Participate. While so much of the work we do as scholars requires solitude (and occasionally engenders loneliness), there can be great benefits from participation beyond your own disciplinary organizations and university activities. You may find, for example, that participating in a Twitter chat with people from other disciplines and other countries–that you would be unlikely to encounter face-to-face–may give you a new perspective on how to get through your literature review, find funding, or turn that conference paper into a peer-reviewed article. Participation can also bring you allies and friends in places you would not necessarily think to look for them.

Consider being generous. Awhile ago there was a discussion about Tweeting during conference panels and whether doing so was making scholars’ research public outside of their established intentions. Academics are generally trained to be very protective of their ideas, their data, and their scholarship: there’s a reason for the term “intellectual property.” The inverse would be to apply the ideas of generosity and publicness to scholarship.

Michelle Moravec conducts her scholarly work in open places, inviting engagement and comments from others. She notes: “Writing in Public is my small contribution to making visible the processes by which history making takes place. I draft all my work in documents shared with readers for comments and critique.”

Author and artist Austin Kleon makes a similar pitch. His latest book is titled Show Your Work: 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered. Kleon encourages readers to “think about your work as a never-ending process, how to build an audience by sharing that process.”

What might you gain from being generous with your scholarship?

Dip into your networks. Whether or not you are participating in Academic Writing Month, it is a good reminder of the value of networks and communities. Many people cringe at the word “network” because it evokes ideas of being overtly self-promoting to strangers in rather shallow ways…a leftover connotation of the corporate world. AcWriMo is a way to celebrate the vast networks of scholars, researchers, and writers working around the world. Whether you connect through social media or face-to-face, take the opportunity to get encouragement and support from like-minded folk. One of the striking things is that when you offer encouragement to people in your networks, it often comes back to you twofold.

Do some warm ups! Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) begins 1 November, and there is no time like the present to start considering your goals. As our own Charlotte Frost wrote recently, you can set goals for word counts, time committed, or pages completed–whatever works best for you. Trying out different kinds of goals can help you decide what method will be most useful for AcWriMo and help you prepare to set goals for our big thirty-day commitment.

It’s back! Academic Writing Month 2014 starts 1st November!

If you’ve taken part before, you know the drill: get your reading done now, stock up on your favourite coffee [insert other productivity enhancement products here] and cancel what you can, because November means ‘write like there’s no December!’

 If you’re new to AcWriMo here’s the deal:

Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo for short) is a month-long academic write-a-thon that happens every November, it’s inspired by the amazing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but caters to the specific needs of academic writers at all stages of their career (from undergrads to the most distinguished of professors).

It’s hosted by the online resource, PhD2Published, and throughout the month we provide dedicated posts about academic writing and share literally thousands of tips via Twitter.

The idea is that you set yourself a writerly goal and get stuck in with all the information, advice and support you’ll get from others taking part. The month helps us:

• Think about how we write,
• Form a valuable support network for our writing practice,
• Build better habits for the future,
• And maybe – just maybe – get more done in less time!

And if you can get a lot done in November – a busy time for us academics all over – think how easy it’ll be to get writing done the rest of the year!

So here’s how you get involved….

There are 6 basic rules:

1. Decide on your goal. You might count words, hours put in or projects achieved – it’s up to you. But try and push yourself a bit.

2. Declare it! Sign up on the AcWriMo 2014 Writing Accountability Spreadsheet and fill in the sections on what you’d like to achieve and keep us updated on your progress. Being accountable is key to this working for you. You need to feel a bit of pressure to get the work done.

3. Draft a strategy. Don’t start AcWriMo without doing a bit of planning and preparation. Get some reading done, carve out time slots in your schedule to dedicate to writing, even buy your favourite coffee. Sort out whatever you’ll need to write, and get it done now, there won’t be time when November comes around.

4. Discuss your progress. OK so being on Twitter and Facebook with us all day isn’t acceptable – you’ve got work to do – but checking-in at certain times is really important! We want to know how you’re getting on? What is working for you and what isn’t? Do you need help? Do you want to share a writing triumph? (You’ll find most discussion about AcWriMo on Twitter using the #AcWriMo hashtag, but if Facebook is more your thing, go there. Or use your own blog to keep in touch. You can even write little updates you want to share in the spreadsheet.)

5. Don’t slack off. If you push yourself, you’ll quickly discover the tips and techniques that work best for YOU and that’ll save you even more time in the long-run.

6. Declare your results. It’s great to use the spreadsheet everyday (or as often as you can) to chart how you’re getting on, but even if you can’t do that, you MUST announce your results at the end of the month. Our writing community benefits not only from sharing in your achievements, but knowing what didn’t work and being reminded that, at the end of the day, we’re all human!

We will have a team of AcWriMo Ambassadors supporting you at every. And if you have time, blog posts are a great way to reflect on your writing strategies with your peers (we always gather all the posts created during AcWriMo season here)

Tony Adams is Associate Professor and Chair of Communication, Media, and Theatre at Northeastern Illinois University. For more information about his work, visit www.TonyEAdams.com

I write this blog from the perspective of someone who has the privilege to publish in a variety of outlets—my institution does not rank or evaluate the best journals; citation counts do not matter; and we do not use external reviewers for retention, tenure, or promotion. As such, this blog may not be of much interest to academics working at research institutions or at institutions where specific journals matter. Here, I offer my experiences with the limited aspect of disciplinary publishing, the benefits of open-access publishing, and writing about research practices and methods.
*

On a job interview for a mid-size, public university, I asked the interviewers about tenure requirements.

“If you publish three articles in the nationally sanctioned journals, you should be okay for tenure,” one interviewer says.

“I don’t publish in our nationally sanctioned journals,” I reply. “Most of the time, they do not welcome qualitative research, especially research that uses ethnography and autoethnography.”

“You’d probably get tenure if you published six articles in the regionally sanctioned communication journals,” the interviewer continues.

“I don’t publish in those journals either,” I say. “These journals also do not welcome ethnographic and autoethnographic research.”

Our interview ended.

Of the 11 nationally sanctioned, disciplinary journals—those journals sponsored by the National Communication Association—only two are open to ethnography and autoethnography, my primary methods for research. If I want (or need) to get published, and if I want (or need) to be published in nationally sanctioned publications, then I immerse myself in a highly competitive publishing process. While I suppose not being accepted for publication in these journals may have some indication about the value of my work to/for the communication discipline, I also believe that many of the discipline’s journal editors are against particular methods before they would even review my submissions. By trying to publish ethnographic and autoethnographic scholarship in more traditional, social scientific outlets, I may exhaust myself in a pointless task.

*
In April 2014, I had a conversation with a colleague about the citation count of “Autoethnography: An Overview,” a 2011 article I co-authored with Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner published in the open-access journal, Forum: Qualitative Social Research. My colleague could not believe that this article alreadyhad more than 200 citations (as of this writing [September 2014], it has more than 300 citations). Further, while I believe that any of my disciplinary journals would have rejected the article especially since these journals focus on content—the findings of research projects, and not necessarily on how to do (communication) research, the article already has more citations than many of the articles published in these journals in the last two decades.

I am most pleased with this citation count because I believe it is an easy indicator that people at least know of the article. And the reason I publish is not to expand my vita or because I am required, but rather because I want to offer  work that is (hopefully) of use to others. I also believe that the open-access journal helps with the citation count—unlike more traditional, disciplinary articles, the article is not locked behind a library database; anyone can access it free of charge.

Further, the article may be of interest to many because it talks about a research method rather than a disciplinary-specific topic; it could be helpful for anyone doing ethnographic and autoethnographic research, not only communication researchers.

*
I want my writing to be read. I feel as though I am wasting my time publishing work without any reason. I like to engage research and to provide other researchers with new conceptual material and support. At some institutions, the journals in which I publish might not be the most credible according to often-ambiguous and elitist standards, but I find it more important that my research is engaged by others.

I recognize that some people do not have the privilege or luxury to publish outside of disciplinary journals, and I recognize the privilege I have in working in and being tenured at an institution that does not require me to publish in so-called “prestigious” publication outlets. If you are privileged to be on a tenure-track position, and if you are at an institution where journals matter, maybe wait until tenure and promotion to publish or meet institutional, tenure requirements for publication and then, post-tenure, publish in other outlets. At the very least, I think we should all do our best to have different conversations about publishing—about recognizing possible limits of disciplinary journals, the benefits of open-access publishing, and the importance of research methodology and practice.

Manage your information diet. We’ve often talked about the great benefits of maintaining ties through social media and staying involved in the discussions on Twitter and blogs. But when does good connection turn into difficult overwhelm? Everyone has their own personal limits, but we may not be aware of them until we exceed them. If you are spending too much time looking for something interesting or relevant to you on social media, a more focused search might be useful. It’s also helpful to remember that you simply cannot read or look at everything on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or in your RSS feed. Whether you mindfully consider how to manage your information diet or try a “digital fast,” you may find some space opens for you.

Image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiddleoak/
under this licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_GB

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost continue their Hackademic series with a new set of hints, tips and hacks focused on academic networking.

 SUBSPECIALIZE. Build and promote an expertise that’s cross-disciplinary or even tangential from your main subject area. A more generalised, let’s call it ‘sub-specialty’ is going to attract a wider group of people to your work. Engaging with folks in neighboring and related disciplines will help you build a more diverse network. The points of intersections between our own work and the work of our peers is often what most inspires us to push off in new directions. We’re fans of networks built around related but divergent interests. Fiona Barnett, the HASTAC Scholars Director, coined their fantastic mission statement, “Difference is our operating system.” This is something we believe strongly of academia and scholarship. Ultimately, our work is only as good as the connections it makes and the discussions it gives rise to.

Image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiddleoak/
under this licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_GB

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost continue their Hackademic series with a new set of hints, tips and hacks focused on academic networking.

HAVE A PROFESSIONAL APPROACH. It’s worth having a networking strategy for every academic event you attend, and even more important to strategize at a macro-scale. We advocate always having a 5 year plan, even if it changes iteratively every 6 months. What job would you like to have? What things might you have published? What courses might you have taught? Now, work back from there. Who will be able to help you achieve these goals? Don’t just think about who is going to publish your work — although that’s also important — think about who can advise you and about whose work can serve as a model? These are the people you’ll need to start reaching out to in one way or another. You might start just by following them on Academia.edu, or Twitter. But eventually you should be ready to engage with them in a mutually-supportive and professional way. However, don’t start with a slew of unsolicited emails announcing your five year plan, and also don’t hover around prospective collaborators at conferences with nothing interesting to say. When you first reach out to potential mentors or collaborators, be clear and upfront about why you’re getting in touch and what you’re asking them for so they can make an instant assessment of the time involved in completing your request. And relate your questions to their work so they know you are genuinely engaged with what they do. If you’re writing them anything longer than a Tweet (say, an email or Facebook message) try something like:

 Dear Professor Clever-Cloggs,

 I’m interested in applying your method of teaching X with Z. I have already read your paper ‘Blah Blah’ but would love the opportunity to ask you a few additional questions (see below) so that I can fully synthesise your approach.

Likewise, if you approach somebody at a conference, first patiently wait your turn and second, be clear and direct about how you’d like to connect with them. Often there won’t be time at the conference itself so be ready to suggest a low-labour alternative. For example ask them if they’d be happy to Skype or Google Hangout with you for 20 minutes at a time of their choosing. Or offer to send them a follow up email with a few mutual action points. The key is to make it easy for them to work with you.

Follow your journals on Twitter. Many academic journals have active Twitter accounts, as do journal editors. Having those journals and editors in your Twitter feed can keep you current on calls for papers and publications. Equally important is the opportunity to listen in and participate in conversations about research in your areas of interest and expertise. If you’re not familiar with or not active on Twitter, there are great Twitter tips catalogued here in the Hackademic Guide to Networking series.

This guest post is from Mark Rubin, a senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. You can visit his ImpactStory profile at: http://impactstory.org/MarkRubin or follow him on Twitter @MarkRubinPsych.

I’ve recently conducted an “Introduction to Academic Publishing” seminar for PhD students at the University of Newcastle and the University of Canberra. During the seminar, I spend some time explaining to students the new emphasis on publication impact. Publication impact is the influence that scholarly publications have on other scholars and the general public, and it is becoming more and more important in academia. Below, I consider some of the ways in which publication impact is making an impact in the research world.

Measuring Researchers
The quality and quantity of a researcher’s publications provide a key measure of their research productivity. Consequently, publication track records are often used to determine whether or not researchers get hired, promoted, or funded for their future research. In addition, at the institutional level, the quality and quantity of a university’s publication output help to determine its international reputation and the amount of funding that it receives based on national research performance reviews. So, there are several reasons why researchers find themselves and their research outputs to be objects of measurements.

© Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity, Tape Measure, Creative Commons

The ethos of “publish or perish” has been around for a long time. However, in recent years, this message has become more articulated, and it now takes into account the impact of researchers’ publications. In particular, researchers are now told that they must not only publish their research but also get their publications acknowledged by other researchers and society at large. In practice, this means that researchers need to get their publications (a) cited in the work of other researchers and (b) discussed in traditional and online media. To help achieve a greater scholarly and public impact, researchers must promote and advertise their work as much as possible. In this respect, the message has now become “publish and publicise, or perish!”

Publications Need to Make a Big Splash!

© Nathan Rupert, A Little Trick, Creative Commons

Measuring Publication Impact in the Scholarly Literature: The H Index
The concern about impact in the scholarly literature explains the growing popularity of the h index, a metric that is used to quantify not only the number of articles that a researcher has published but also the number of citations that these articles have accrued in other scholarly work. My own h value is currently 12, meaning that 12 of my 33 research publications have each been cited at least 12 times in other research articles.High impact researchers are expected to have h indices that are at least as large as the number of years since their first publication. The h index is not without its critics, and some have argued that a more comprehensive assessment of publication impact should take into account a broader array of alternative impact metrics, or altmetrics, that include more than just citations in scholarly work.

The H Index

© LEOL30, Wooden Brick Letter h, Creative Commons

Altmetrics
Altmetrics platforms such as altmetric and impact story count the number of times that scholarly articles are mentioned in both the scholarly literature and online social media and websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia.They can also measure the number of times that online articles are viewed, bookmarked, liked, and downloaded on document managers such as Mendeley and Citeulike. Like the h index, altmetrics has its critics. However, if used wisely, altmetrics can provide a useful tool for assessing publication impact.

© A J Cann, Altmetrics, Creative Commons

“Facebook for Researchers”
In an effort to increase their scholarly impact, researchers are now advertising their work on professional social networking websites such as Academia and ResearchGate, which have over 12 million researchers signed up between them. Researchers can follow other researchers in their area and be notified about their activities, including when they publish new articles. These sites also allow researchers to publish self-archived versions of their research papers that other users can then access, further increasing their citation potential.

By ResearchGate [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Funnelling News of Research Outputs: Research Blog Aggregators
Modern researchers are also blogging about their work. I do this myself and, although it takes a bit of time to prepare each post, I really enjoy turning a dry research abstract into a more accessible and appealing piece for my blog. Like many other researchers, I feed my posts through to research blog aggregators like ScienceSeeker and ResearchBlogging. These platforms funnel posts from many different research blogs into a single stream of the latest research.

© Marsmettnn Tallahassee, I think therefore I blog,Creative Commons

Open-Access = Greater Impact
The drive to publish lots of highly cited and publically-acknowledged articles also helps to explain the rise of open-access journals. Unlike traditional journals, open-access journals publish articles 100% online rather than in print and, without the associated printing costs, they are able to accommodate a greater number of journal articles. For example, PLOS ONE published 23,464 articles in 2012, making it the largest journal in the world!

Importantly, the appeal of open-access journals is not only their ability to publish more publications, but also their ability to make those publications more accessible to readers. Unlike traditional journals, which tend to hide their content behind subscriber-only paywalls, open-access journals make their content freely available to everyone with internet access. This has the effect of increasing publication impact by increasing citation rates among scholars as well as online discussion among the general public.

© Research and Graduate College Graduate Studies Office, Open_Access_PLoS, Creative Commons

Hello? Can Anyone Hear Me!?
If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no-one around to hear it, then does it make a noise? I can’t answer that one I’m afraid. But I do know that, nowadays, if a researcher publishes an article in a journal and no-one views it, downloads it, cites it, or Tweets it, then it certainly doesn’t make an impact!

© Sue Langford,Trees, Creative Commons

Image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiddleoak/
under this licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_GB

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost continue their Hackademic series with a new set of hints, tips and hacks focused on academic networking.

 SHHHHH! LISTEN! When it comes to collaborating and networking, listening is just good form, and it will give you a much better idea of where your own work sits in the landscape of your subject area and neighboring disciplines. In fact, think of interacting with people as doing a kind of book-less literature survey. Find out everything you can about that person’s opinions and publications. You’ll stop yourself making any embarrassing mistakes or overblowing the originality of your work if you survey the territory first — carefully. And think about how you might listen on multiple channels. The conversation on Twitter is different from the conversation on your colleagues’ blogs, and both are different from what you’ll find at your annual conference or in a peer-reviewed journal. Don’t get so caught up in any one medium that you can’t see the forest for the trees, so to speak. Your discipline is happening, literally and figuratively, all over the place.

Get TOC notifications. Staying current with academic journals in your discipline and areas of research interest can help shape your research agenda in positive ways. Keeping track of what is being published can also be a time-consuming burden. You can facilitate the process with Table of Contents notifications from your favorite journals. If you have an RSS feed, you can easily subscribe for alerts. Many journals will also send email alerts to those who sign up for them.

Image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiddleoak/
under this licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_GB

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost continue their Hackademic series with a new set of hints, tips and hacks focused on academic networking.

TIP OFF THE PRESS. Sometimes you’ll organise an event or publish a piece of work that has obvious impact beyond your academic field alone. When this happens make sure you talk to your university’s marketing and press team. Work with them to draft a brief and to-the-point piece of text you can send out — press-release style — to relevant news outlets. It might be that you’re organising an event that will benefit the local community so make sure the local papers know about it well in advance. If you can make life easy for them as well by presenting them with text that pre-empts their questions you’ll increase your chances of the event/project being written about. If your work has real national/international impact then it’s really important you work closely with the press team not just to make sure you get press but also so that they can protect you and your intellectual property (no matter how you choose to license it, whether with a Creative Commons license or a more conventional copyright).

 Academic work is seldom a fame-game, but it’s always worth publicising important work because it will be bring prestige to your university and give you added kudos in your department (not to mention it may well build an audience for your work and help sell books etc) and that can lead to bigger and better grants. Jesse writes more on this subject in his article, “Promoting Open Access Publications and Academic Projects.” There, he writes, “Our work has value, and it’s safe to openly admit that. In fact, at this moment in education, championing what we do should be a major part of what we do.”

Image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiddleoak/
under this licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_GB

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost continue their Hackademic series with a new set of hints, tips and hacks focused on academic networking.

ORGANIZE AN EVENT. The most productive sorts of networks are populated by both strong and weak ties. One of the best ways to network is to attend events in your field, and sometimes it’s just as useful to attend events in neighboring fields. Even more useful, though, is to organize an event of your own. Doing so will force you to not only show up for the event, but you’ll also have the opportunity to work closely with folks you might not otherwise have the opportunity to work with. It’s also an important service to the profession. If you’re a graduate student, perhaps start by organizing a dissertation writing group or a series of workshops about academic writing. If you’re a classroom teacher, start a pedagogy club for talking about new perspectives on and strategies for teaching. When you find yourself without community, build one, and work to populate the community with a diverse array of participants — not just students in your cohort or faculty in your department, but a wider group of people that don’t always do exactly what you’d do or say exactly what you’d say.

After you’ve had some practice with organizing a smaller event or community, try something more ambitious. Gather together a group of your peers for an unconference or symposium on a subject related to your work. Or, even better, find a way to gather your peers together for a project that engages your local community (or some more global digital community). Put yourself in the center of the fray, wherever that fray is, and do work to help your discipline — your community — evolve.