What does it take to spark faculty imagination and engender faculty commitment to academic writing? Over the last three years,…
10 Tips for ESL/EFL academic writers (and everyone else, too)
Congratulations on learning English, the current lingua franca of international communication and the most difficult Western language to learn. I’m really glad it’s my native language. As a copy editor, I have worked for many years with scholars whose native language is not English. In 2008 I became house copy editor for the International Review of Public Administration, which at that time was published by the Korean Association for Public Administration and is now published by Taylor & Francis; more recently I took on the same role with Korean Social Science Journal. The majority of articles accepted for publication by IRPA and KSSJ are written by academics native in a language that is not English (with the majority of authors native in an Asian language). That work has led to my developing a specialty in working with ESL/EFL authors.
TAA Podcast – Millions of Articles, Thousands of Journals: How an Individual Scholarly Author Can Thrive in Today’s Scholarly Publishing Ecosystem
The changing scholarly publishing ecosystem provides new opportunities, and some perils, for scholarly authors. Listen to this session by Jeffrey Beall, “Millions of Articles, Thousands of Journals: How an Individual Scholarly Author Can Thrive in Today’s Scholarly Publishing Ecosystem,” recorded at the 2014 TAA Conference in Baltimore, MD, which addresses how authors can better expose, promote, and share their research to reach a larger audience and achieve greater impact.
Focusing on scholarly journals, it will update you on some of the problems associated with predatory publishing, such as research misconduct and the publication of pseudo-science. It will also help authors select publishers that provide greater added value to their work, such as basic copyediting and digital curation.
How to Write a Sophisticated, Dynamic Scholarly Argument
It is incumbent upon early-career academics to distinguish their research as mature scholarship, not student work. So as an editor who often works with junior faculty and recent PhDs, I’m always on the lookout for hallmarks of amateur writing that scholars can identify and excise.
Perhaps most academics can name some of the tics that unfortunately characterize graduate-student writing: overqualification, hedging, extensive literature review, and a high ratio of quotation to original material are just a few.
How to navigate the peer review publishing process
When an author submits a manuscript to a scholarly journal, the manuscript will face one of three basic responses: accept, reject, or revise and resubmit. Samantha Elliott, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education (JMBE), and Jeffrey Arnett, editor of the Journal of Adolescent Research, offer the following information to guide you through the different responses you may receive from editors.
Accept/Accept with Minor Modifications
Manuscripts that fall into this category are exceptionally strong papers that received glowing peer reviews, and the only modifications needed might include clarification on certain points, or formatting issues specific to the journal. While this is every academic writer’s dream response, it is a very rare occurrence. If this happens to you, Elliott recommends that you celebrate, and then take a good look at the feedback you received to find out what impressed your reviewers. You can use this feedback to help shape future manuscripts.
Journal author and editor offer advice for writing articles for scientific journals
Writing journal articles can be demanding for an academic writer in any field, but authors seeking to publish their work in scientific journals face unique challenges.
Elaine Hull, a prolific writer in the fields of psychology and neuroscience, and Ushma Neill, an editor for The Journal of Clinical Investigation, offer the following advice for science writers: