Today we present a guest post from Jo VanEvery. I invited Jo to create a post giving her take / feedback / ideas about our series of posts on publishing in academic journals.  Jo is an academic career coach you can read more about her here and you can follow her on twitter @jovanevery

The biggest barrier to publishing is fear.

• Fear of rejection.
• Fear of criticism.
• Fear that you really don’t have anything to contribute.

As you progressed in your education you were consistently among the best in your
cohort. That’s what got you into your PhD program in the first place. Read more

Weekly Wisdom #35

If the jobs aren’t out there, pour your energies into getting your book pitched & written.

Over the last three weeks, we have focused on issues to do with getting published in academic journals, as this is traditionally the first step many newly-qualified academics take into the world of academic publishing. The first task in getting published is actually writing the paper ,so here is the first post in a new series on how to write journal articles by the thesis whisperer Dr Inger Mewburn. PhD2Published is all about being interactive so intertwined with Inger’s step-by-step approach to paper wrting will be posts from me discussing my experiences of using her techniques to create a paper based on one of the issues highlighted in my previous post.

In my last guest post I gave out some advice on selecting journal articles and developing a publishing strategy. Over the next seven posts I am going to write about my ‘quick and dirty’ method of assembling a journal paper for publication.  I believe that many research students are held back from publishing because they think an article is ‘extra effort’ on top of their PhD. In one sense they are right; it is extra effort, but the work can be folded back into your PhD so it is not wasted effort. This post is geared towards a research student audience because this is the one I know best, but I think what I have to say applies to early career academics too. Read more

Weekly Wisdom #35

Bear the global financial crisis in mind; this is a really difficult time to make a solid case for a speculative project!

On Saturday 12th March I’ll be representing PhD2Publsihed and Arts Future Book at UCL’s Spring ReSkIN event. ReSkIN is a compulstory  seminar and support scheme for PhD students working in the field of Art History and Visual Culture. This means it unites students from  six different colleges within the university who all work across the same discipline so that they can meet each other and find out more about the issues they face going forwards. The spring event looks closely at writing and publishing in the arts and I’m delighted to be on a panel with a diverse range of expertise.

I’m going to do two things in my talk that reflect aspects of my  projects. One is that I’ll look at how you can use the web and social media in particular to build your platform as a researcher and author. The other is that I’ll provide a quick tour though some inovative uses of technology in academic publishing. Anything from Open Humanities Press to Gamer Theory. I’m really looking forward to this event and hope to see you there!

This weeks guest post comes from Dr Inger Mewburn who is a Research Fellow at RMIT University in Australia.  Inger does research on research education and writes about it.  Follow her on twitter and don’t forget to visit her blog The Thesis Whisperer.

I’ve been working in the research education field for some six years and continue to be surprised by the passive attitude of many students to publishing. Some seem actively scared of the process, or set their sights on lower ranked journals and conferences, perhaps because they are afraid of rejection. I think part of the problem is that students are not coached on developing a publishing strategy. A clear publishing strategy will help you get the most out of your study time and kick start your post doctoral career.
There’s three main reasons that you should publish while you are doing your research degree. All of these reasons will inform the outline of your publishing strategy

1) One of the ways in which examiners determine the quality of PhD is the extent to which it is publishable. If parts of the PhD have already been published this will give you some confidence about the outcome of the examination process.

Read more

Weekly Wisdom #33

Learn to love writing.

Right, so my thesis has been completed and examined and I passed subject to minor corrections, which were dutifully done within 3 months, so now what? Well, according to my examiners the first step in my post-doc life should be publishing a paper in to a good academic journal. This seems to make perfect sense however, at the same time it raises three important questions;

1.       What parts of my thesis would make good journal articles?

2.       What constitutes a good journal and how do I choose?

3.       What do I do if  my paper gets rejected?

Over the next three weeks we will consider all these issues with guest posts from Dr Inger Mewburn who writes about Journal selection and Professor Chris Hamnett who offers advice on dealing with rejections and resubmissions. In this post I will consider the first of these questions – what parts of my thesis would make good journal articles? Read more

InterFace is a new international forum to learn, share and network between the fields of Humanities and Technology.

Below is an outline for the conference and the call for participants the conference will be held at University College London between 27th – 29th July 2011:

The symposium aims to foster collaboration and shared understanding between scholars in the humanities and in computer science, especially where their efforts converge on exchange of subject matter and method. With a focus on the interests and concerns of Ph.D students and early career researchers, the programme will include networking activities, opportunities for research exposition, and various training and workshop activities. Read more

Hello and welcome to my first post as Managing Editor of phd2published. Now that Charlotte has secured her book contract she has, partially, passed the baton on to me, so I can document my progress toward and my experiences with getting my book published. Charlotte will still be documenting her experiences of writing her first book as well as contributing other relevant posts here and there.

I thought I would use this first post to introduce myself and my plans and ideas for what I want to bring to this site:

Who am I and why am I here?

I am a social scientist, more specifically a Development Geographer and my research interests lie in the areas of international environmental governance and development planning and financing, particularly in relation to sub-Saharan African countries. I completed my PhD in the Geography Department of King’s College London in 2010 and I am now working toward securing a post-doctoral research position and, as my examiners keep reminding me, publishing!

I came to this site through twitter, I love to tweet, as you meet so many new people and find invaluable pieces of information like this site. I looked through the pages and thought while I know how to approach post-doc research through a mass of grant and job applications, how do I address the issue of publishing? I suddenly thought that I really don’t know how to go about developing a publishing strategy, this worried me. Read more

Weekly Wisdom #12

Break book-pitching into short-term, medium-term and long-term tasks; don’t get overwhelmed!