Textbook and academic writing is hard work. It’s a tiring endeavor. It stretches the individual and the discipline with each new publication. To be successful, though, we need to consider the words of David Goggins who said, “Don’t stop when you’re tired. Stop when you’re done.”

Whether you are starting a literature review, attempting to describe theoretical, conceptual, or analytical frameworks, editing a book, or simply editing your work for your reader, our collection of articles this week has some advice to keep you moving forward in your efforts to reach your goal. We have also included articles on promoting research through social media, entrepreneurial pursuits, Journal Impact Factors, the pandemic’s impact on open access, and how working from home has affected US publishing.

Whatever your current role and goal as an academic author, no matter how tired you may be in the process, move forward this week. And don’t stop until you’re done. Happy writing!

How to start your literature review

There are three well-trodden literature pathways you can consider – a trio of ways to think about how to begin and get stuck into the initial reading, summarising, thematising, categorising, mapping. If you don’t want to invent your own process, then take a look at these.

Creating tables and diagrams to describe theoretical, conceptual, and analytical frameworks

Like I have done in other blog posts of mine, I am going to show you several graphic and table-based depictions of frameworks that may help you think through how you can visually explain the concepts you are using to analyze what you are analyzing.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: My experience in writing two books as editor

If you are at the point in your career where you may have gained a fair amount of experience on a certain topic, and built up a network of fellow researchers, you may be considering to put together a book as editor. In today’s post, I’ll share my experience on this topic, and I’ll also give some general advice.

Edit for your reader: An exercise and checklist

It’s not up to you to decide if the book is good. Yes, we all need to learn how to discern a good book, but we don’t write for ourselves alone. We write for the reader. The biggest mental switch a writer needs to make is from self-focused — which you needed to be in the creative flow — to reader focused.

Promoting research through social media

Through a new partnership with Editage, CCC’s RightsLink® platform is now able to facilitate critical research communication solutions.

Tweeting-citations authors speak, finally

The authors of a much–critiqued study of the beneficial effects of tweeting on citation and altmetrics speak, finally. I say “finally” since my attempts to get the authors to respond to my questions seemed futile. No one was willing to defend the paper, not even the journal’s editorial office. And yet, the authors did finally respond through a Letter to the Editor, published in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery on July 20. I only heard about this letter from a colleague, not from the authors themselves.

Choosing to leave academia and create something new: An interview with Jane Jones

Dr. Jane Jones has had the “golden ticket” job, and she will be the first to tell you: it’s not for everyone. She may have landed a tenure track job her first year on the market, but after 3 years she knew it was not for her. Racial inequity, lack of creative freedom and the constraints of academia led her away from the professor life she had always wanted, and toward her own entrepreneurial venture.

SAGE releases five-year Journal Impact Factors to broaden the impact conversation

This is the second year that SAGE has published JIF data from a five-year period in a move to widen the conversation about alternative measurements of research articles that better demonstrate their impact. SAGE believes that while citation data cannot reflect this impact in its entirety, it provides a longer-term and more balanced picture than the standard two-year measure.

Two steps forward, one step back – the pandemic’s impact on open access progress

The COVID pandemic has given us a clear view of the value of open science, yet has also created conditions where implementing open science may not be feasible. We know that the transition to OA was likely to be financially disruptive, even under good market conditions, but now in a global recession (if not depression), it’s increasingly difficult to see rapid progress happening.

Working from home is working for US publishers

While many in publishing successfully work from home, someone has to get the books out the door, so warehouse workers don’t really get that option. Yet because so many workers can work from home, this does allow publishers to focus on safety efforts for who do come to a physical location.