Getting your research and academic work published in a peer review journal is essential to your career. The process seems difficult and mysterious, but it doesn’t need to be that way. Join us for this one-hour webinar, “Getting Your Journal Article Published: Simple Steps to Success,” on March 8 from 2-3 p.m. ET. Publishing Consultant John Bond will present practical steps for any aspiring writer and researcher to follow to go from idea and raw data to submitting a top quality manuscript for possible publication. Topics include: “Developing a plan and Timeline,” “Determining a Target List of Potential Journals,” “Writing and Editing Your Work,” and “Understanding Journal Review the Decision Process.” You’ll also learn the 13 most Frequently Asked Questions.
Five ways to increase your confidence as an academic
Many academics lack confidence in some aspect of their professional lives, and while some are open about this, for others, it’s a well-kept secret, says Mary Beth Averill, academic writing coach, editor, and co-author with Hillary Hutchinson of The Confident Academic: Overcoming the small fish, big pond experience… and other difficult matters.
“I’ve been working with academic writers for over 30 years, and one thing that comes up repeatedly in my work with clients is their lack of confidence,” she says. “Even people who look to me like they’re at the top of their field sometimes feel a lack of confidence in some areas of their professional life.”
Choosing a journal to submit your new manuscript
Your research is done. You have a solid first draft. Now, where will you submit your paper?
Authors will either have a quick answer or struggle to figure out which is the best fit for their work. I suggest you put nearly as much time into thinking through the best match for your work as you did in creating it.
Start to develop a list of possible publications for submission. Potential journals will migrate up and down your list as you learn more about each one.
What is critical race theory and why it should matter to academic authors
Recently, since the popularity of the 1619 project and its connection to critical race theory (CRT), there has been significant confusion about what CRT is. CRT used to be only known and debated by scholars in law, education, sociology and other related fields, but now it is troubling the minds of the parents of elementary students, among others. Let’s start with what it is, talk about what it isn’t and end with discussing what academic authors need to know about it.
Using IMRaD to organize article content
In his presentation “Why Your Journal Articles Are Confusing, and How IMRaD Can Help”, Thomas Deetjen, author of Published, offered advice for tightening your articles’ structure around the IMRaD format as a method for getting jumbled thoughts into words that your readers will understand.
Deetjen says, “If you know where things are supposed to go, then you can write your article that way in the first place, and you can edit your articles in a way that will move information around into the correct places.” He advises, quite simply, to put information where readers expect to see it.
Crafting compelling and purposeful titles: A five step process
Although the old adage states “you can’t tell a book by its cover”, in academic writing it is crucial that the title of an article or book “tell” the essence of the work. The title is the first critical decision point for a reader. Its goal is to invite the reader to peruse the abstract, read the article, and, hopefully, cite your work.
The title does a lot of work for your manuscript, and there are many good reasons to pay attention to crafting short, content-rich, and engaging titles. First, for you, the author, spending time crafting a title forces you to distill your detailed, multi-page manuscript into 10 to 15 words, a daunting task.