This week’s collection of articles from around the web is full of questions. Questions about our writing practice. Questions about the science of academic writing and scholarship. Questions about the future of the publishing industry.

Beginning with “what’s the worst that could happen?” and ending with “what’s on the horizon for publishing and open access?” these articles inspire fresh perspective on our textbook and academic writing processes.

Andre Dubus III once said, “I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that’s the job of art.” This week, use your writing practice to go deeper into the questions associated with your discipline and process. Happy writing!

3 Ways to counteract self-sabotage

There are a lot of reasons we don’t get the writing done, and often fear is at the center. Fears can be real, valid, and substantial. They can also be illusive—ones we fabricate or blow out of proportion because we aren’t ready or willing to deal with the fears. I like to face my fear by asking myself: “What’s the worst that could happen?”

How to use your excuses to get more writing done

Whenever we don’t get the writing done, we have a library of excuses ready to use. How can we shake ourselves loose from all this excuse-making and boost writing productivity? Here are three methods that might work for you.

How to get organized as a busy college student

With a potent mix of friends, and fun activities on one hand and schoolwork on the other, optimal time management can prove tricky. However, success in your schoolwork calls for a balance between your personal life and study. This article tackles organization tips for college students to improve their productivity.

#litreview. Defining – It’s your ‘take’

Other people’s work is really helpful when we are deciding what our key terms will mean. Most of us use terminology in our research question or hypothesis which needs some explanation. One or more key terms. We have to say how we understand the term, and why. We have to say what we will include and exclude. We have to offer our take, what readers need to know about our particular version of the term. Referring to other people’s work to help us make the case.

On clarifying the goals of a peer review taxonomy

Under pressure from both researchers and consumers of research, the practice of peer review is changing and new models are proliferating. Recently, the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), a major academic publishing association (representing academic societies, commercial publishers, and scholarly publishing organizations), has made an effort to categorize these disparate models, which resulted in a draft from their Working Group on Peer Review Taxonomy. This comment emerged as a response to their call for feedback to that proposal.

The science of storytelling

In storybooks and scholarly journals alike, narrative is the framework for how we share information, experiences, and insights. Talia Adell Stinson, a freelance journalist and project manager based in Philadelphia, sees this ancient craft of storytelling in thoroughly 21st-century terms – as a form of data collection and data management.

Teaching & learning online? Two new podcasts & a book

To help her education students and others catapulted into online teaching and learning, my colleague Narelle Lemon started a podcast: Teachers Supporting Teachers. Given that I was an early adopter for online education, she asked me to participate. The results of our conversation is now online in two podcast episodes. While these podcasts do not address research instruction specifically, I think the points made are relevant when teaching methods and engaging student researchers.

SSP’s early career development podcast: episode 4, the publishing industry and the pandemic part 1

In this fourth episode of SSP’s Early Career Development Podcast, Meredith Adinolfi and Sara Grimme engage with Charles Watkinson (University of Michigan Press), Alison Labbate (Wiley), and Leon Heward-Mills (Taylor & Francis) about strategies and programs that their companies have put in place to support staff and employees during a time of great uncertainty for many in the publishing industry and for the communities that we support.

Springer Nature collaborates with the OAPEN foundation on open access (OA) toolkit for researchers and academic book authors

Springer Nature is pleased to be one of the founding members of the new OAPEN toolkit for researchers and academic book authors. The toolkit is a free-to-access, stakeholder-agnostic resource that aims to help authors better understand open access (OA) for books, to increase trust in OA book publishing, to provide reliable and easy-to-find answers to questions from authors, and to provide guidance in the process of publishing an OA book.