Writing for publication: a rough guide

1
Writing for publicationa rough guide

• University of Brighton
• 10 December 2007
• Graham Badley
• Emeritus Professor of Educational Development
• Anglia Ruskin University, UK

2
Writing for publication - why?

• affirmation, fame, vanity?
• because one has to in this game
• amusing and pleasing oneself
• searching for meaning and understanding
• subverting the establishment
• showing the bastards

3
Writing for publication - how?

• target the market
• read the relevant, peer-reviewed, journals
• follow their notes for contributors
• do as the editors ask
• edit and redraft based on what reviewers say
• cut your wonderful words

4
Writing for publicationfinding the time

• learn to say no
• delegate if you can
• prioritise main purposes and goals
• plan ahead
• keep a research diary or notebook or filofax

5
Writing for publication - read

• to get ideas
• to improve your writing style
• to understand the field
• to learn about research methods
• to legitimate your arguments
• to develop a critical stance
• to enliven what you have to say

6
Writing for publication -join or form

• a reading group - to examine key texts, share
  reading, compare notes, develop skills of
  critique and review
• a writing group - to create peer support, allay
  anxiety, develop writing skills, demystify the
  process, give and receive critical feedback

7
Writing for publicationwhat is needed

• a sense of appropriateness and scope - of
  questions and topics
• a critical sense of context
• a sense of alignment to others in the field
• a sense of audience - appealing to readers
• a sense of style or genre - for the journal in
  question

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Writing for publicationfirst write and then edit

• apply ass to chair
• get it written, dont get it right
• write when you can - words, sentences,
  paragraphs, pages, chapters
• write as if to your (critical) friends
• read your stuff aloud
• edit, cut, re-write, edit, cut, re-write...

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Writing for publicationwhat makes a good
article?

• clear, coherent arguments
• lucidity, originality and relevance
• well written and well presented
• well structured
• significant contribution to the field
• appropriate methodology
• critical and rigorous
• opens up new questions

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Writing for publicationreasons for rejection

• does not address professional readers
• no point or edification in it
• lacks - analysis, argument, clarity, coherence,
  context, critique, data, evidence, literature,
  methodology, originality, rigour, significance,
  theory
• gets lost in its own words
• draws unwarranted conclusions

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Writing for publicationeven conclusions

• should be mini-arguments with the case made for
  them, and the link between evidence and
  conclusions made quite clear what is it that you
  can - and cannot - evidence?
• (Murray 2005 193)

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Acceptable doctorates

• can be worthy and dull, unexceptional,
  micro-focused, ponderous, over-referenced,
  hyper-cautious, overly methodological, and so on,
  without being failed
• none of these features is, however, a
  recommendation for publication
• (see Dunleavy, 2003 245)

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And finally...

• Writing is something that you can never do as
  well as it can be done. It is a perpetual
  challenge and it is more difficult than anything
  else that I have ever done - so I do
  it (Ernest Hemingway)
• In the world of scholarship we are what we write
  (Kennedy, 1997)