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You may have noticed that PhD2Published has been very busy recently chairing live chats on Twitter (#acwri) and collecting various blog posts, all concerned with the process of academic writing. Charlotte initially set up PhD2Published to find out more about academic publishing and to make use of it as a space built around peer-to-peer sharing. As Managing Editor I have tried to emulate this ethos and have found this to be incredibly useful so far. With this in mind, I am currently engaging in regular dialogues through both this site and other forms of social media to learn more about what is essentially the foundation of academic publishing; writing.

Spurred on to some extent by Charlottes AcBoWriMo initiative back in November 2011 and a chat initiated by Dr Jeremy Segrott on Twitter, it is clear that many academics have the desire to discuss and explore issues around their shared experiences of academic writing and how this may subsequently lead to different forms of written publication. In participating in this newly established online community and with the desire to share what I am learning, I have come across several useful resources that focus on just this topic and I wanted to share one in particular here today. Carol Smart’s discussion of academic writing is interesting because she explicitly confronts the particular challenges and problems faced by academic writers and offers potential shifts in thinking that may make dealing with these challenges more workable.

In The Emotional Challenges of Writing (available as a video and a written transcript) Carol draws on personal experiences to think about how difficulties in writing may be overcome. It is initially helpful that she acknowledges that writing can be challenging, even for those who are technically gifted or very experienced. I often feel frustrated that I can’t get words down on a page even though I know how to do it, so it is comforting to recognise that this is not just an issue with me.  Carol argues that the reasons for these challenges often stem from the kinds of emotional questions that inevitably arise when embarking on a new project or writing task; what will my peers think? Am I as good as my peers?, and so on. She also recognises that academic writing produces often contradictory feelings and insecurities in individuals and that it can be depressing and overwhelming at times. Her suggestion for overcoming this is to try to become more aware of your personal writing rhythms, no matter how peculiar they may be and lighten up a bit about what you want to say. As she rightly points out, writing is about being part of a conversation rather than setting something down in stone.

I particularly like what she has to say about getting stuck with writing. Quite often when I write I have little idea what it is I am trying to argue and I worry that this is wrong or means my thinking and writing lacks rigour. Carol suggests though that she also does this, particularly when deriving ideas from data.  While at times this may lead to dead ends, this can actually become part of the creativity of writing (and thinking) that also makes it very enjoyable.

Even though Carol’s full discussion is available online, I have briefly reviewed this resource as a way of opening up a dialogue on the PhD2Published site about academic writing. Not everyone is on Twitter or is able to join the live chats so this post is intended to be a catalyst for continuing a conversation about academic writing online and extending its reach. I genuinely believe, as do others, that academic writing is the foundation of academic publishing, yet it is also fraught with emotional and technical difficulties that are easier to acknowledge and hopefully overcome in a peer-to-peer sharing space.  Please do post any useful resources that focus on academic writing that you come across here and do raise questions and discussion. What are the main challenges you face as an academic writer? What kinds of writing do you find most challenging? What do you want to learn more about from more experienced writers?

REWARDS FOR ACADEMIC PUBLISHING. The old saw “virtue is its own reward” applies to most of your academic publications. There are exceptions. If you write a scholarly monograph in the humanities or the social sciences you receive a small royalty. Journals invariably do not pay you. Your annual review to determine whether you should receive a raise, however, tends to reward you for publishing, particularly in high-repute journals. Of course, if you work abroad in a school such as one we know about in South Korea, you may be awarded a bonus every time you publish, with the size of the bonus depending on the journal.

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.

THE LITERATURE SEARCH YOU PERFORMED FOR YOUR DISSERTATION IS A TREASURE TROVE of information. It should be the foundation of a survey article on the field. And the world desperately needs more survey articles. Unfortunately, although only a few journals (e.g., Computer Surveys) accept such articles, you receive little credit for them in tenure and promotion reviews. You will be rewarded more for adding one little new data point to the literature than for a brilliant synthesis of that literature (unless your name is Arnold J.Toynbee). You can, however, transform a literature review into a meta-analysis, which is a systematic, statistical aggregation of pre­viously published research findings. Such a paper carries more ca­chet with tenure committees, and the statistics are not difficult.

The latest #acwri live chat was conducted on Twitter on Thursday 10th May 2012 and Jeremy chaired it.

Through a Tweet poll the community cast their votes on a choice of four topics to discuss this week; finding motivation to write, writing an academic blog, collaborative writing and grant application writing. Interestingly there was a tie for discussing writing an academic blog and finding motivation to write so we decided to go with finding motivation first (which is of course fundamental to all forms of academic writing) and we shall be discussing writing an academic blog next time (come and join us Thursday 24th May 2012, 6PM GMT). We are really keen that the community has as much of as a say as possible about the topics we discuss so if you’re on Twitter, keep an eye out for our links to the topic polls and to the final summaries.

Until then, here is the really useful summary of finding motivation to write:

Read more

YOUR DISSERTATION IS A PUBLISHING ASSET. You should receive a return on your investment for the time spent on your dissertation. Avoid advisers who insist on joint authorship on all papers that result. They are exploiting you.

SUBMIT YOUR PAPERS (other than those you know are stinkers) first TO THE BEST JOURNALS IN THE FIELD. Work your way down the list if a paper is rejected. Many articles rejected by a poor journal were later accepted by a leading journal, so you might as well start with the best. It is easier to follow this rule if you are thick skinned. Two additional factors should affect where you place a journal on your “go-to”list (not all journals make this information public): (a) the percentage of submitted papers the journal accepts, and (b) the length of time the journal takes to review a submission.

DEADLINES. Many graduate students and professors hate deadlines even though they pervade academic life.  If your dissertation isn’t completed and approved by a specific date, you do not march at graduation.  Requests for proposals require submission by a date certain.  Book publisher’s contracts and professional meetings set deadlines for submitting a polished draft. Grades are due shortly after the end of the semester or trimester. The list goes on. The truth is that deadlines are friends, not enemies.  They force you to finish and free your mind to move on to the next task. We know academics who lament that, were it not for a deadline, their article or proposal would bemuch, much better.  We doubt that.  We estimate that three additional months spent on an article or proposal improves a paper by, at most, 15%. Better an excellent paper completed than a perfect paper never finished.

In her latest post for PhD2Published, Claire Warden raises those all important questions about what it is that makes a good journal article.

In the feedback for a recently submitted journal article, the reviewer said that, although s/he liked it (phew!) it was just a little bit ambitious. Alright, a lot too ambitious. So, a little adjustment here, a little tinker there, take out 1000 words and change the focus of the argument completely and I would have the makings of a successful journal article. Rewriting an article is about as pleasurable as toothache so, at first I let out an audible groan and, in typical English fashion, made a comforting pot of tea.

Recently, in the wake of my first book, I have been writing a few journal articles and this has forced me to move academic genres, one of a number of transitions that we often make from book to conference paper, dissertation to article, blog post to review. Getting back into article writing has been a sharp learning curve for me and has forced me to reassess the genre entirely. What is the primary thing to think about when writing a journal article? Are we focusing on the need to improve our publication record, the importance of publications as we apply for those allusive tenured jobs or the joy of writing about something we find fascinating for a few months? I think I probably consider all these things. But more and more I have been thinking about my readership. Who is reading the article? Why are they reading it? What are they hoping to find? Which leads me to a question (yes, another one!) I constantly grapple with: what is my audience? To make an article engaging, this is a really important issue. If the journal is about crochet then you can safely assume that your readership knows about needles and wool. If it is not then you probably need to explain chains and slip stitches at the start.  

My recent article writing extravaganza led me to read a load of papers from different journals in an attempt to discover what an engaging reader-focused article really looks like. I came up with the following checklist:

• A balance of academic rigour and accessibility – if I am going to talk about either difficult or niche topics then there is all the more reason for syntactical clarity and straightforward structure.
• Brevity and specificity – these two important aspects are an anathema to my rather distended writing style but are both vital for article writing.
• Niche but relevant – under-researched topics are fascinating but they need to be framed by recognisable theoretical models.
• Explanatory notes and expository analysis – there is always a need to decide how much your audience needs to know: a full biography, a complete synopsis, a footnote for further study suggestions?

These are the four elements that I’ve noticed in the best articles I’ve been reading recently and often they are missing in the less impressive ones. So, returning to my own article dilemma, fuelled by the obligatory teapot, I got rid of 1000 words, added 1700 and it was accepted.

CITATIONS. When you write a paper, you cite other researchers who preceded you.  Once your paper is published, other scholars will cite you.  Forty years ago, the Institute for Scientific Information developed software to count how many times an article was cited.  Today that technology is incorporated in Google Scholar.  Your article citation counts are an important part of your academic record. You are more likely to be cited if you publish in a leading journal. Because the software can filter out self-citations, you can’t boost your numbers simply by repeatedly citing yourself! We knew a distinguished scholar who applied a new analytical technique but made a mistake.  After that, other researchers warned, “Be sure not to do what Jones (not his real name) did.”  Jones, however, wound up with an impressively high citation score. If you write the first paper in an area, you can reach the enviable place where others feel that citing your article is almost mandatory.

Since the AcWri live chat officially launched on Twitter recently, Jeremy and I (Anna, PhD2Published) have been summarizing the chats with the aim of generating a useful and lasting resource for all academic writers. From now on, the plan is that each summary will be posted to both the PhD2Published site and Jeremy’s own personal blog so that everyone can access them after each event. The first of the chats have already happened and provide some great information, hints and tips about academic writing. The summaries for these from previous weeks can each be individually accessed using the following links:

Thursday 16^th February 2012: The very first chat initiated by Jeremy: Starting a chat

Thursday 23^rd February 2012: With PhD2Published, the second chat involved further exploration of potential academic writing related topics to discuss during the chats, including some initial discussion about academic writing issues. See the summary here.

Thursday 5^th March 2012: Writing Journal Articles

It is hoped that these provide a great online resource and introduction to the AcWri community. If you are an academic writer, or a writer more generally, please do get involved. The bigger the community, the more ideas and questions we can discuss and the more support we each gain. Acwri live chats are run on Twitter on Thursdays at 6pm GMT every fortnight.

The latest #acwri live chat held on Thursday 12th April 2012 is summarised below and is available here:

It was identified that there is very little information on the subject of actually writing conference papers (P2P found one useful one during the chat and I am sure there are many more – please do share!). Predominantly focus is on presenting them. This is a significant gap given that presentations are so important in trying out new ideas and networking, and are also another form of academic writing:

EDITING YOUR OWN MATERIAL. As you write your dissertation or a paper it is natural to make changes and major revisions. You are, in effect, editing your own material. That’s good and bad. It is good because you add intellectual capital, you clarify, and you consider the knowledge (or lack thereof) of your readers.  It is bad if, like most of us, you become infatuated with the sound of your own words.  It is difficult, if not impossible; to change language or ideas you labored over long and hard. Just like job application letters, have at least one (preferably more) people read what you wrote and suggest improvements. If a word, a paragraph, or a section is unclear to them it is likely to be unclear to others. Better to receive critiques and suggested improvements from your peers than from referees or decision makers.

In the second of two posts about Writing Accountability (the first of which introduces the initiative and you can read about here), Jennifer Lim explains how writing progress can be effectively measured and managed. Jennifer’s post is part of PhD2Published’s new Academic Writing feature.

For accountability to work, measuring and monitoring progress are essential too the writing process. Monitoring your own progress helps in recognizing current productivity status and finding ways to improve it. Setting an ultimate goal and daily writing plan to achieve it is important for improving writing productivity. Progress measurement is of great interest to me. As there is no strict rule about how writing progress should be measured, in the Writing Accountability initiative, I find it amazing that everyone has different ways of measuring their personal progress. Here are some examples of how to measure writing progress in order to develop accountability.

Word Counts/Targets

Although some measurements are similar, there are still many different ways of doing it. The most practical method is word count. Whether the final writing achievement is a few thousand words of an article or more than 10,000 words of a dissertation or thesis, word count is the best way to measure and monitor writing progress towards an ultimate writing goal. It is also best to break down the ultimate writing goal into smaller daily goals. Let’s say you need to write at least 12,000 words in 6 months and that most probably you do not plan to write over the weekend. This equates to at least 100 words per day in order to achieve 12,000 words in 6 months. By having this daily writing goal of 100 words, you have a clearer writing plan to help to achieve the ultimate goal and can diminish the overwhelming feeling that a larger word count often creates. If writing 100 words a day is too easy, set it higher or to a limit that you feel is challenging enough to motivate you to write daily.

Time Measurement

Writing is not the only thing one does as an academic however. A lot of time is also spent on reading, making notes, data collection and data analysis etc. Should we not measure those that actually contribute too the final product of our writing? What is the best way to measure these? I personally think the daily time spent on these activities should also be considered. This helps to minimize the feeling of unproductiveness if no significant words are written on those days when other academic activities take precedence. So, another good way to measure daily progress is the total time spent. Set a minimum time that you are willing to spend on a daily basis to work on your academic activities, including reading, literature review, etc. Your time target should be reasonable and something that you can achieve such as 1 or 2 hours a day. Setting a target too high will only decrease your motivation if you can’t achieve any at the end of each day.

Combining the two

It is viable to combine both word count and time spent measurements as the daily goal. In that way, you can measure word count when you are writing and time spent when you are working on other relevant academic activities. I also find it is beneficial to record daily progress together with some comments about what has been achieved or lack thereof so reflection is possible for self improvement. Another example of measurement is from Sarah Ford (who Tweets as @Sarah_M_Ford). She has a unique formula of calculating ‘score’ to measure her daily progress (learn more about it here).

Other than using the spreadsheet for progress update in writing accountability, there are also some #AcWri enthusiasts who like to blog or tweet about their writing goals and progress. The #AcWri community on Twitter provides great peer support where people are sharing writing advice and encouraging one another in the writing process. If you work better with pressure, the #AcWri community can also act as (positive) peer pressure. Seeing others progressing well when you are not provides encouragement to  improve your own productivity. Either way, participating in the #AcWri community will only benefit your progress and increase your motivation. Knowing you are not alone in whatever obstacles you are facing provides good solace. The key to accountability is: knowing what you need to achieve and making sure you put in the effort to achieve it. Regardless of how you measure your progress, all you need to do is to find the best way to achieve the ultimate goal by setting targets that are reasonable and achievable.

BE SURE TO SPELL-CHECK AND GRAMMAR-CHECK AND FACT-CHECK your work. Your degrees certify you as a literate, educated person. Grammatical or spelling errors in a résumé or in an article submitted for publication turn off reviewers who are making judg­ments about you. For example, in a résumésent to one of us as an outside reviewer for tenure we found the following: “My research activities has centered on . . .” and a reference to the journal Group Decision and Negotiation wound up as Group Decision & Negation.

LEARN THE FINE POINTS OF ENGLISH. With multiple degrees in hand, you are assumed to be an educated person. Writing and speaking mistakes turn off your students, reviewers, and the editors of journals. If you need help, buy a copy of Fowler’s Modern English Usage and William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White’s The Elements of Style. Read them. When in doubt, consult them. A well-written paper is more likely to be accepted than a poorly written one. For example you should: Know the difference between assure, ensure, and insure, and between affect and effect. Recognize that criteria is plural and criterion is singular