Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted, “that which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.” In our collection of articles from around the web this week, we see several suggestions on how to make our lives as academic writers easier by increasing our ability to do.

Suggestions include writing for the public for more impact, forming a brain trust, expanding our knowledge set with new literatures, collaborating around Big Data, and providing choice on how to pay for peer review and publication. This week, we encourage you to explore these and other ways to make your tasks as an author easier and to increase your ability to do. Happy Writing!

Academics ought to write for the public for more impact

We propose something simpler: academics just need to start writing, getting edited and seeing if the public reads them. Through this process, academics will not only learn to express themselves clearly, but most likely become better scientists as well.

Building a brain trust

I have found that many, if not most, brain trust relationships come about through personal referrals, but sometimes advisors are discovered through their writing or presentations. However the brain trust is put together, and whether it is voluntary or a paid assignment, there are some common elements.

Getting to grips with new literatures

Over time all researchers build a knowledge base about their key interests. A large part of this knowledge is a core set of literatures. They/we do need to keep up to date, but they/we can rely on – and use – our incrementally expanding personal library of literatures. However, every so often, researchers have to deal with a completely new topic and brand new literatures.

Collaboration & Big Data research

Nowhere is the ability to reach across disciplines and professional fields more important than in Big Data research. Nowhere is the ability to reach across disciplines and professional fields more important than in Big Data research.

Let authors choose how to pay for peer review and publication

The United States Office for Science Technology and Policy (OSTP) is rumoured to be gearing up to release an Open Access (OA) policy, and like cOAlition S before it, both the funders involved and the researchers affected will need to consider different approaches to covering the costs of Article Processing Charges (APCs) that the majority of journals will charge to make an article OA.