As textbook and academic authors, we often know where we want to go, perhaps have some idea of how to get there, but are often caught with feelings of ill-preparedness, lack of knowledge or resources, and a general sense of self-reliance to produce our results. From the outside looking in, we may appear to be working hard with nothing to show for the effort.
Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: October 23, 2020
Writing takes work. Whether starting a PhD or working on another published book or manuscript, academic authoring is work and should be treated as a professional endeavor. Margaret Laurence once said, “When I say work I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.” Our writing must receive focus and time for us to be successful.
In this week’s collection of articles from around the web, we have advice on early career authoring, building an impact and brand, and current trends in publishing. As you embark on the week ahead, give your writing the focus it deserves. After all, everything else is just odd jobs. Happy writing!
Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: April 24, 2020
In these times of uncertainty, it is common to experience confusion, seek knowledge, and wish for better days ahead, but as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Wishing is not enough; we must do.”
This week’s collection of articles from around the web includes information on copyright and creative commons, online methods of research, social media streaming, finding a flow in a COVID infected world, building an academic community, and collecting qualitative data online. Perhaps one or more of these have been things you knew about or wished to learn more about.
But knowing and wishing is not enough. What you do with these and other ideas in our changing world is what determines the future you will create. Happy writing!
Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: April 3, 2020
Ben Franklin once said, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” As we start the month of April, the first full month of spring, the season of new beginnings, it’s important that we do something. Despite the worldwide call for social isolation and limited activity, we must continue to find ways to progress in our academic efforts.
To support those efforts, we have found the following collection of articles on the web this week. First, we offer advice on resetting your research agenda while working from home, core knowledge on the basics of theory, and tips for writing successful proposals. We then explore what to do now, storytelling, relational inquiry, and truth-listening, and how to prepare for an effective virtual interview. Finally, we explore noteworthy topics of the Internet Archive, who is allowed to talk about equality, diversity, and inclusion, and scholarly issues of COVID-19 racism.
This week, we hope that you continue to write something worth reading, that you advance your scholarly efforts, and that you do something to make your writing stronger. Happy writing!
Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: October 25, 2019
As we come to the close of Open Access Week 2019, having been faced with the challenge of considering this year’s theme, “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”, the words of Carl Sagan seem even more appropriate. “Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”
This week’s collection of articles from around the web begins with some relevant discussions on open access including an MIT-developed framework for negotiating contracts with scholarly publishers, the future of open access business models, discussion about ownership of research, and the first 100 books from Johns Hopkins University Project. We’ve also included some other hot topics for academic authors on grant writing, being an older student, and being a minority in academia.
Wherever your writing takes you this week, whether publishing open access or traditional, consider the audience you can reach and the shackles of time you can break as a result of your efforts. Happy writing!
New year welcomes thousands of copyrighted works into the public domain
This year marks the first in two decades that a significant body of copyrighted work has lost its U.S. copyright protection and fallen into the public domain. Why is that…and what does it mean for scholars and educators?
Prior to 1978, the term of copyright protection for a work in the United States was measured from its date of first publication in the U.S. Under the first U.S. copyright act in 1790, U.S. works enjoyed an initial term of 14 years of protection, with an optional second term of another 14 years.