Schedule a meeting (or seven). As a new year is beginning, and a new semester for many, you may be looking at your calendar for 2014 to fill in your standing meeting, appointments, and classes. Now is the time to schedule your meetings with your projects. Setting a routine meeting can be a good way to ensure you sit down to work on research and writing. The key is to block the time and lock it in: don’t let anything take precedence over the time you’ve set aside. So rather than thinking, “I want to write on Tuesday and Friday,” set a specific time of day that can’t be interrupted.

Todays post is written by Helen Wainwright. Helen is a final year PhD Candidate from The Department of Art History at The University of Nottingham, researching conceptual art’s supposed demise in the early 1970s in New York, and the concurrent redefinition of the spaces and/or places of artistic practice and dissemination stemming from the period. She is particularly interested in the work three separate artists: Stephen Shore (1947-present), Gordon Matta Clark (1943-78) and Anthony McCall (1946-present), and the gap that exists between their early works and later (re)interpretations of them.

Twitter: @adxhw1

http://nottingham.academia.edu/HelenWainwright

Recently, the thoughts of what to do post-PhD have started to worm their way into my mind – a good six months ahead of schedule. Rather than ignoring my subconscious efforts to prompt me into a premature job search, I used them as a nudge in the right direction to think about what I really want to accomplish in the year leading up to my viva, and likewise what I would need to accomplish in the subsequent year (or two) after it. This is when I metaphorically stumbled, via Twitter, across William Germano’s book From Dissertation to Book, an extremely useful and accessible text first published in 2005 by University of Chicago Press. I initially approached it with caution, thinking it would ultimately lead to a flurry of self-doubt, but what I actually found was an insider’s guide to what it takes, and how to make the first moves towards publishing your thesis as a book, and what decisions and barriers will more than likely be encountered along the way.

As the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social sciences at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and a former Vice President and Publishing Director at Routledge, William Germano knows exactly what it takes to take those first steps towards publication. The message running throughout the book is clear: be willing to revise, rework and even rethink your PhD research. This advice is coupled with a hefty warning: a thesis is not a book manuscript and will more-often-than-not be rejected by a publisher without any form of editing. Germano provides his readers with a list of eight options to choose from when considering what to do with the thesis once complete: ‘do not resuscitate’; ‘send the dissertation out as is…’; ‘publish the one strong chapter’; ‘publish two or three chapters as articles’; ‘revise the dissertation lightly’; ‘revise the dissertation thoroughly’ or ‘cleave the ample dissertation in two’ (p.38). It is safe to say that readers of From Dissertation to Book are most likely seeking advice on just that topic, and are thus left with the sole prospect of gentle/hefty revision. However, reading between the lines, I think the underlying message of the book is clear: there are more routes towards writing your first book than simply turning your doctoral dissertation straight into a manuscript.

One suggestion is the transformation of chapters into publications. Not only will this allow ideas to be transmitted to a larger audience; gaining much needed publicity, but it will grant the opportunity for a moment’s pause to deliberate whether these ideas could actually form the basis of further research, and lay the foundations for an entirely different book proposal. Likewise, such reflection may aid in the dissection of the thesis as a whole; allowing it to be sliced in two, moving both parts in separate directions, and therefore furthering the possibilities of future research and publication. Alternatively, as Germano continually recommends: revision is the key. Whilst attempting to re-work the thesis, it is also highlighted that a publisher who can recognise the potential audience for a book is far more likely to accept a manuscript or proposal, because they can clearly see who the text is aimed at and who it will be sold to. In contrast to the doctoral thesis, which will only ever meet the eyes of a handful of people, despite best wishes, the book must have a definite audience, and therefore a direct and highly relevant message. If you can argue this case straight away, then perhaps you are on to a winner.

The awareness of your thesis as something far from finished, but as the stepping stone into the world of academia is a daunting prospect, given the amount of blood, sweat and tears which are poured into the work. However, this realisation is also entirely invigorating when realisation dawns that all the routes of thought that had to be closed off in order to concentrate on getting to the finish line, could one day be re-opened. As a researcher you are expected to be adaptable and full of belief in your ideas, and From Dissertation to Book echoes these basic assumptions, asking its readers to think in the same way about their doctoral research: that it is malleable and full of potential, whether published as a book on first attempt, or not.

Today’s post by Prof. Jan Draper reflects on her own experiences of carving up her PhD thesis into publications and provides excellent advice for post PhD-ers about what to consider and how to do it. Jan is a Professor and Director of Nursing at the Open University, UK, in the Faculty of Health and Social Care.

I don’t have an academic book (unfortunately!) but when I completed my PhD (2000) I did approach a number of publishers to see if they were interested. I think my recollection from this (very dated now of course) was that the publishers could ‘spot’ a PhD ‘conversion’ a mile off, so you have to be very careful in this regard. Some publishers are very happy to consider conversions from PhDs, others are not. So in order to maximise chances, I think one needs to be very well informed about which publishers do what.

With that in mind here are my Top 5 Tips for getting published:

1. Write a good PhD in the first place! Sounds obvious but you would be surprised at the range! Include in this writing a very solid theoretical foundation. Theory can really liberate and help make connections that otherwise might not be made.
2. Make sure that you have a good publication strategy arising from your PhD. You may need to seek some help in gauging this – either supervisors or other colleagues, depending on the nature of your work. If you are located in a practice-based discipline for example, in addition to conventional academic papers arising from your thesis, there will also be professional/practice-related papers that you could write. So think very carefully about how you ‘cut’ your thesis.
3. Think creatively about the above. Don’t just think the obvious i.e. the description of the project and the findings. Is there something about the method that was innovative, that I can write about? Was there something about the theory I used? How helpful was this theory? Did my work advance the theory in any way? Was there something about ethical considerations that was more unusual in my study that could be of benefit to the wider community in some way? Think also about conference presentations – not just papers.
4. Think very carefully about where to publish. This may sound very obvious. But, I was very fortunate that I ‘stumbled’ across this important factor. Don’t settle for low impact journals but think about your academic career – if of course, that is something you wish to develop and enhance. Go for high impact journals that will get your work noticed. Not only will it get your work noticed, but it is likely that the feedback you get from reviewers will be of excellent quality. I learned so much from the feedback from reviewers working for The Sociology of Health and Illness not only about the papers but also about the process of reviewing. Their contributions to me as a writer have influenced by ongoing, longer-term work as a reviewer. Strange!
5. Don’t underestimate the time it will involve! Cutting up a thesis is a traumatic and bloody affair! It has taken so long to write the thesis to get it to its current format, so to think about carving it up in a different way can actually be quite difficult. This is where wise counsel from either supervisors or other colleagues can be helpful. But my advice would be that no matter how hard it feels – just do it! To get to this stage and not publish would be a travesty so I would always encourage students that no matter how hard it feels, you must do it! From my own personal experience, I know that getting 5 good papers out of my PhD created a solid platform for my ongoing academic career. So it is worth it – honest!

Todays post by Karen McAulay follows on from her first, and discusses her experiences of publishing her thesis as a book. At the end of Part One, Karen had received the contract for writing her book and Christmas 2011 had arrived. So what next? This is when the Planning, Prep and writing really began.

Planning and Preparation

Although I hadn’t been asked to rewrite anything, I wanted to go through the manuscript with a fine toothcomb, looking for anything too wordy, unclear, or where a footnote could be pared down or incorporated into the text.  Adopting the same approach that I’d taken with my thesis, I counted the chapters, introduction, appendices and bibliography, and allocated a set portion of time to each, with a bit more for the new chapter.  So long as I kept to my own deadlines, I knew I’d be fine.  To ensure I wouldn’t come unstuck, I booked a couple of weeks’ leave from the day-job, in the run-up to submission day.

Now, I know that sometimes one fixates on trivial details as a form of procrastination.  In my case, I awoke on 2^nd January, after a dreadful night’s sleep, convinced of just one thing: I needed a new laptop.  Showing resolution over and above my customary bloody-minded determination, I went online, checked the PC World website, then leapt in the car and bought one.  (In my own defence, I have to explain that my very old PC had a couple of problems that I’d been unable to resolve.  USB drives and dependable internet connections are somewhat crucial when it comes to writing a book!)

And I treated myself to a new mug (featured in the image above): ‘Writer’s block – when your imaginary friends refuse to talk to you.’  I’ve often said that I know more dead people in Edinburgh than live ones.  Since they were all getting an honourable mention in the book, I decided my ‘imaginary friends’ might just as well sit right there on my desk with me while I wrote!  I only used that mug when I was working on the book, as a point of principle.  Don’t knock it: it worked for me!

That sorted, I was able to get on with the job in hand.  I started a blog (another blog) for the purpose of monitoring my progress, in the hope that friends and colleagues would occasionally murmur the odd word of encouragement.  ‘True Imaginary Friends’ has been a useful outlet.  It provided me with somewhere I could write informally, and jot down any problems I came up against.   Such as the day I realised that the new chapter was far from the walk in the park that I’d anticipated …

On the whole, the existing chapters didn’t take long to tidy up, but I had to pare down the chapter that would precede the new one, add some of the pared material to the new chapter, and rearrange the entire new chapter to accommodate the work I’d done in recent months.  Apart from the intellectual exercise involved, it was also rather time-consuming.

Time

Having a full-time job places constraints on my writing time – I’ve become used to that.  I did my PhD part-time, after all.  I just book annual leave when the need arises.  Where I nearly came unstuck, though, was when I then got the opportunity to do a few lectures at another institution.  I was already committed to the book; and to writing and presenting two conference papers; and now I had lecture-plans to prepare.  There followed an invitation to speak to a local piping society.  (Bagpipes, that is. I’m not a piper myself, but my subject interests pipers.)  Could I say no?  Certainly not!  It’s all advance publicity for the book, after all.

Images, Maps …

Whilst I had no illustrations in the thesis, I thought a few well-chosen images would enhance the book.  One per chapter … so I scanned some of my Victorian song-collections.  The scans weren’t quite up to publication quality.  I ordered up the appropriate images from the uni library.  They, and another one, had permissions to be sought.  Gradually I whittled away at the list, until there was just one problem: finding a map.  I didn’t want just any old map – it had to have the names of various Hebridean islands and key Scottish locations, but nothing else.  If you want a map drawn, Daniel Dalet, c’est l’homme – he’s the French cartographer who runs D-maps.com.  And he’s very helpful indeed!

And an Indexer

As I worked on the manuscript, questions kept occurring to me.  One concerned the indexing.  Find out what your publisher prefers: I had the choice of having the indexing fees subtracted from my royalties; doing it myself using the facilities available on a pdf; or engaging my own indexer.  Conference networking proved its worth, when I was lucky enough to be put in touch with an indexer actively looking for indexing in my general subject area.

Looking Ahead

At the time of writing, my book has an ISBN; is in editorial/production; and is advertised on Ashgate’s website.  Oh, and it has a publication date: March 2013.  It’s really happening!   There’s only one problem: what shall I write about next?

Websites and Contact Details

• True Imaginary Friends: http://trueimaginaryfriends.blogspot.co.uk
• My website at Academia.edu: http://rcs.academia.edu/KarenMcAulay
• Whittaker Live, the performing arts blog I do at work: http://whittakerlive.blogspot.com

• Tweet me @Karenmca
• Email: K.McAulay@rcs.ac.uk

Today’s post is by published author Gina Neff. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University  of Washington. She is also a Chair of the Communication and Information Technologies Section, American Sociological Association and the author of Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries. You can follow her on Twitter at @ginasue.

1. A dissertation is not a book. Figure out what makes your research useful, interesting, and relevant to your field. There are obvious differences between dissertations and books, of course, but when you start to “speak” like a scholar instead of a graduate student your work and your ideas will be heard differently. The wisdom of William Germano’s From Dissertation Into Book cannot be overstated.  Repeat: cannot be overstated. If you get a rejection notice (and expect to get one) that says you should read Germano, you’ve not done your homework.

2. Get advocates for your book. Books do not publish themselves (unless you’re thinking of self-publishing, and if you are thinking such silly thoughts as a junior academic then shame on you). Books, like all cultural and media products, are produced in social networks. Figure yours out and get advocates for your book who are established within that network or scholarly community. You already have advocates for your dissertation (presumably your chair, your committee, co-panelists from professional presentations). Figure out who will support you in revisions, proposal writing, picking the right press, finding the right series, etc.

3. Focus. This is advice for both you and your manuscript. Revising a dissertation into a book is hard. Figure out what you want to say to your field, what contributions you have, and focus that into a coherent manuscript. Along the way, you’ll need to find time to focus yourself – turn off the internet, step outside of the classroom, get to the library or shut your office door, and sit down and write.

4. Think about markets. Books are products. Even if you’re in a relatively small and specialized field (or perhaps because of it) you’ll need to think about who will buy your book and why. Your potential editors will be thinking these thoughts. Does your work speak across disciplinary lines? With a little work can you make your work relevant, readable, and intelligible to interested scholars in related fields? Thinking about how the book might be marketed shouldn’t be your first or primary consideration, but it should be one thing you consider when revising your dissertation.

5. Write your book. A first book is not for your dissertation chair, your department chair, or your tenure review committee chair. Those voices, or fears of those voices, may be in your head as you tackle the difficult job of revisions. But the book is yours—own it and advocate passionately for the ideas that lead you to pursue this work in the first place.

(C) http://www.flickr.com/photos/james_scott/

Today’s post, is the third in a short multi-authored series on PhD2Published where I have been collecting hints and tips from published academic authors, all about successfully getting an academic book published.  Today’s tips are offered by Susan Nance, an Associate Professor of US History and Affiliated Faculty with the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph. Her next book, Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and Business in the American Circus, is due out from the Johns Hopkins University Press in January 2013. For more information, you can visit her website.

My big five principles for getting a book out with an academic press:

Todays post is by Dr Beatrice Hale. Her most recent, and first academic book is a co-authored book entitled The Age of Supported Independence, published by Springer, Dordrecht, with Dr Patrick Barrett and Professor Robin Gauld.  They’re next book is currently in preparation. Here Beatrice provides her top 5 tips for getting your book proposal accepted by a publisher.

1. Conduct a thorough search of relevant publishers,

2. Send them a well written book proposal,

3. Be courteous and inform the publishers whom you contact that you will be contacting a number of publishers

4. Ensure that the proposal gives a brief outline of the related literature of theory and data (social science here). You must identify and stress where your book has its place/or can fill a gap,

5. Do a thorough reading of the publishers’ websites, and comply with their list.

In this post Karen McAulay shares her experiences of planning and publishing her first academic book. In the first of two posts, she reflects on planning to publish.

     ‘And when I get my PhD’, you muse, ‘then I’ll publish it as a book’.  Admit it!  Haven’t we all thought this, in an unguarded moment?

Advice

Several years ago, I stumbled across this advice:

• Leave it a year or so after getting your PhD
• Deliver a few papers and/or publish a couple of articles
• Start thinking about publishing your thesis as a book.
• You’re a more attractive proposition to a publisher if you have already published on your subject.

I graduated in December 2009.  I diligently wrote papers – and published a few things – and didn’t start thinking about ‘the book’ until Autumn 2010.  But where to publish it?  I really didn’t want to go down the self-publishing route.  I didn’t want the expense, or the bother of production and marketing.  I did want to be published by a reputable company that would (a) know where to get the book reviewed, and (b) be as keen as me to sell a reasonable number of copies.

I could see that my topic would probably fit into the scope of several academic publishers.  I also wondered about a couple of publishers who might have been interested in my topic for its regional connections.  However, I was fortunate enough to be approached by the series editor of one of my target publishers, before I’d even contacted their publishing house, and that was the one I decided to go with.

The Book Proposal

So, what can you expect when you have a publisher interested in your title?  Submitting a book proposal comes first.  You have to be able to describe your target audience, and demonstrate how your book fills an unfilled niche.  It’s crucial that you’re up-to-speed with what has recently been published in your field.  If A says this, and B covers that, but you can demonstrate that you’ve devoted a good part of your thesis to some other aspect – or taken a different approach – then that’s all good!

You may have to submit a demonstration chapter.  Only you will know if the tone of your thesis reads like a book, or would still need more work to make it more accessible.  I suspect this is partly a question of writing style, and partly of subject matter.  I was asked for the link to my e-thesis, and that was that.

If you’ve published scholarly articles, you already know about the peer-review.  This can take a long time.  (I wouldn’t venture to pronounce on how long is too long, because I don’t know what’s normal in the book-publishing world.)  Similarly, I imagine there must be a wide range of responses, between “No, thanks”, and “Yes, please”, but I can only speak for my own experience.

The Contract

At the end of the day, I wasn’t asked to re-write anything.  However, I was asked if I could add another chapter, so that the book would have added value over and above the online thesis.  I was only too pleased to do this, since I’d gone on researching post-graduation, and this offered the perfect opportunity to get it in print, in context.  (I’d spoken on my subsequent research, and had a paper that would serve as a draft, but more work was needed before it would be a chapter that I could feel proud of.)  I agreed to supply the manuscript in four months.

It was by now just before Christmas 2011.

Once we’d taken down the Christmas tree, I decided, I would get started….To be continued.

About Karen

Websites and Contact Details

• True Imaginary Friends
• My website at Academia.edu
• Whittaker Live, the performing arts blog I do at work

• Tweet me @Karenmca
• Email: K.McAulay@rcs.ac.uk

My day-job is Music and Academic Services Librarian at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  After hours, I’m a musicologist specialising in historical Scottish song collections.

My first degree in Music at Durham, was followed by a research Masters in mediaeval English plainsong uses at Exeter, then doctoral studies into mediaeval English music.  A subsequent postgraduate librarianship diploma at Aberystwyth left me with insufficient time to finish the mediaeval music research.

Librarianship at the University of East Anglia, Metropolitan Borough of South Tyneside and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has filled in the decades before I resumed research again, this time into Scottish song collecting c.1760-1888. After 5 years’ part-time study concurrently with my full-time work, I graduated with a PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2009. I submitted my book MS at the end of April 2012: Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era.

LEARN TIME MANAGEMENT. Determine your work priorities and try as best you can to match your time commitments to those priorities. The model of an academic having large blocks of time at work to think deeply about a problem is not valid, and may never have been. Your time on campus is fragmented. You are interrupted for teaching, office hours, supervising dissertations, phone calls, keeping up with e-mail, research, writing, publication, and more. Each activity is important and/or mandatory. You barely have time to be collegial. If you are overloaded, use time management tools. The simplest is the calendar that comes with e-mail software. Keep a record not only of your appointments and your teaching commitment but also your interruptions. Analysis will show times when you can combine repetitive interruptions and when you can undertake reading, research, and professional activities. Learn to say no! One of our colleagues, who published well over 30 books in his career, advised: “If you write only a page a day, that’s a book a year.

GET TO KNOW THE MAJOR EDITORS of the book publishers in your field. The best place to meet them is at the book exhibits asso­ciated with your annual professional conference. You will find that some of them know absolutely nothing about your field, not to mention your subject. Avoid working with such editors because they will treat your work as a commodity, like pork bellies.

SELECTING A PUBLISHER INVOLVES TRADE-OFFS. With a large pub­lisher that issues many books in your field in a year you gain the advantage of mass marketing and advertising. Large publishers em­ploy reps who visit campuses. However, these reps are given many books to push and their commissions depend on the number of books sold. As a result, they concentrate on freshman and sopho­more texts for required courses. Furthermore, since they receive the same commission no matter which book is adopted, they have little incentive to sell a particular book. Thus, you run the risk that pro­motion of your book will be lost among the many others with simi­lar titles being offered by that publisher. Small and specialty commercial publishers and university presses give you much more individual attention. You can judge whether they are a good fit for your book by looking at their publications list on their Web site, themailings you receive from them, the advertisements in your profes­sional journals, and the experience and recommendations of your peers. If a publisher looks reasonable based on these probes, go to your school’s library and look at their books they have published. Before signing a contract, make sure that (a) your publisher will have your manuscript peer reviewed, and (b) the publisher you chose “counts” with your field’s tenure committee. Under no circum­stances publish with a vanity press, that is, a publisher that charges you for publishing your book.

Image from christmasstockimages.com http://christmasstockimages.com/free/ideas_concepts/slides/festive_gifts.htm

This post is the fifth in a series by Josie Dixon, a consultant with 15 years’ experience in academic publishing, as Senior Commissioning Editor at Cambridge University Press and Publishing Director for the Academic Division at Palgrave Macmillan.  She now runs her own business, Lucian Consulting, and gives training workshops on publishing and other forms of research communication for postgraduates, postdocs and staff in over 50 universities internationally, alongside her training and consultancy work in the publishing industry. In this set of blog posts for PhD2Published, Josie examines some of the polarities between Planet PhD and the world of publishing, and offers strategies for how to bridge the gap. 

In the first post of this series, I took as my starting point the importance of recognising that publication is inevitably a commercial activity.  Pitching a book to potential publishers involves a degree of salesmanship, which doesn’t always come naturally.  In the publishing workshops I give for early career researchers, participants do an exercise in pairs, much like the well-known ‘elevator pitch’ in which entrepreneurs must make a concise and compelling case for the value of their enterprise to an investor.  The process of seeking a publisher for a book is, if you like, a kind of Dragon’s Den, in which presses will be looking for projects which will repay their investment.  Doing the exercise in pairs ensures not only that participants produce their own sales pitch, but also that they get to be a consumer of someone else’s, to encourage critical thinking about how the case for publication may look to an outsider.

This commercial turn is not about selling out on your academic values, but encouraging others to buy into the importance of your research.  It’s a difficult transition because most academics dislike the idea of having to market their work.  For some this spills over into disdain for anything so vulgar as promotion, and even a sense of hostility towards commercial values.  In an article in the TLS, addressing the recent controversies in the UK surrounding the introduction of impact as a criterion for funding research, Stefan Collini set out a dystopian future in which academics will have to become ‘accomplished marketing agents’ and ‘door-to-door salesmen for vulgarised versions of their increasingly market-oriented products’.  Collini’s desire to defend the independence of academic research and stand up for the cultural values of the humanities is of course commendable.  But it’s interesting that he sets this in such bitter opposition to a pejoratively framed notion of marketing and commercialisation.  I recognise in this a familiar, deep-rooted cultural cringe, most pervasive in the arts and humanities, based on the sense that scholarship and business are not just different worlds, but mutually hostile value systems.

Working in publishing has increased my respect for what marketing can do, in finding wider audiences – bringing greater recognition and impact – for academic research.  In retrospect, one of the most important lessons came surprisingly late in my publishing career, when as a publishing director I sat in on a copy-writing workshop run for my team of editors by the marketing department.  Our marketing manager spelled out a fundamental law of salesmanship – basic stuff in the shopping mall but a new way of thinking to most ivory-tower types.  This was the difference between features and benefits.   Features describe the characteristics of what you are trying to sell – for a book this might involve the content, coverage and approach, all of which is a good start but could still provoke the ‘so what?’ response in a jaded sales rep, bookseller or customer.  Benefits go further and make a more effective sales pitch, by making explicit how those elements will be useful and beneficial to the reader (whether in scholarly, pedagogical or even non-academic terms).   These might be methodological tools or analytical models with transferrable applications, new resources for further research, insight and guidance for policy-making, information and techniques for professionals and practitioners, and so on.

My experience is that most academics can elaborate for hours on the features of their work, but find it surprisingly difficult to articulate the benefits.   You would not sell a disposable coffee cup on the basis that it was made of cardboard (a mere feature), but rather by pointing out that it was heat-resistant and recyclable (two resulting benefits).  When you put together a book proposal you will likewise need to articulate not only the features but crucially the benefits of your research for your prospective readership.

Here are five tips to help you make this transition effectively:

i) Work out the features of your project – as many as you can think of!

ii) Convert each one into a benefit – explain why and how it will be of use to your readers

iii) Clarify who will benefit– e.g. researchers, teachers, professionals, practitioners, policy makers, or any other stakeholders you can identify.

iv) Concentrate on those benefits which are unique to your research

v) Be concise in communicating this as part of a publishing proposal – can you distill them into bullet points couched in terms that are accessible to non-specialists, rather than burying them in more elaborate, detailed or technical description of your research enterprise?  This will help to highlight your USPs more convincingly (see tips in Blogpost 1 in this series) and make clearer the reasons to publish your work.

Good luck!

RECOGNIZE THE DELAYS IN PUBLISHING. You face long, long delays. In this hint we estimate the delays in journal publica­tion. For books, the total time is usually much longer. Let’s assume you’ve written your first article and printed out a copy that is ready to send off to the top journal in the field. If you expect that this brilliant piece will appear in the next issue or, at the latest, the one after that, we have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Let’s assume that your paper is so good it is accepted without a request for even minor revisions. Even in this unusual case, the pace of publication is extremely slow.

This post is the fourth in a series by Josie Dixon, a consultant with 15 years’ experience in academic publishing, as Senior Commissioning Editor at Cambridge University Press and Publishing Director for the Academic Division at Palgrave Macmillan.  She now runs her own business, Lucian Consulting, and gives training workshops on publishing and other forms of research communication for postgraduates, postdocs and staff in over 50 universities internationally, alongside her training and consultancy work in the publishing industry. In this set of blog posts for PhD2Published, Josie examines some of the polarities between Planet PhD and the world of publishing, and offers strategies for how to bridge the gap. 

When you have lived with your PhD thesis as work in progress for several years, it’s hard to imagine it as a finished product.  Often that sense of perpetual process infects the language in which the project is framed, and I have often been surprised by the extent to which would-be authors are still writing about their aims, hopes and intentions at the point when they are submitting it to a publisher.  Aims and objectives are perfectly proper in a grant proposal at the outset of your research, but when your work is being published for a paying market, there is an expectation of completion, results, and a focus on what your work actually achieves and delivers.  That requires a good deal more confidence, since readers will look for a measure of authority in a publication; in the minds of commissioning editors and the referees involved in the peer-review process, your work will appear less convincing if your claims are watered down in formulations which suggest that you are merely aiming, attempting, intending or hoping to achieve the desired outcomes of your project.  Nobody’s hopes ever made a selling point in a marketplace as tough as the current one for academic publications.

Arriving at destination publication means completing the journey, moving from process to product, and achieving a degree of closure.  On the other hand, we could also see this as an opening out, from the inward focus on the foundations and analytical processes of your own research which is often characteristic of a thesis (documented in literature reviews and chapters on methodology), to look outwards to what it will now offer to your audience or readership.  This change of outlook is also a change in direction: insofar as a thesis is required to document those processes of your research for the benefit of your examiners, it looks backwards, charting its own development; a publication must look onwards, anticipating its afterlife in the hands of your readers.

What your project will do for its readers may be very different from what it has done for you.  In the second blogpost in this series, I looked at the outward movement from micro to macro, particularly relevant to case-study research.  Here the case study material which formed the end point of a thesis may only be the starting point for a publication, if it is to anticipate the ways in which its readers will be interested in transferring your insights or models for application elsewhere.  That afterlife of your project will be less about the research itself and more about its implications and applications – where does it take us, and what does it yield?  What difference will it make?

Here are five tips to help you ensure you make this transition effectively:

i) Use confident and purposeful language in the framing material outlining the rationale for your project– aims, attempts, hopes and intentions won’t do here.  If you really can’t say categorically what it achieves, then at least strengthen the auxiliary verbs and say what it is designed to do, rather than leaving a degree of doubt.

ii) Cut down methodology sections and literature review (see also Blogpost 3 in this series) to move the focus away from process

iii) Highlight your original research findings to emphasise the outcomes of your analysis

iv) Make explicit the implications and applications of your research

v) Look ahead to the afterlife of your project in the Conclusion – this should not merely recapitulate what has gone before, but point outwards and onwards to articulate where your research leads, and what difference it will make.

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This post is the third in a series by Josie Dixon, a consultant with 15 years’ experience in academic publishing, as Senior Commissioning Editor at Cambridge University Press and Publishing Director for the Academic Division at Palgrave Macmillan.  She now runs her own business, Lucian Consulting, and gives training workshops on publishing and other forms of research communication for postgraduates, postdocs and staff in over 50 universities internationally, alongside her training and consultancy work in the publishing industry. In this set of blog posts for PhD2Published, Josie examines some of the polarities between Planet PhD and the world of publishing, and offers strategies for how to bridge the gap. 

A publishing proposal needs to make clear the project’s contribution to work in the field, and define its originality with reference to what has gone before.  You aren’t working in a scholarly vacuum, so you will need to contextualise your research in the discipline, but in a very different mode from that of a PhD literature review.  Coverage of secondary sources is no longer of interest for its own sake: your mastery of the field can now be assumed, rather than requiring demonstration at every turn for the benefit of your examiners.  As an editorial colleague once put it, ‘A publisher is interested in what you think, not what you think other people have thought’.   The journey from PhD to publication involves rethinking not just the quantity, but also the quality and manner of your citations.

In the first blogpost in this series, I referred to an article by Peter Barry which offers equally useful observations in this context.  Barry complains, rightly, that ‘much academic writing seems to hamper its own flow by footnoting, quoting or citing in almost every sentence. Its own argument never gathers any proper momentum or direction, like a car being driven with the brakes half on’. He pinpoints in particular the problem of ‘constant self-interruption (“as X has argued”, “as Y points out” and so on)’.  Barry’s stylistic point is a good one, but I would go further, since I have additional reservations about ‘as X has argued’ as a critical manoeuvre, in terms of what it suggests about the author’s confidence in their own independent contribution to the field.

A PhD has been traditionally viewed as an apprenticeship for an academic career, and that sense of being an academic underling working in the shadow of the established authorities often betrays itself in formulaic citations of this kind, in which you can risk overplaying the homage to senior figures in the field (X and Y are typically gurus like Foucault or Habermas).  The ‘as’ in ‘as X has argued’ suggests an alignment of your own point with one that has already been expressed by someone else, and this formula usually introduces a main clause which recycles their point (likewise ‘According to X’) in the attempt to bolster your own argument.  Too much of this kind of ‘straight’ citation in order to agree suggests a dependent or derivative relationship, and insufficiently novel or critical thinking on your part.  Turn that around with a different formulation – ‘whereas X has argued…’  – and you automatically make space for your own new and different contribution to take centre stage in the sentence – a much stronger form of argumentation.

A similar principle applies to framing material outlining the relationship of your work to predecessors, models, or sources of methodological and theoretical inspiration.  Too many would-be authors characterise their project as ‘drawing on’ or ‘following’ the work of existing authorities in the field, suggesting a position that is derivative or lags behind.  Editors want to publish the leaders in their field, not the followers!  So a stronger pitch would be to characterise your project as ‘building on’ its predecessors, making clear that their work is only the starting point for yours, which pushes further forward and achieves something more.

So have the courage of your own convictions here – Foucault, Habermas & co have enough disciples, and you won’t distinguish yourself by adding to their number.  Rather than joining the chorus, make sure you are singing solo.  Don’t be a passenger on other people’s bandwagons: be the driver of your own!

Here are five writing tips, to help you manage your relationship to secondary sources in ways that foreground your originality to best effect:

i) Avoid ‘as’ and ‘according to’ when introducing citations – concentrate on differentiating your viewpoint, rather than aligning it with others’

ii) Beware ‘c.f.’ and referencing sources without making explicit the relationship of your viewpoint to the ones being cited – the risk is that you will appear to be recycling others’ views uncritically

iii) Avoid too much summary of critical debate without your own intervention – this can make you look like a bystander or commentator rather than an active participant, and at worst turns into a bibliographical laundry list

iv) Use dynamic rather than passive verbs – you will make a more compelling case for your contribution if you make clear how your project challenges or overturns previous work, rather than simply complementing it (too neutral), filling the gaps (too humble) or drawing on your predecessors (derivative rather than critical)

v) From problem to solution: while you will of course need to give credit where it’s due, you will make a stronger and more positive case for what you bring to the scholarly party by explaining the deficiencies in existing scholarship which your research aims to remedy, and making clear the pay-off for your distinctive approach