This week is the first ever Peer Review Week. ORCID, ScienceOpen, Sense About Science, and Wiley launched this idea and will be sharing various posts, webinars, and other activities throughout the week. Many more organizations and scholars are expected (and already are) tweeting and blogging about peer review. You can follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag: #PeerRevWk15.
The most useful textbook & academic writing posts of the week: September 25, 2015
Most often in this series the posts I find from week to week are on many different topics. This week, however, there are two overriding themes “referencing” and “organizing,” with just a sprinkling of other topics to enjoy.
Featured Member Kathleen King – Motivation, marketing & the ‘easy fix’
Kathleen P. King, professor of Adult and Higher Education at the University of South Florida in Tampa, is an award winning author of 30 books, most recently 147 Tips for Emerging Scholars and The Professor’s Guide to Taming Technology, and more than 175 journal articles and research papers. She is known for her sessions and innovative topics and is a popular international keynote and conference speaker, mentor, and professor. King’s areas of research include instructional technology, faculty development, and mentoring. Here King shares what motivates her to write, tips on marketing your works, and the ‘easy fix’:
Make your dissertation your priority
As you undoubtedly already know, writing a dissertation is different from anything you’ve ever done. This enterprise requires you to adjust, if not radically change, your lifestyle. If you ever really want to complete the dissertation, and in a timely manner (if that isn’t an oxymoron), you need to rethink your priorities.
Your a full-time job, of course, should be high on the priority list. You may have been used to putting family first. But rethink this priority. Heartless and psychologically suspect as this statement may sound, you can make it up to them in many other ways—later (that’s another article).
The most useful textbook & academic writing posts of the week: September 18, 2015
“The best way to learn about writing is to study the work of other writers you admire.” –Jeffery Deaver
Isn’t this an excellent bit of advice that Jeffery Deaver gives us? Do we not do this in our own writing, but also in other aspects of our lives? I think one piece is missing from his advice, however. I believe that you also have to find and study writers that have a similar tone, style, and voice to that of your own. All of those things make up who you are and who you are as a writer.
How to edit and polish statistical writing
Effective statistical writing is important for many writers because it helps explain key pieces of information typically found in the methods and results sections of academic documents. In a TAA webinar entitled “It’s All Greek to Me: Translating Statistical Writing”, Ami Hanson, an editor for Elite Research, LLC, provided many helpful ideas for polishing statistical writing, specifically in dissertations, journal articles, and grant proposals, for maximum reader impact.