Systematic reviews are an increasingly popular academic research method and manuscript style, often garnering many citations when published. In fact, the most recent bibliometric analysis of more than 1,200 published systematic reviews found they have cited an average of 26 times over a 4-year period after publication, or 6.6 citations per year. While publishing a systematic review can certainly add to your academic profile, with 85% of these manuscripts being rejected by journals at submission, success is far from guaranteed.
Choose your best dissertation chair
It is impossible to overestimate the significance of the student-advisor relationship. . . . This is both a personal and professional relationship that rivals marriage and parenthood in its complexity, variety and ramifications for the rest of one’s life. (Zhao, Golde, & McCormick, 2007, p. 263)
These wise observations were made by a new “doctor” in the study by Zhao et al. (2007) of how the doctoral students’ choice of chairs and their behavior affect the students’ satisfaction. The candidate quoted above echoes what many doctoral students learn, with ease or agony, during their dissertations. Your relationship with your chair (sometimes called advisor or supervisor) is absolutely the most important in your entire doctoral haul.
Safeguarding your scholarship in OA: What to look for and what to avoid
As open access publishing matures into an accepted (and in some disciplines, the standard) form of scholarly communication, it is more important than ever to be able to spot what Jeffrey Beall calls “predatory publications”, publications that accept article processing fees but fail to provide essential editorial services. As academic librarians who have many years of experience helping faculty navigate this new landscape, we recommend using the following strategies for safeguarding your scholarship while pursuing open access options for your work.
10 Tips on getting writing started
Many academics find sitting down at the computer and starting to write to be one of the most difficult challenges facing them. One reason for this, as one of my students put it so well, “if I never start, then I never fail.” Other reasons include getting out of the habit of writing—or never having a writing habit at all.
While tough to overcome, these obstacles do have some straightforward solutions. Here I share ten tips on getting your writing project started and moving it toward completion.
Dear Katy: Tips & strategies on setting boundaries
So many of the questions I am asked by my clients, colleagues, and friends boil down to boundaries. And no wonder, the world continually invents more ways for us to be connected across time and space all while our professional lives demand that we write, write well, and write quickly. To discuss this issue, I’ve rounded up a few questions about boundaries I’ve received to answer here, to both fulfill my lifelong goal to be an advice columnist (?), and also to illustrate that boundaries are important for all of us, no matter our title, rank, or experience!
Q: “I am a newly appointed chair of my department, and my manuscript is due at the end of 2019. I know that campus will not be a useful writing space for me, but I’m also not the best at writing at home, or in other spaces. How can I make this work for me?”
TAA’s 2020 Conference Call for Proposals
TAA is accepting session proposals for its 33rd Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference. We invite the submission of presentations relevant to writing, publishing, and marketing textbooks and academic works (journal articles, books, and monographs). The proposal deadline is October 7, 2019.
TAA’s conference will be held at The Westin San Diego Gaslamp Quarter located in the heart of beautiful downtown San Diego, CA, June 12-13, 2020. A highly interactive event, the conference will be attended by authors and aspiring authors of textbooks, journal articles, and other academic works, as well as by industry professionals from across the country.