Busy TAA People: Mary Kay Switzer

TAA member and former TAA Council President Dr. Mary Kay Switzer will be an honored feature in noted Chinese author Albert Chang’s book and paintings, “Six Women,” to be exhibited in Tokyo in April 8-10, 2019.  Chang and Switzer began their collaboration at California State University Pomona. Switzer has been designated Professor Emerita at that university. She is currently living in Tempe, Arizona where she is involved in theatrical productions.

Publish & Flourish: Revising around key sentences

At the 2018 Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference in Santa Fe, NM, Dr. Tara Gray presented on her twelve-step program, “Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar”. Steps 7 & 8 of the program focus on the revision process by identifying and using key sentences in each paragraph as follows:

Step 7: Revise paragraphs around key sentences

Step 8: Use key sentences as an after-the-fact or reverse outline

In order to complete step 7 and revise paragraphs around key sentences, it’s important to first identify the key sentence in each paragraph. So, what is a key sentence?

How to select effective journal article keywords

Unless potential readers are searching for your article by title or are reading the journal your work is published in, chances are they are going to find your article through a research search engine. If effective keywords are not associated with your article, the search engine uses content in your title, abstract, and article to determine if your article is relative to the user’s search efforts. As a result, your target reader may never see your work.

To improve your chances of getting in front of the right audience, keywords let you identify places where your work is a relevant choice for the reader. Below are five ways to select effective keywords for your journal article.

The most useful textbook & academic posts of the week: June 22, 2018

Douglas Adams said, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” Do you like that sound? As the official start of summer is upon us, we hope that you are finding time to work on your writing projects and are better equipped to meet deadlines or to finish work on projects whose deadlines may have passed during the academic year.

Our collection of articles from around the web this week begins with some strategies for writing for publication, conducting qualitative interviews, and conducting interdisciplinary work. It continues with concerns regarding “business-as-usual” confidentiality in a growing state of research openness, unreported editorial misconduct, and the value of literature reviews. Finally, we have found some discussions on peer review, expanded access to ProQuest through Google Scholar, and a new community-controlled open access publishing platform – the Free Journal Network. Enjoy and happy writing!

Textbook and academic discussions – keep them going

If you were at the 31st Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference in Santa Fe, NM last weekend, you know the excitement and passion this group of authors shared throughout each session and networking opportunity. For the nearly 100 participants in the roundtable discussions held Saturday afternoon, there was much to talk about and some incredible ideas shared in the groups. Many participants expressed an interest in continuing these conversations beyond the conference. To this end, we have used the roundtable discussion topics to start eight threads in our LinkedIn group for just that reason.

If you were in attendance, we’d love for you to get the conversation started by sharing notes from the session with our LinkedIn group. If you weren’t able to attend (or were participating in another roundtable at the time), please share your insight, ideas, and questions in any or all of the discussions linked below. The roundtables just got bigger! Welcome to the table!

Write with purpose, publish for impact

This post was originally published on SAGE MethodSpace and has been republished with permission.

SAGE MethodSpace logoWhen we put our thoughts into writing and publish them, we tell the world something about who we are. We move beyond circles of people who know us — colleagues and friends– to reach readers we will never meet. They learn about us from the choices reflected in our writing. What messages do you want to convey to your readers?