What Can You Do If Your Work Is Plagiarized?

By Sierra Pawlak

During the July 2024 TAA Conversation Circle on the topic of plagiarism, Micki Caskey, a Professor Emerita at Portland State University, shared her experience with having her work plagiarized.

“It was a shock to me that my work had been taken,” she said. “The reason I cared is because I worked really hard on that project. This was work I had committed a lot of intellectual space to, and I just was aghast that someone would take it. It’s not that I am the greatest author in the world, I just would like to be credited for the work that I’ve done.”

Caskey discovered her work had been plagiarized in 2021 when she went to update a piece she originally wrote in 2007 and had updated in 2014, a research summary on the developmental characteristics of young adolescents.

What Can You Do If Your Work Is Plagiarized? Read More

2024 TAA Textbook Award Winners Share Insight, Inspiration

Fifty-six textbooks were awarded 2024 Textbook Awards by TAA, representing more than 100 authors. We recently reached out to these award-winning authors asking several questions, including how they fit writing time into their schedule, what pedagogical elements in their textbook they are most proud of, and what they wish they had known before they started writing their textbook. We hope their answers provide insight and inspiration for your writing projects.

2024 TAA Textbook Award Winners Share Insight, Inspiration Read More

12 Articles on Writing Your Dissertation: A Curated Collection From Noelle Sterne, PhD

Dissertation coach Noelle Sterne, the author of Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles, has contributed more than 30 articles to the TAA Blog over the past 10 years. We’ve curated all of these articles into a new TAA Blog category, Noelle Sterne’s Dissertation Posts, and have included 12 of them here. Enjoy!

12 Articles on Writing Your Dissertation: A Curated Collection From Noelle Sterne, PhD Read More

Author Tech Tool Suggestions: For the Tech Bewildered

By John Bond

We are living in a Golden Age of technology for authors. But sometimes these new or improved tools can be intimidating. Here are some simple steps for getting started on considering these tools that might improve your writing output and quality.

Before we start, take an inventory:

  • Currently am I making the best use of my time?
  • Will new tools make me more productive?
  • What’s wrong with your current tools?
  • What is available to you now through your institution?
  • What’s your motivation for a change?

Author Tech Tool Suggestions: For the Tech Bewildered Read More

Academese: Are You Narrowing Your Audience By Not Speaking Their Language?

By Sierra Pawlak

During TAA’s May 2024 Conversation Circle, several members shared their experiences with ‘academese’ and tips for how academic writers can avoid it in their writing. Academese is characterized by writing that is heavily filled with jargon, overcomplicated language, and/or convoluted sentence structure (Wikipedia).

“The biggest sin in academic writing is the passive voice,” said Barbara Nostrand, an Aquisitions Editor at Gakumon and Senior Fellow at the de Moivre Institute. “It makes it much more difficult for the reader to understand what’s been written, and it’s completely unnecessary.” She recommends using the active voice instead, for example, ‘I saw’, ‘I observed’: “A trick to doing that is to move the verb as close to the beginning of the sentence as possible.”

Academese: Are You Narrowing Your Audience By Not Speaking Their Language? Read More

Before You Start Writing: Identify the Journal You Want to Publish In

By Sierra Pawlak

Dave Harris, an editor and writing coach from Thought Clearing, says identifying the journal you want to publish in early helps you decide what goes into the paper you write.

“You want to identify what journal you’re writing to first, because every journal is different, and if you’re not doing a good job of targeting your article to a specific journal, you’re going to have a harder time getting accepted,” he said, during the April 2024 TAA Conversation Circle discussion on the topic of literature reviews. “At some point where you’ve got this research project that you’ve done and you’re trying to write it up, that’s when you say, ‘here’s the journal I want to go to,’ and you start there, thinking about how to frame your material to suit the journal.”

Before You Start Writing: Identify the Journal You Want to Publish In Read More