Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Academic Writing: An Interview with Katherine Firth This post is an edited transcript of my interview with Katherine Firth in October 2019 to celebrate the publication of my Short Guide on Peer Review. JoVE: Hello. So I am Jo Van Every, and this is Katherine Firth. [Katherine confirms]. […]
Read More »Beyond the academy: a category in transition
Knowledge mobilization, wider impact, reaching non-academic audiences, knowledge transfer, knowledge exchange ... all the things you do (or might do) to reach people who could use the knowledge you create but who aren't likely to be reading specialist academic journals.
Posts in this category will be edited and possibly recategorized beginning in July 2015.
Prioritising non-academic audiences during the pandemic
This post was originally written during a time when many universities and workplaces had shifted to remote work in response to the COVID pandemic. Although circumstances have now changed for many people, much of what I say in this post still applies. One of the issues that has come up in both Office Hours (a […]
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The relationship between writing for scholarly audiences & for wider audiences
My approach to academic publishing is focused on its importance for communicating what you have learned from your research with others. I also argue that writing (and publishing) for scholarly audiences is important and is often quite different than what you would write for practitioners, activists, policymakers, or other wider audiences (see What is the point […]
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What is the point of publishing peer-reviewed articles if you care about changing things out there in the world?
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Peer-reviewed articles and changing things out there in the world I want to write more about some of the practical applications of the general point I made in Communication vs Validation: Why are you publishing?. In particular, I want to connect my approach to writing and publishing with the […]
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Stop worrying about recycling
Back in 2011, Aimée Morrison wrote a post on Hook & Eye, ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’, in which she discussed the question What I’ve been really thinking about lately is this: how much reusing and recycling of our work is appropriate here? This is a common concern, especially among early career researchers. I responded with a […]
Read More »Prestigious journals & wider impact
Writing for scholarly journals and writing for wider impact are not mutually exclusive. The impact your work has outside of academia is partly dependent on the quality of the work and the respect that work has within relevant academic networks. Yes, we want evidence based policy and practice, but we also want that evidence to […]
Read More »grumble … Knowledge mobilization … grumble … wider impact … grumble
In a recent workshop I asked participants to write down all the grumpy thoughts they were having about the prospect of writing a Knowledge Mobilization plan (aka Pathways to Impact statement in the UK). I collected these and put them aside while we got on with a more positive approach. I want to return to […]
Read More »Open Access & Knowledge Mobilization
I fear that for some in the academic community, Open Access publishing is acting as a crutch, albeit one they don’t have yet. Open Access publishing is a good thing. We should have more of it. There are lots of reasons for this, all of which are well known. But … How many of you […]
Read More »Interesting post on impact of research
This post on measuring impact (within and beyond academia) has some interesting elements. Impact zones and the role of publishers: changing the way academic research makes wider impact | Impact of Social Sciences. I find the middle section, with the green chart, particularly interesting as a way of imagining the potential impact of a piece […]
Read More »It’s fine to only want to reach other academics
I know Knowledge Mobilization, Relevance, Knowledge Transfer and all that are hot topics right now. And if you are doing work that has immediate relevance to particular non-academic audiences, you really need to work out the best way to reach those audiences. Which is one reason that I wrote that earlier post. But that doesn’t […]
Read More »Figure out who you want to reach
In my last post, I talked about how perfectly reasonable it was not to be publishing if you think no one reads journal articles. The problem is, you are doing all this work and you aren’t sharing it with the people who need to know about it. You have great ideas. These ideas are important. […]
Read More »Two Solitudes? Knowledge mobilization/transfer & the PhD problem
This post might be a bit random but there are some thoughts mulling in the back of my head and I figure if I get them out of my head where other people can engage with them, they might grow into something more coherent. Please treat what follows as preliminary thinking. Thinking aloud. An invitation […]
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