors, should appear in International Studies Quarterly if our revisions are accepted.

I’m currently working on a paper on political geographies of Nagorny Karabakh with JohnO, and one on Serbian geopolitical orientations with Bojan Savic, a post-doc from the University of Kent currently at Virginia Tech National Capital Region for the year. JohnO and I are also looking to gather together some of our survey findings from all four of the de facto states we have studied. I expect we’ll be working on that early in the New Year. We present on the topic at INR in the US State Department in mid-January.

And then there’s the small matter of my book project on the US and the August 2008 War. At this rate it will be done by the 10th anniversary of the war….