Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · How grading ruined peer review “Academics should not be terrified of one another’s judgments, just as students should not be afraid of their teachers. … we need to imagine things as they might be otherwise; in this case, a world where evaluation of others isn’t part of the daily […]
Read More »Scholarly Publishing: a category in transition
Communicating your research knowledge to scholarly audiences. Books, journals, edited collections, etc. Selecting a journal or publisher. How publishing is used in evaluation processes.
Posts in this category will be edited and/or recategorized beginning in July 2015 as we move to a library of useful information.
How to find a book structure that works
A note from Jo: I saw a great Twitter thread by Allison Van Deventer that is related to a book she and Katelyn Knox have coming out in November: The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook. She agreed to write a blog post (with her co-author Katelyn E. Knox) based on that Twitter thread for November. Jo VanEvery, Academic […]
Read More »Why are you writing this book?
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Why are you writing this book? A book is a big project. Depending where you mark the beginning, book writing can take years. Not only is it hard to protect the time, given all your other commitments, but it can be hard to sustain momentum. Some of that is […]
Read More »Who are you writing for?
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide | Who are you writing for? One thing that’s difficult about writing a book is its scope. There is a lot of material to organize. It’s too big to hold in your head. It’s hard to maintain your motivation when you won’t see a finished product for a long time. […]
Read More »You don’t have to find a “gap” in the literature
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · You don’t need to find a “gap” in the literature Your research, and the publications based on that research, need to make an original contribution to knowledge. Over the past 20 years, I’ve seen a lot of ways academics, at every career stage, get in a bit of a […]
Read More »What to do about a stalled book project
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · What to do about a stalled book project Are you *not* writing a book? Maybe it’s your “thesis book”. Maybe it’s something else. You might have a contract for it. You might not have started it, but think you should have by now. You might have a lot of […]
Read More »Making Decisions: peer review
This post was originally written in February 2021 as a follow up to Planning Your Winter Semester and was shared in the Academic Writing Studio. It has been edited and divided into a series of shorter posts for ease of reading. The general principles—habits, routines, and default responses—are explained in the first post in the […]
Read More »Thoughts on academic freedom, scholarly publishing, and mundane practices
This post is something I initially wrote for my newsletter. I had come across something that I wanted to write about even though I didn’t have a neat conclusion or lesson. I value freedom and autonomy. I know freedom and autonomy are important factors for many people who choose an academic career. I also value […]
Read More »Revision following peer review is a normal part of the scholarly writing process
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Revision following peer review is a normal part of the scholarly writing process Upon the publication of my 4th Short Guide: Peer Review, I had a lively discussion with Katherine Firth to mark the occasion. One of the things that came up was the frustration that comes from the […]
Read More »Peer review supports academic writing!
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Peer review supports academic writing This post is an excerpt from the 4th book in my Short Guides series, Peer Review (A Short Guide), was published on 15 November 2019. I also offer a class called Dealing With Reviewer Comments which is based on the principles elaborated in this book. […]
Read More »Scholarly writing as a collective project to advance knowledge
It saddens and frustrates me that so many scholars lose sight of how meaningful their academic work is (or was) for them in the face of external pressures. Too often the collective process of advancing knowledge has been obscured by competitive pressures that lead to bullying and a distraction from the work itself to focus […]
Read More »What does citation mean? Values and practices in scholarly work
Helen Kara has written a though provoking piece about citation and scholarly friends: To Cite or Not to Cite your Friends. One of her scholarly interests is ethics, so it’s not surprising that she would think about this in relation to the ethics of citation. Is citing your friends cronyism? Is it “gaming the system”? What […]
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