UWE,

Bristol

Getting Published:
Strategies for success
Dr Paul Spencer

Researcher Development Manager

Paul.spencer@uwe.ac.uk
0117 32 83974

Session overview
Setting the scene
The rhetoric of publish or perish
The point of scholarly publishing
A publishers point of view
The changing nature of scholarly publication
the era of open access
An academic point of view
Some practicalities/tips

Publish or perish?
Quality is measured by your
publication record; progress and
promotion are dependent on it so
therefore get your work into the
highest ranking journal as you can

The obsession with metrics

Whenever you create league tables of
whatever kind, it drives behaviours that
are not ideal for the whole endeavour.
Not only are we failing to provide
the right incentives, we are actually
providing perverse ones.
The primary motivation of young scientists is to
publish in high status journals (whether defined by
JIF or something else) and this is a very profound
cultural problem.

ISBN: 1902369273. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4929.1363

How do I get started?

About you

Do you
consider
yourself a
writer?

Who am I as a writer?
Identity
Scholar? Practitioner?
Apprentice?
Doctoral, post
doctoral, early career,
mid career, mature,
senior

The purpose of scholarly writing

We write so that we
can contribute to
conversations about a
particular area of
knowledge production

Barriers to writing
Lack of confidence

Fear of rejection
Fear of open criticism
Insecurity about ability to write for academic journals
Not knowing where to start

Prioritising workload
Too busy and Cannot find the time
Talking about writing, is not the same as getting down to writing

Post PhD exhaustion

Adjusting from doctoral writing to journal writing

Writing is hard!

The writing cycle from Research Degree

Voodoo blog

Writing as part of a scholarly life

Developing good habits around writing
regularly
Writing is also part of the identity of a
researcher
Lots of techniques/tools to help on
productivity
BUT we mustnt forget WHO we are
writing for

Who is the reader?

Writing is a social
discursive practice
Academic writing
has specific
language that
differs by discipline
Jargon or insider
knowledge

Discourse Community
(Scientific Community)

a local and temporary constraining system,

defined by a body of texts (or more generally,
practices) that are unified by a common focus. A
discourse community is a textual system with
stated and unstated conventions, a vital history,
mechanisms for wielding power, institutional
hierarchies, vested interests, and so on.

Context for thesis writing

National higher education policies; national
scholarship conventions; institutional policies; general
scholarly/disciplinary conventions
Supervision
The field, the literature, disciplinary conventions
Research conventions/standards
Text
LAYER ONE
Discourse practice
LAYER TWO
Sociocultural practice
LAYER THREE

Taken from Thomson & Kamler (2013)

Context for journal writing

Commercial publication requirements,
scholarly/disciplinary conventions, audit regimes
Editing and refereeing (philosophical, market,
promotional, relational, textual and secretarial
concerns)
Text
LAYER ONE
Discourse practice
LAYER TWO
Sociocultural practice
LAYER THREE

Taken from Thomson & Kamler (2013)

Which journal do I submit to?

The one(s) that serve the discourse
community that you want to engage
with

Questions to ask yourself

Who is in this discourse
community?
What does it publish?
What is its mission
statement?
How does its editor see
the purpose of the
journal?

A publishers point of view

How?
Follow the reference
Which are the journals that
feature in your literature
reviews?
Follow the leading scholar
Which journals do they publish
in? What editorial boards do
they sit on?

The era of open access

Open Access (OA) is the
practice of allowing academic
outputs to be available to all,
free of charge. Generally this
applies to journal articles, but
some effort is being made to
apply OA to monographs and
other outputs.

So what?
There is a seismic shift
in scholarly publishing;
the next generation of
researchers who will
be operating in a
different climate in
terms of disseminating
their findings.

The future is Open

CC-BY Andreas Neuhold

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Open_Science_-_Prinzipien.png

Open Access is
A natural consequence of the internet
Good for research

Faster exchange of ideas

Fosters inter-disciplinarity
Enables text mining
Stronger sense of community ownership

Good for the taxpayer

Better cost control (eventually)
Access to the research they paid for
Changes dynamic of public engagement

Affecting & affected by many aspects of academic life

Open Access is NOT

Free (or the same as file-sharing
The end of peer review or synonymous
with low quality
Easy to implement

Open Research Advocacy

I did say at the outset I was an advocate of open

The future is open no doubt about that
Funders have implemented sticks (compliance)
BUT understand the benefits examples?

http://openaccessweek.org
http://whyopenresearch.org

The contribution
So what? Who cares?
Simply reporting
findings or engaging
with the discourse
community?
Letting your academic
voice be heard

The contribution
The contribution to the
discourse or the take
home message has to be
clearly articulated in your
writing.
This requires focus and
clarity of the idea being
put forward

A good abstract
Dont underestimate the importance of a good
abstract. This has to be good and takes work. See it as
an important job not the thing you rush before
submitting. It may be the only part of the paper that
most people read (using searches). In most disciplines
it should cover brief context (research problem), your
approach, key findings/conclusions. And WHY YOUR
PAPER IS IMPORTANT

An abstract in four moves

LOCATE

Placing work in context of

discourse community creating
space for the contribution

FOCUS

Identify specific issues/ideas that

paper will explore
Outline research, sample,
analysis and/or findings to assure
crediblity
So what? Now what? Nail the
significance offer opinion etc

REPORT
ARGUE

Skeleton structure using five

moves
LOCATE: ...is now a significant issue (in/for)
because(Expand by up to one sentence if necessary)
FOCUS: In this paper I focus on
ANCHOR: The paper draws on (I draw on) findings from a
study of which used in order to show that (expand
through additional sentences)
REPORT: The analysis of finding shows that
ARGUE: The paper argues thatand concludes (I conclude) by
suggesting that

A good article should have

a tight focus which allows one (or at most two) ideas to be dealt
with, and about three or four major points in the argument to be
made
a synthesis of research literatures not a review. Reference
should be made only to the key texts and debates on which the
particular paper builds and to which it makes a contribution
theory, if it is used, should be explained largely in the writers
own words and as economically as possible, referring only to the
particular theoretical aspects that are needed in the paper
citations which do not crowd out the text; the majority of the
word allowance should be devoted to the paper itself, which is
after all the contribution.

Using abstract as a planning

tool for writing
We can build on the
abstract
Assign word limits to each
section
Start to build the sub
headings
Revise as necessary

Sentence/phrase bank
One strategy is to look at a
good abstract and strip out
the details leaving the
sentence skeleton with key
signposting phrases

Academic phrasebank
Signposting terms that could be
really useful to help unblock writing
http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/
Lots of other useful stuff at thesis whisperer
Thesis whisperer blackline series

A word on authorship
Can you confirm the originality of the work?
Agree author order at outset
Authors are people who have made a unique and substantive
contribution to the manuscript i.e. design of study, data
analysis, and drafting of versions of the paper
www.icmje.org/
Authors are those accountable for the rigour, accuracy and
integrity of the content
Rights of authorship must not be based on seniority of staff or
alphabetical order
www.publicationethics.org.uk/

Plagiarism, salami slicing and double

duplication and submission
Plagiarism - is the direct copying of other peoples work without
crediting them, giving the impression that the submitted documents
are ones efforts and ideas
Salami Slicing- is the dividing of a piece of a large study into discreet
papers for publication, with each addressing a distinctive area and
without replicating the data
Double submission- occurs when an individual submits two similar
(almost identical) manuscripts to two journals
Double publication happens when publication of a paper appears in
press that is substantially identical to one already published (eg
particularly in terms of data) [Stone 2003, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, 45 (4): 47-49]

Submitting the paper

q Online submission can be time-
consuming
q Registration at the journals website
and create an account
q Follow instructions for uploading:
Title
Authors qualifications and place
of work
Abstract
Main body of text
Tables, figures, photographs
Letter confirming authorship

Peer-reviewing process in academic journals

q Most journals have a process of anonymous reviewing involving two
or more experts.
q Experts will be nominated to review your paper according to the
journals own criteria
q In academic journals, peer review is a mark of quality and rigour of
the publication and aims to raise standards

Dealing with feedback

q Once reviewed it is checked by editor
q Accept (with/without minor revision)
q Revise and resubmit
q Reject

q If you have comments, then:

q List these carefully

q Respond to each as appropriate
q Return the manuscript outlining how you addressed the comments
q Do it soon

Reasons for rejection

1. Sent to the wrong journal
(doesnt fit journal aims or
scope)
2. Not a proper journal
article (e.g. thesis chapter
or consultancy or too
journalistic)
3. Too long or too short
(ignoring word limits)
4. Poor regard to journal
conventions

5. Bad style, grammar,

punctuation, poor English
6. Fails to say anything of
significance or states the
obvious at tedious length
7. Not properly contextualised
8. No theoretical framework
9. Scrappy presentation
10. Libellous, unethical, rude

Revise and resubmit

Three things to remember
1) Dont dash off a furious e-mail to the editor!
2) Deal with the negative commentary
3) Hurry up and get on with it!

Supporting resubmission
Important to get
help/support to
resubmit from
experienced scholar
Dont let the rejection
undermine your
confidence

The final stage

Receiving, checking and responding to proofs
Proof-read and respond to any questions raised by
copy editor
Return proof as soon as corrections are made and you
are satisfied with pdf version
Wait for online publication ahead of paper version
Congratulations

Be writerly!
Think back to your identity as writer; it is
integral to being a scholar.
making time for writing as part of your usual,
average work week
setting yourself up for writing
valuing writing. See writing as equally worthy
of your intellectual effort as any other area of
scholarly activity

Be readerly!

1. Knowing who your reader is

2. Writing for the reader
3. Producing well-crafted
writing

Be strategic, but not instrumental

1. Its important to write for the people who
want and/or need to read what you have to
say
2. Dont be afraid to also write something less
apparently scholarly
3. Its important to get actually get published,
to get some track record