As we near the end of the calendar year, hopefully you are reflecting on your writing projects and establishing a plan for future efforts in the new year. In this week’s collection of posts from around the web we find both reflective and forward-facing content that may be of use in your personal writing efforts.

First, reflecting on what has been – whether tackling a revise & resubmit request, reconsidering a stalled book project, or turning your completed dissertation or thesis into a book. As we look further at what is and what’s coming to the academic publishing arena we find accessibility, equity, open access, and new models like ‘publish, then review’ in the forefront of discussion.

Isaac Asimov once said, “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” So I encourage you to put your fingers to work. Get thinking and get writing!

7 Steps for Tackling a Revise & Resubmit (R&R)

Receiving a R&R from an agent or editor can be both confusing and exciting at the same time. It might feel a bit disappointing because you were hoping for an offer, but let there be no mistake, an R&R is good news. The agent sees something in your work, and they are inviting you to submit again. They have taken time out to read your pages and provide notes to help you improve your manuscript. R&Rs don’t happen to everyone, and an agent doesn’t send them unless they’re genuinely interested.

What to do about a stalled book project

Are you *not* writing a book? Maybe it’s your “thesis book”. Maybe it’s something else. You might have a contract for it. You might not have started it, but think you should have by now. You might have a lot of research and drafts of some sections, or even a proposal. Whatever that book you are not writing looks like, it’s on your mind.

For the book from the PhD

I do love the book that comes from the PhD. The book seems like a fitting reward for all the hard work done during the doctorate. Indeed, in some countries, the post defence thesis is published as a book. That’s the book of the PhD, not from it. Of course not every PhD is book material.

Our Societies, Journals, and the Narrative of Accessibility and Equity in Open Research

The history of academic journal publishing is as old as the history of society journals. These journals have gone through numerous changes over the past 356 years, of course most drastically and rapidly in recent decades. While adapting to unprecedented surges of digital advancement, learned Societies, like their commercial counterparts, have been engaged in conversations and actions on Open Access (OA), or Open Research for that matter. Equity, along with diversity and inclusion, in terms of ability, age, gender identity, geography, race, and sexual orientation, are also increasingly being discussed and acted upon in the scholarly publishing industry. But, when we talk about access to research in an equitable way, it is not only about money, technology, or justice. We also need to ask equitable for whom? Who is going to make it equitable? Where are the areas to intervene? I’ll try to find answers to these questions along three related strands.

CCC exceeds 1,000 institutions and funders on its RightsLink for Scientific Communications Platform

With over 1,000 institutions and funders in the network, RLSC can quickly enable a comprehensive range of transformative deals, pure OA agreements, membership discounts, and other financial arrangements between publishers and customers, providing real-time transaction data for all parties.

No Languishing for Global Publishing in 2021

Over a year of vaccines and variants, COVID-19 played hide-and-seek around the world. After a devastating pandemic year in 2020, any return to normal was fitful, as Delta and Omicron crashed party after party. The ongoing global public health crisis deeply challenged all sectors of publishing in 2021. Yet industry stakeholders remained determined in the pursuit of renewal and recovery. In the final weeks of 2021, Velocity of Content is looking back at the past twelve months of programs.

Research funders invest in ‘publish, then review’ model for science publishing

eLife is transforming research communication to create a future with a diverse, global community of scientists producing trusted and open results for the benefit of all. The open-access eLife journal was the first step in this initiative. Now, in response to the increasing popularity of preprints, the organisation has moved to a new ‘publish, then review’ model of scientific publishing that emphasises preprints and public reviews.