Dave Hare is currently a part-time lecturer at City University of Hong Kong. His research work concerns film studies, specifically contemporary cinema stereoscopy.

This is the fourth and final week of AcWriMo 2016. Words have been written, edited, and proofread; ideas have been noted down; and work has been tallied (by The PhDometer 3.0 app!). The leaderboard shows an impressive amount of effort. This work should act as motivation to reach your personal AcWriMo targets. It prompts a sustained effort.  Alternatively, finish the month by thinking about the ways that this effort can be efficiently transformed into tangible rewards (publishing or submitting).

Establishing a good, productive writing habit is one of the main benefits of participating in AcWriMo. Paul Silvia, who writes more broadly on the subject of productivity in How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, makes the simple point that ‘productive writers don’t have special gifts or special traits – they just spend more time writing and use this time more efficiently’ (funnily enough, this idea also reflects Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘don’t break the chain’ advice to young comedians, which you can find here and here). AcWriMo essentially helps participants do exactly that: its finite time span encourages a form of intense focus, and its social media presence, PhDometer app, and leaderboard provide positive feedback to reinforce good, productive behaviour. It provides a short cut to more productive drafting, editing, proofreading and note taking processes.

This short cut leads to more publications. So, while AcWriMo mainly focuses on writing, publishing is one of the main goals of participation (that is, getting recognition for all that AcWriMo effort!). Achieving this result involves understanding and making use of a variety of services and tools for sharing and tracking research output. These services and tools are what Geoffrey Bilder, Jennifer Lin and Cameron Neylon call ‘infrastructure’: identification, storage, metadata and relationships. They enable the smooth production, distribution and publication of scholarship. Put a different way, establishing the right writing, researching and publishing infrastructure is another form of shortcut that will help you become more productive.

One important piece of infrastructure that Bilder, Lin and Neylon cite as an example is ORCID (or Open Researcher & Contributor ID). ORCID is a non-profit, online registry. It identifies researchers and connects them to all of their work and ‘affiliations, across disciplines, borders and time’. It is a unique number allocated to individual researchers, which, when used actively, removes problems associated with name ambiguity. What is significant about ORCID is that it can be integrated with Scopus, ResearcherID, LinkedIn and other academic profiles, which means it removes the need to update multiple profiles each time you are successful in being published. It will save you time (when, for example, you finally publish all of that AcWriMo work). ORCID is free to register, and is increasingly being used by universities as a way to streamline internal research reporting (which means you might eventually be asked to register an ORCID by your institution anyway).

Combining a focus on writing with the right infrastructure will help you develop a more productive (writing and publishing) habit. This habit is exactly what AcWriMo and PhD2Published are about. It will serve you until next academic writing month, when it will be bigger, better and even more useful!

Joanna Hare is currently a Subject Librarian at City University of Hong Kong. As a research-practitioner, Joanna’s interests include information and digital literacy, research support for Humanities and the Arts, and innovative models of customer service. She continues Dave Hare’s series blog posts in the AcWriMo 2016 series.

As a librarian, I often attend presentations by representatives of academic publishers about ‘how to get published.’ These usually cover broad, basic advice like checking the journal’s scope before making a submission and using the correct academic style. One thing that is mentioned is to ‘pitch’ your article to the editor directly via a query letter. Book authors use query letters and academics can use them too. These letters typically include a brief (usually one to two paragraphs) synopsis of your academic writing, which is then sent to the journal’s editor asking if it is something they might publish. You can see a sample here.

Query letters are work. Thinking about them prompted me to reflect on whether they are actually worth the effort and if the letters actually do lead to higher publication rates. To find out, I contacted the editors of a few of the highest ranked Communication journals according to the Scimago Journal Rankings (SJR) and asked them about their thoughts on query letters:  

Steve Jones, editor of New Media and Society, does not mind receiving query letters. However, he makes it clear that he ‘cannot “pre-review” manuscripts on the basis of a query, which is something writers often seem to want’. Jones adds that ‘there is no advantage to sending a query letter, ultimately, unless an author is truly uncertain about whether a manuscript’s topic is or isn’t a fit with the journal.’

Jonathon Hess, editor of Communication Education, is ‘happy to get letters from people who are familiar with the journal… and are asking about specifics that couldn’t be answered by looking online.  But general emails pitching papers for which it’s clear the author has no familiarity with the journal aren’t a good use of my time.’ Hess goes on to say that if after reading the journal’s scope statement the author is still unsure if their work is suitable, he would ‘prefer that she or he just submit the article rather than sending an inquiry.  It’s much easier for me to see the paper and offer a clear response than to try to guess based on a description. I screen most submissions within a week, so authors will find out promptly if the paper doesn’t fit or isn’t strong enough for review.’

Tuen A. van Dijk, editor of Discourse Studies, says he does not receive query letters that often, which is perhaps due to his journal’s practice of pre-review: ‘prospective authors get an automatic reply when they submit a paper, in which they are asked to pre-review their own paper on the basis of very detailed criteria of the journals… so they already know what kinds of paper we publish or not.’

Rasmus Nielsen, editor of The International Journal of Press/Politics (IJPP), says ‘the majority of the query letters I receive are not very helpful, because they either (a) reflect that the author has not actually read the journal, or just consulted our aim and scope or (b) is trying to flog a sub-standard manuscript. A minority of query letters are interesting and useful for me, but in that case almost always reflect the fact that the author already knows that a given manuscript may not be a good fit for IJPP.’ ’

So, what should you do?

It is clear from these responses that if you only do one thing before reaching out to an editor prior to submitting your article it is:

Read the journal’s aims and scope first!

An editor’s receptiveness to a query letter has a lot to do with personal preference, with most stating that they do not mind receiving letters. However, it is critical that you demonstrate that you have an understanding of what the journal is about. You can make this clear in your letter (for example, ‘I have read your journal’s aims and scope and my work fits these guidelines for reasons A, B and C’).

If you are not already very familiar with the journal you are submitting to, I would recommend going further than reading the aims and scope to reading several of the articles published in the journal. This will give you an idea of the writing style and topics covered, and how your article would fit in an overall volume. Referring to specific articles in your email to the editor is also evidence that you are familiar with the journal and committed to publishing with them.

A caveat: in my experience it can be worth reaching out to the editor for advice on writing an article if they are producing a ‘special edition’ of the journal, such as a special topic or an edition dedicated to a recent conference. The scope and type of article accepted for special editions may be slightly different and the editor might be able to guide you in a direction that is more likely to lead to publication. But of course, check the website to make sure this information isn’t already easily available!

Thank you to the editors who provided valuable advice for this post.

Dave Hare is currently a part-time lecturer at City University of Hong Kong. His research work concerns film studies, specifically contemporary cinema stereoscopy. This is his second blog post in the AcWriMo 2016 series.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14594792869/

So, following last week’s post, you’ve decided to use AcWriMo to finalise and submit your work to a journal. The next thing to do, according to almost every academic blog ever, is to create a ‘publishing strategy’ or ‘publishing agenda’. You can read about strategies and agendas here, here, here, here, here and here, and also here (and basically everywhere else*).

Publishing strategies don’t always come about in the prescribed way. For me, it was made clear in a job rejection email that I wasn’t being considered for a position because I didn’t have enough Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) publications. I knew that I needed more work published, but I applied for the job anyway and (Surprise) got rejected. The upside of that downside was that I got specific feedback on how to shape my publishing strategy: to look to journal ranking lists, which university departments obviously use to gauge job candidates (as well as a bunch of other stuff, as in exchange knowledge, apply for funding grants, evaluate staff performance, build careers etc.).

There are issues, however, with this type of publication strategy. Tseen Khoo, one half of The Research Whisperer blog team, discussed a few of these issues in a post back in 2014. She concluded the post with the thought that ‘you may still end up “publishing to appease” every so often, but don’t let it be your life’; which is to say there are particular times to focus your attention on journals that others favour. For me, given the response to my job application, the time is now.

For the uninitiated, journal ranking lists are LONG. The A&HCI, for example, is almost 200 titles across multiple fields of study. So, you need to start by filtering out irrelevant titles. A friendly academic librarian can help you with this task; I know, because one helped me. Here is a summary of that librarian’s advice:

• Step one: Create a spreadsheet to list the journal titles you are going to target for your publications. The spreadsheet should include all the relevant information about the journals you plan to target, such as the name, links to the Aims and Scope, recommended article word counts and a ‘Notes/Comments’ column for any extra details about the vibe of the journal.
• Step two: Skim the title lists to identify titles relevant to your field. My field is contemporary cinematic stereoscopy, so keeping my outlook broad I selected any titles that seemed to be about film or media studies, as my work spans both aesthetic and industrial aspects of contemporary cinematic stereoscopy.
• Step three: As you find a title that seems relevant, visit the journal website and find their ‘Aims and Scope’ information. This should tell you if your work will fit in the existing scope of the journal. Add any titles that seem promising to your spreadsheet. At this stage be prepared to be both disappointed and surprised: you may find that the well-regarded journal you were hoping to publish in is actually not ideal, while the scope of journals you are less familiar with might end up being the perfect fit.
• Step four (optional): Email the editor/s of the journal/s and ask if your work sounds appropriate for their publication (more on query letters in the coming weeks). Suffice to say this email should be short and to the point, with a brief description of your work. A typical response to this email will (1) note that your work is interesting and (2) that you should submit it for consideration, providing that (3) you have followed the journal’s style guide. It may not provide too much information, but it might just help you decide which journal you’ll submit to first.

After following these steps, my list included about 25 relevant journals, five of which stood out as being clear targets. In addition to these, I also included journals that might be useful for future research. Now, I am ready to get on with the task of editing, re-writing, and proofreading. A quick note for those AcWriMo-journal-writing peeps that already have a publishing strategy: Your target journals may have posted a recent call for papers, redefined their aims or have a new editorial board. A quick check to see if journals have changed is a good idea before settling down to write.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3903230097/

Forming a publishing strategy (or agenda), conducting research into a journal index, and creating lists, all count toward your AcWriMo success as well as the goal of journal article publication. If you’re doing these tasks, please share your experiences on Twitter and Facebook using the AcWriMo hashtag.

*because the interwebs is loaded with academic blogs talking about strategies … including this one.

Dave Hare is currently a part-time lecturer at City University of Hong Kong. His research work concerns film studies, specifically contemporary cinema stereoscopy. This is the first of a series of blog posts for AcWriMo 2016 by Dave Hare.

START

By now, you’ll be aware that AcWriMo is an event that encourages different forms of productive changes. The reference to ‘write-a-thon’ on the AcWriMo about page dek will lead many participants to focus on quantity, or ways that they can produce more written words. Larry Burton’s account of a corresponding write-a-thon event (NaNoWriMo) primarily talks about this form of change. He writes, ‘the important thing at the end of November was that … I had pages and pages of words just waiting on me to massage them and reshape them’. In his case, the completed draft paper was an achievement that reinforced the benefits of his new quantity-based process and routine. This change will work for some, but if you’re like me, you don’t actually need to produce more words; in fact more (mo) words are probably going to lead to more (mo) problems. In my case, I’ve got an entire PhD thesis to shape into publishable articles and I’ve got an article that has previously been declined that needs editing attention. Quantity isn’t a motivating force for the changes that AcWriMo can help me with: quality is (a fact that happily aligns my role as PhD2Published Journal Articles section editor with my current situation as an under-published academic looking for work). My point is to approach AcWriMo bearing in mind the changes in your academic work that you’d like to make.

(Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. (1917). #467. Telling the folks about France. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-08c6-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)

So, if you’re like me, November work will mainly concern massaging and reshaping words for specific publications; what Raymond Chandler calls cleaning up (‘Throw up on your typewriter every morning. Clean it up every noon’). The blog and Journal section already have a number of excellent posts relating to cleaning up. For example, the final four posts of Ellie Mackin’s series on Wendy Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks might provide the exact information you need. They cover feedback (Week 9), writing clarity and argument revision (Week 10 and 11), and polishing (Week 12), which are all necessary parts of the cleaning up process. The posts (and Belcher’s chapters) all sit satisfyingly (like) into the AcWriMo event’s one month schedule (first week, ‘Giving, Getting and Using Others’ Feedback’; second week, ‘Editing Your Sentences’; third week, ‘Wrapping Up Your Article’; and, fourth week, ‘Sending Your Article!’).

Alternatively, you might prefer throwing up and cleaning up (as Chandler did). In that case, Allan Johnson’s PhD2Published post, ‘Writing the Second Book – Week 1’ describes a mixed approach: a daily blend of drafting and rewriting work. The benefit of this mix is illustrated by the fact that Johnson overcame writing work that he says had been dragging on. His major change, which occurred at around AcWriMo 2015, was mostly to do with the energy he spent on this work, specifically Johnson says he learnt to better manage his energy output rather than management of time and this resulted in greater work output and better work practice (note: the work Johnson cites is his soon to be published second book, The Fisher King’s Wound: Sequence, Consequence and a Sense of the Beginning, 1919-1945).

Finally, I want to suggest collaborating with a work friend or colleague during AcWriMo. This collaborative work would be taken up in addition to AcWriMo’s support network of writers, and would aim to change the way you work via processes of negotiation and compromise. In this case, Charlotte Frost and Jesse Strommel’s post, ‘Collaborative and Public Writing Techniques for Google Docs’, discusses processes of collaboration that involve the document (spreadsheets, word docs, presentations) sharing program, Google Docs. Collaboration, they say, provides a range of benefits to workers (including accountability, camaraderie, instant proof-reading and peer-review, less work, progression, and socialising). So, if you haven’t collaborated on a project before, maybe November is a good time to test it out.

The point is to consider how AcWriMo can benefit your work process and situation, whether that means writing more (as in Burton’s case); editing and re-writing more (as in my case); a combination of drafting and re-writing (as in Johnshon’s case); or collaboration. AcWriMo provides a forum to test out new and/or different ideas and processes.

November is nearly here and the write-a-thon awaits, so get to thinking! (the alternative is a ye old timey skeleton holding a whaling spear will appear in your room and threaten to skewer you).

As we approach the end of October, it’s time to get ready for Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo), the month-long academic write-a-thon that happens every November. If you are new to AcWriMo, or if you wish to refresh your memory on the AcWriMo rules, read this page.

Don’t forget to download the all new PhDometer 3.0 app to participate in AcWriMo 2106, track your progress, and share with the global #AcWriMo community! See you on the leaderboard soon!

A revolutionary optimist and expert procrastinator, Minka Stoyanova subscribes to Wheaton’s Law, believes that brie and red wine will solve most of life’s problems and likes to pretend she is working towards a PhD at City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH MENDELEY — and how to get around it.

Mendeley is by far the best research management tool I have found to date, however there are some aspects of its complete research suite that some users might find challenging.

THE CONS

PDFs

Everything I have mentioned works best for pdfs and can have limited or no functionality for other file types. This means that users might have to convert documents, particularly e-reader formats to pdf in order to reap the full benefits of Mendeley (I find Adobe Acrobat and Calibre to be powerful conversion tools).  

OCR

Additionally, Mendeley has no integrated OCR functionality, so image pdfs (such as scanned book chapters) should be run through an OCR tool (like Adobe Acrobat) before being added to the Mendeley library or the document content will likely not be catalogued by Mendeley’s crawlers.  

DUPLICATION

If users want direct access (i.e. not through Mendeley) to their files through cloud servers, but also want Mendeley on any one of their devices to import documents via the “watch folder,” duplicate documents will be created in the Mendeley database.  This is because each device recognizes the new content in the watch folder as new, to that device — and thus adds the content to the Mendeley library. As a fix for this, Mendeley does include a powerful tool for merging duplicate documents, but some users might find the process annoying and/or time consuming.  

SYNC

Sync, sync, and sync again.  Mendeley only automatically syncs libraries upon opening the application. Thus, if one is apt to regularly switch between devices it is prudent to regularly sync Mendeley’s library manually – or at least to do so at the end of each Mendeley session.  

ANNOTATIONS

The greatest complaint I have regarding Mendeley’s functionality is that annotations made within the body of the text (sticky notes) are not included in the document “notes” section and thus are not included in Mendeley’s search function.  These annotations can be exported along with the highlighted text and attached to the document through the Mendeley library, but this does create an extra (and seemingly unnecessary) step in the reading-to-access workflow.

FINALLY…

Despite its small annoyances, Mendeley’s integration of robust library features and e-reading capabilities make it a solid option for researchers looking to pull together many different perspectives and to discover the nuanced connections that can emerge from a large body of text.  

[see you at the beach]

Vivian Lam, a student at the City University of Hong Kong, is an intern at PhD2Published.

It is important to end procrastination through self-discipline and dedication, but you know what’s better? Be inspired from your time of procrastination and start working again not because you have to, but that you want to. This past week I have been browsing through the internet to see advice on how to end procrastination and there are literally hundreds of suggestions. However, only a handful of them focus on finding the inspiration we need. Below are a few that stands out.

Freewriting

When you are in the middle of procrastinating, or if you have the urge to start, give yourself five minutes to write non-stop about whatever. Most people recommend writing about what you are working on, maybe a short summary of your thesis or a rationale on why your research is worth the time. This method resolves the existential crisis all writers – no matter what kind – have faced at some point. We have all found ourselves, deep in a writing project, wondering about the value of what we are doing. Use some time to convince yourself that what you are doing is important and explain to yourself why it is important. Freewriting is not only an awesome way to motivate yourself, it is a chance for us to generate new ideas or access the ones buried deep in our mind that we have forgotten.

Relax

I have never actually tried this, since relaxing seems to defy the sole principle of ending procrastination, but a lot of people are suggesting this, so it must work for some of them. Basically, if you feel stressed out from procrastinating over an important task, take a break. You can watch some TV, listen to music, or take a walk. Personally I recommend staying away from the internet, or your electronics in general, for this to work. Do not relax by browsing BuzzFeed articles your Facebook friends share or watching funny cat videos on YouTube. Soon one article will turn into ten and the cat videos will eventually take you to the weird part of YouTube that you both don’t understand and don’t want to leave (I’m speaking from experience here, guys). The internet is your best friend only when you have time to waste.

Read

This is something I have tried, and failed at spectacularly, but again, someone suggests it and says it works, so it probably does for some. If you get stuck, find a book to read. I did this, twice, when I was doing a short fiction assignment. The first time, I picked up a novel I had just bought and ended up not putting it down for 3 hours. The second time I learned from my mistake and picked up a novel I had already read twice before. That time resulted in my deleting two thirds of what I wrote that day since most of it resembles that novel too much. Some say that, if you want inspiration through reading, you need to read something of a completely different genre than what you are writing. Novels are acceptable when you are working on your research paper, not when you are writing short stories. For fiction writing projects, try reading any kind of non-fiction. This helps to not distract you from your work while inspiring you at the same time.

Talk

Talk to anyone about what you are working on: explain your thesis to your parents during family dinners; call up your best friend and rant about how much procrastination sucks and proceed to tell them what you are procrastinating over. It may freak your friends and family out, or it may interest them. The point is you let people know what you are doing. If someone is interested, they may raise questions you have never thought of before or give – sometimes awful – suggestions that will help crush writer’s block. A lot of lightbulb moments happen when someone unintentionally says the right thing, even if it’s just a stupid joke at your expense. Alternatively, if you talk to too many people and absolutely no one is interested, this is a sign you should reconsider your entire project life 😉

Writer. Dancer. Tea Drinker. Idea Wrangler. See more of Dana’s work and writing at www.danamray.com

Congratulations! You are just a few days from the end of Academic Writing Month. It has been a remarkable amount of work and effort. Perhaps you made all your goals. I have a confession: I struggle to meet goals. Rarely do I set a word or page count to meet and then actually follow through. Sometimes, that makes me feel like a failure. But the process profoundly challenges me to push into new terrain in the composition and drafting processes. My writing can improve trying to meet new goals even when I fail to meet them; trying to run a mile helps even if we huff and puff and walk most of the way.

Often, it is the process itself that is illuminated and gives the best take-aways from a month like AcWriMo. My words might be weak on the page but I have learned new skills and tools to keep pushing forward with writing.

Trying Scrivener has been a useful lens on my writing process in a deeper way that I had reason to consider before. Years of using Microsoft Word make the first drafting steps seem familiar. Familiarity can trigger all the old habits and hang-ups and anxieties before the first word is even in the document. There are things that a new, shiny tool cannot solve: drafting aversion, anxieties, stress shut downs, revision nightmares, etc. Fundamentally, Scrivener cannot solve the person demons and hang ups that we each carry into the lonely process of drafting. But Scrivener, or other alternative writing tools, can thwart what we expect in the first writing moments. With an altered first step, we have the chance for a new outcome.

Scrivener, as a new and unfamiliar writing space, made it easy for me to notice some of my quirks, like the myriad of ways I dart to distraction instead of drafting. Writing can be an anxious process for me. I have had to face my fears about writing in a new way than I had before. I have had to face the things that prevent me from sitting down and getting the work done.

In conclusion, Scrivener did not become my new best friend. But any new tool, if we give it the chance, can jolt us out of our detrimental habits. New tools can shine a little light on the more miserable parts of our inner academic world, the difficult places where the shiny ideas and associations that got us into scholarship are not as alluring as they once were. Recognition is the first step toward addressing the far more difficult inner work that a new tool cannot ever solve. Tools are only as useful as we make them. It takes time and discernment and some messing around (and the Longest Tutorial) to figure out what works for us.

I raise a glass to you for your hard work! To Scrivener! To our tools old and new and to all the light they shine!

Summary of my favorite parts of Scrivener:

• Pin board. The ability to shift sections of text around in the document by looking at the note card visual of a project.
• Zen mode. Cut the distractions and get ‘er done.
• Integrating media with the writing process.
• Words not pages. Okay, truth be told, I hated this because the pages make me feel like I got somewhere instead of infinite incompleteness. But shifting my measure of success really impacted my conception of the writing process.
• Potential for creative and scholarly work existing in the same project board.

Allan Johnson is Assistant Professor in English Literature at City University of Hong Kong.  He is the author of Alan Hollinghurst and the Vitality of Influence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) as well as articles and chapters on an array of writers including James, Stoker, Conan Doyle, Shaw, Forster, Woolf, Eliot, Cather, Waugh, Doctorow, and Hollinghurst.  You can find ot more about Allan at his website: http://thisisallan.com, and follow him on Twitter @thisisallan.  Below is his reflection of writing habits and systems.

During AcWriMo 2015 I have been sharing some of my observations on managing large-scale writing projects such as books, observations which have grown largely out of the initially difficult transition I faced between finishing my first book and then moving on to the second.  In previous weeks I have written about managing the different forms of energy required in a large-scale project and measuring and evaluating progress.  This week I will be rounding things off with a summary of my weekly review process, which ties together each of the elements I use in project management and helps keep the whole system running smoothly.

My own weekly review is based partially on David Allen’s GTD Weekly Review, but has been adapted heavily and transformed as I began to explore the specific requirements of advanced long-form academic writing.  I have set up each of the following tasks as scheduled tasks in Things, where they appear each Friday to make sure that I keep on track.  Although there are several other steps in my weekly review related specifically to teaching and administration, below are the elements related directly to my research, which, anyway, forms the bulk of my weekly review.

Process Evernote Inbox: I have been a committed Evernote user for years (and am, indeed, the Evernote Higher Education Ambassador), so all of my devices, browsers, and RSS readers have been set up to easily send notes to Evernote.  By the end of the week, my Evernote Inbox will have a number of articles, websites, book reviews, or blog postings that may or may not be related to my research at hand.  I first scan through my Evernote Inbox and assign relevant tags as necessary and if any particular note will need further attention for my research project, I create a task in Things to remind me to do that next week.

Review Projects and Yearly Planning Calendar: After processing my Evernote Inbox, I move to my projects currently underway and my yearly planning calendar which organises all writing tasks for the year.  By measuring and evaluating progress of my work during the week I am able to assess if I am still up to date with my plans for the year and can make changes as necessary.

Review Upcoming Tasks: I make a great effort to update iCal throughout the week so that I have a good record of precisely how much time I spent on various tasks, rather than just a reminder of how much time I had planned to spend.  Reviewing the past week can provide good insight into the rise and fall of energy levels, and may suggest the need for reassessing writing and research plans for the coming week.  This might create additional tasks to add to Things such as a trip to the library on Monday morning for secondary sources, or requesting a particular article not available through my library’s databases.

Process Things Inbox: By this point in my weekly review, my Things inbox has accumulated quite a few new tasks.  Many of these might not be ‘tasks’ at all, but really events that can be scheduled in iCal (for example, a library visit is an event rather than a task because it can be scheduled for a specific time).  Once I have scheduled all events in iCal, I then move to the remaining tasks, which I tag as necessary and advance through Things in a typical GTD task-management process.

Review Upcoming Week: My calendar for the coming week will by this point be quickly filling up with repeating events (e.g. classes, department meetings) and newly scheduled events.  Now is the time that I can move around and adjust sessions for drafting and rewriting—I have already set this week as weekly repeating events, so now it is just a matter of moving them to where they best fit in my schedule.

Review Future Objectives: I always like to end my weekly review (and, thus, my Friday afternoon) with a brief review of my future goals and objectives, such as plans for a new article or ideas for a conference presentation.  I keep these as tasks in the Someday folder in Things, and it is always useful to review my new steps and to keep these in mind as I move forward into the following week.

A revolutionary optimist and expert procrastinator, Minka Stoyanova subscribes to Wheaton’s Law, believes that brie and red wine will solve most of life’s problems and likes to pretend she is working towards a PhD at City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media.

Last time on Minka Talks About Mendeley…

I suggested what I believe to be the two greatest challenges facing academic researchers:

1.  Going Digital: Freeing oneself from the paper prison..

2.  Actually Knowing Things.

MENDELEY THE LIBRARY INTERFACE

When I first encountered Mendeley upon starting my PhD, I was immediately excited by its potential to overcome both of these challenges.  However, at that time, it’s lack of a mobile application (for Android) forestalled its ability to truly allow me to “go digital” — as I believe reading is an activity best completed away from one’s desk. But, even without on-the-go reading support, Mendeley’s library interface proved a powerful tool towards solving the second academic challenge: knowing (or more correctly — remembering).

Mendeley’s library interface is not unlike its similar open source alternative Calibre. Though, the design is (in my opinion) a bit more clean and academic.

[I don’t need no stinking hearts!! wait, maybe I do]

Furthermore, I find the interface and the functionality to be more intuitive in Mendeley than in Calibre. Thus, while Calibre’s large library of open source expansions/plugins probably make it the more powerful digital library, Mendeley’s ease of use and ease of setup makes it the superior library manager for me. After all, time spent learning software is time not spent reading papers!

[Because even academics need time for the beach]

[Calibre is still a powerful conversion and publishing tool, and is the most convenient way to strip DRM and convert proprietary reader formats to alternative formats… if I were to do such things — DRM Buster, pirate ship]

Another key feature of Mendeley’s library is that Mendeley allows users to attach external documents to their original documents.  In this way, notes exported from other readers, external notes documents as well as other papers or reviews can be associated with a given library document. Thus, each document in a Mendeley library can encapsulate and make accessible the entire milieu of personal research a user has completed around a given text.  

In support of my personal research methodology however, Mendeley’s real potential arises from the powerful integration of three basic library features. The three features behind Mendeley’s power are: watch folders, flexible organization options, and its comprehensive and powerful search tool.

[all of the world’s knowledge at my fingertips; itty bitty interface!]

WATCH FOLDER

Mendeley’s watch folder function streamlines the research process by automatically importing and analyzing new files. Once a user sets up a watch folder (which can be any folder(s) on the user’s computer), any documents added to that folder are detected and automatically imported into the Mendeley library. Thus, when I am collecting research texts, I need only dump them in a single (completely unordered) folder and they automatically appear in my Mendeley library.

ORGANIZATIONAL FLEXIBILITY

This functionality merges perfectly with Mendeley’s second great library feature, its organizational flexibility. Mendeley allows users to organize their content in a variety of ways including: by tags, in folders, or through citation data or other document metadata. Mendeley’s approach to documents as database objects — which allows objects to hold multiple tags or appear in multiple folders/subfolders — empowers users to rapidly create nuanced lists of subject-specific content without having to build completely new and cumbersome operating-system-based file plans.

[I just spent all week organizing my documents — I am totally ready to research now!]

POWERFUL SEARCH FUNCTION

While the ability to create flexible file systems is likely the most basic function of any library application, Mendeley’s powerful internal search engine provides the real functionality that makes the organizational system shine. Mendeley searches access all of documents’ metadata (citation information) as well as text content, and user notes. As a result, a simple keyword search within one’s own library can quickly create highly nuanced document lists that reveal not only connections within the document’s content but also within the user’s notes on those documents. This kind of search tool — that goes deep into the content of the documents as well as any notes or other documents attached to them — allows users to make the kind of cross-document, cross-authorial connections that would normally require an extremely deep understanding of a large number of scholars and texts. 

[I require all the papers that are about referencing underwater basket weaving … ven diagram!]

[Thus, Mendeley is basically my brain.]

[crystal ball: Oh great Mendeley… tell me what I thought in 2012]

MENDELEY, THE E-READER

All of the above-mentioned functionality had already made Mendeley an important part of my research system before June of this year. But, despite my regular use of Mendeley’s library function, I was still anxiously awaiting the release of their Android mobile application. The desktop e-reader is a solid interface with a simple but effective system for note-taking, highlighting, and annotating texts. However, without the ability to read on-the-go, Mendeley was never going to liberate me from my paper prison.

[so many books!!! schlepping]

I am happy to report that, despite its somewhat delayed release, Mendeley’s mobile app is everything I expected and then some.  All of the functionality from the desktop version seems to have been replicated in the mobile version with the added benefit of downloading only those documents which you are actively working on — thus protecting the limited resource of device memory while also allowing academics to have access to all of their documents. Downloaded texts can be read on or offline and changes made will be synced to the cloud once Internet connectivity is again available.  

By combining a strong a library and citation managing tool with an e-reader Mendeley makes itself a one-stop-shop for my research needs.

In the next instalment though, I will discuss the things I don’t like about Mendeley and some workarounds I have come up with for these challenges.

Vivian Lam, a student at the City University of Hong Kong, is an intern at PhD2Published.

Being an intern at PhD2Published means in the past few months, I’ve read more pieces on academic writing than my entire three years in the university combined. Many of what I have read involves investigating the problem of procrastination. I can’t help but notice that academic writers and creative writers hold very different beliefs when it comes to that problem. Some people are calling for academics to cease thinking of themselves as just scholars or researchers, but also writers, so perhaps we can take a few notes from people who fully identify themselves as writers.

So what exactly do creative writers have to say about procrastination?

Embrace it. That’s among the first things you will hear.

Creative writers often have slightly more flexible deadlines, so when they hit a writer’s block, they probably won’t tackle it by sitting down and ordering themselves to write at least 5000 words a day. They prefer putting the tasks aside and wait until inspiration strikes. “I’ve spent the last two weeks not writing and I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it, and I don’t feel guilty for not feeling guilty about it [,]” writes Bryan Hutchinson, a creative writer and the proud owner of the Positive Writer blog. He explains in a blog post on why procrastination is a good thing that forcing himself to write usually results in work he doesn’t appreciate. He finds this method wastes time and is causes more stress.

Of course, this doesn’t mean creative writers simply procrastinate for the rest of eternity. Rather  they treat their procrastination period as a short break for their worn out mind. They believe creativity comes and goes as it pleases, and cannot be squeezed out like lemon juice. When the time comes, inspiration hits and that’s their sign of going back to work. Optimistic much? Perhaps, but funnily enough, from what I’ve read, this strategy usually works. “I discovered that the more time I put off writing and procrastinate, the more time I spend creating [,]” claims Hutchinson in his post.

Indeed, for creative writers, writing is a process of creation, not gluing your hands to the keyboard and typing until you hit a word limit. The problem academic writers have to ask themselves is, do they have the luxury to NOT do the latter? Sadly, most of the time the answer is no.

The bottom line, creative writers are people who value quality over quantity, while the academic world seems to expect the opposite. Quantity often dictates a scholar’s worth: The number of their works which have been published by high impact journals; the number of citations those works have received… The list goes on.

Just to cheer things up, I believe academic writers do have the chance to procrastinate. One thing both academic and creative writers can agree on is the best time to procrastinate: Something good usually comes out of putting your work aside after the very first draft. Give yourself a break before revising and editing and you will see your writing in a whole new perspective. If you don’t experience an inspiration spur during one of your showers at the procrastination period, it often still comes when you start working on the piece again.

On a final note, creative writers enjoy the writing process itself. As academics, you may find joy in researching or being published, but do try to enjoy the in-betweens like creative writers do. When you sit in a café with no wifi, writing your literature review, treat the process as something you have come to love. Passion always makes quality work.

Writer. Dancer. Tea Drinker. Idea Wrangler. See more of Dana’s work and writing at www.danamray.com

Composition rarely involves just text on a page. And increasingly, in a digital world post Roland Barthes, we learn to read more than words on a page. Our texts are not simply words but a compendium of different media and sources. And this makes the long academic project incredibly difficult to organize and tackle. It is not a matter of merely arranging our sources to analyze but sorting them and noting them as we construct our thoughts on the page. The writing process is the act of analysis. How can we write in a way that gives us full access to the texts and ideas that motivate us while focusing on getting the words on the page? Can Scrivener be the tool that enables a new kind of writing process?

What Scrivener can do:

Scrivener creates a writing process that exists alongside constant reference to digital sources. It does not expect you to write constantly flipping back and forth between source documents and your writing process. Various media and text files can be integrated with the writing process. You can add images and YouTube videos and web pages into the Research Folder and easily view them in the split panel frame feature. And really, this is a game changer for the composition process.

Interdisciplinary academics draws on multi-media sources as well as text sources. And this is introduces a whole new realm of possible writing processes. Scrivener can participate in that with the split panel frame that allows the writer to consistently view various references while composing. You don’t have to wait until a later stage to begin integrating references and comprehensively analyzing sources.

I imported a term paper on partner dancing in literature as a test run for the feature. Over the past week, I have begun revising the text and considering possible ways to break the original paper into multiple texts for publication. My primary task: I needed to collect and arrange digital dance sources and analyze them during the composition process. It was great to have access to YouTube videos of Regency period dance reproductions right alongside videos of contemporary West Coast Swing “Jack and Jill” competitions. I can play a video and easily type thoughts as I viewed the video. This creates a close integration between my written text and the image I view. I can explore the possibilities of real time response as I write.

Here’s the rub:

I wanted to integrate the videos into the text itself and easily format the Scrivener file into a digital form. This would allow video to live right beside the analysis rather than imagining my paper being read only on static print paper. Instead, I imagined research being engaged digitally. And this is where Scrivener ceased to help me.

Scrivener CAN export to flexible forms like html (yay!) and basic .txt files. For those of you in digital humanities or the like, this will give you all you need to move to create a fully digital text with integrated images and media files.

The problem for me is based in my composition philosophy. For those of us without computer know-how, we need formats that allow composition to happen with close integration with media files.  And Scrivener’s digital exporting options cannot include images and media files included in the writing text itself.

What I wish Scrivener could do and someone should definitely create:

Integrating images and videos into the text itself in a way that is easily exportable to digital formats. What I mean is this: more scholarly writing needs to include images and videos within the text itself. We need platforms that allow our research to easily format with images and videos rather than simply providing links or screen shots to be inserted later. There is a growing integration of sources and formats that is reflected in both writing process and writing outcomes. The way we construct things is not the same as it used to be and we need platforms that allow composition to exist alongside formatting tools.

Now, I am aware that this is a highly unfair ask of Scrivener. They never claimed to be the solution to a new age of research formatting and text/media integration. Scrivener has only ever claimed to focus on text production, getting those elusive words on the page. Everything about the tool is aimed at that outcome and that outcome alone. Blaming a platform for not being what it never wanted to be is highly illogical of me as a reviewer.

So let’s give some kudos to Scrivener for what it does: creating a split frame feature that permits dynamic reading/analysis and composition process. Full integration into digital platforms with our multi-media sources is just around the corner.