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 […]
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Selecting a Journal, an excerpt from Scholarly Publishing (A Short Guide)
The third volume in the Short Guides series will be published in January 2019. In Scholarly Publishing I focus on the big picture of publishing for scholarly audiences. After discussing the purpose of publishing for scholarly readers and what is meant by making a contribution to the advancement of knowledge, I look in detail at the main […]
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Risking doing the work you find meaningful
A longstanding imaginary-friend-on-the-Internet, who now runs a very successful online business, once said that something I’d said to him years ago had been pivotal to his success. I had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently, back when we were both still trying to figure out what and how to do our things, I […]
Read More »The role of journal editors in long review times
The scenario You (or someone like you) submitted your journal manuscript. Polite enquiry or a well designed journal website has provided information about how long they expect the review process to take. That time has passed. You’ve allowed some extra, possibly a couple of months of extra. What the H-E-double-hockey-sticks (as we Canadians like to […]
Read More »The frustrations of peer review: why is it taking so long?
The scenario You submitted your journal manuscript. Polite enquiry or a well designed journal website has provided you with information about how long they expect the review process to take. That time has passed. You’ve allowed some extra, possibly a couple of months extra. What the H-E-double-hockey-sticks (as we Canadians like to say) is going […]
Read More »How can reviewer comments improve your work?
You want to do good work. You want your work to be published so that other scholars can read it and engage with it. You’ve submitted an article manuscript to a peer reviewed journal or a book manuscript to a scholarly monograph publisher. You’ve received a decision and the reviewers comments. What now? Your emotional […]
Read More »The role of peer review
In situations where scarce resources are being allocated, peer review ensures that those decisions are made by people who share a set of values about what counts as knowledge, rigour, and so on. In the context of journal and monograph publishing, only so many things can be published in this journal issue or by this […]
Read More »From Conference Presentation to Journal Article
In my earlier post, I suggested that conference presentations make great first drafts of journal articles. The hard part is actually sitting down to turn that excellent first draft into something good enough to submit to a journal. Dealing with criticism. Maybe someone in your conference session asked some awkward questions. Or made some suggestions […]
Read More »Validation vs communication: another example
How is it that just as I write that post about validation and how stuck it can get you, I find another relevant link: Why Lists are a Flawed Approach to Assessing Excellence
Read More »PhD programs are not career training
A degree may be necessary but it is never sufficient
There is no job for which an educational qualification is enough to get you hired.
There is no job for which an educational qualification provides all the necessary skills and knowledge.
A degree, whatever it is, is always but one piece of a complex puzzle.
Read More »Who do you want to reach? An example
As I’ve argued in previous posts, publishing is all about reaching the people who can benefit from your ideas. For most academics, some of the people you want to reach are other academics. And the primary way you are going to reach them is through publishing in refereed journals. For too many of us, publishing […]
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