Manuscript matchmaking: Finding a home for your article 

With so many options, finding the right home for your manuscript can seem daunting. However, with a few useful tools, you can quickly and confidently locate publication venues appropriate for your work. In this article, you’ll be introduced to two such tools: Scopus Sources and the Web of Science Master Journal List.

Free to use, Scopus Sources allows authors to search for publications indexed in Scopus, an abstract and citation database from Elsevier. Scopus Sources is easy to search. Once you’ve performed a simple keyword search at the top of the page, you can refine your result list further by utilizing the limiters on the sidebar. For instance, you can limit by the open-access status of a publication, minimum number of citations, minimum number of documents, and by specific types of publications (such as journals, conference proceedings, etc.).

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Write a syllabus for yourself

It’s that time of year when faculty are revising syllabi for the classes they teach and students are reviewing those documents in an effort to understand the expectations for the semester ahead. Academia is fueled by the course syllabus that serves to establish intended outcomes, the path by which they will be met, and the consequences of not meeting them.

Unfortunately, the syllabi that we engage with do little (beyond assigned projects) to guide and encourage our academic writing practice. So, if you have academic writing goals that are not tied to a particular course – whether finishing a thesis or dissertation or continuing your academic publishing career – consider writing a syllabus for yourself this semester.

Here are seven things you may want to include to keep yourself motivated throughout the semester ahead.

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Copyright, Covid, and the virtual classroom

With the fall semester fast approaching, faculty are intensively preparing for the 2020-2021 academic year, in the face of continually changing information and circumstances. A number of our higher education clients have had questions about copyright issues relating to the transition of traditional in-person classes to online or hybrid formats. We have also been reviewing software agreements for various services that allow institutions to shift more of their offerings online. Here we discuss four common issues we have encountered. Although the answers are seldom black-and-white, we thought it would be useful to share some of the questions and possible approaches to them.

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Too tired to write?

Do you often find you’re too tired to write? If so, you’re suffering from a widespread malady: Too Tired to Write Syndrome (TTWS). I know it well. Late at night, after three hours of primetime soaps/CIA adventures/sports/reality shows/80s reruns, we solemnly promise ourselves we’ll tackle our latest writing project early the next day. Or we solemnly assure ourselves, early in the new morning and jolted by a surge of caffeinated joy, we’ll write later today between 3:00 and 4:00.

But then . . . our promise to ourselves to write drowns in the rest of our lives. With all we have to do, we’re just too tired.

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11 Aspects of clear academic writing

In a recent TAA webinar, professional coach Caroline Eisner shared ways to write clearly across academic disciplines. Specifically, she discussed the components of clear academic writing and how these components apply to the discourse conventions across the disciplines.

Below is a summary of eleven aspects Eisner identified as essential to producing clear academic writing across the disciplines.

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TAA’s 2021 Conference Call for Proposals Is Open

TAA announces a Call for Proposals for its 34th Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference which will be held June 18-19, 2021 in Indianapolis, IN. We invite the submission of presentations relevant to writing, publishing, and marketing textbooks and academic works (textbooks, academic books, journal articles, and monographs). Interactive, hands-on sessions are encouraged. The proposal deadline is October 7, 2020. 

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