How to write journal article in 7 days

Alan Wong K.F. (a.k.a @alanwong)

A caveat

You can turn a messy bunch of academic stuff’ into an article quickly… but you must have:

Data, ideas or artifacts,Preliminary analysis or thoughts

Day: One

What sort of paper will you write?Rugg and Petre (2003) claim journal articles can be understood as

falling into genres:

– Data Driven– Methods Papers – Agenda Setting / Consciousness raising papers– Review papers– Theory papers

Writing in a range of genres shows your versatility as a scholar.

Where will I publish?

• Where do people I like to read seem to get published?

• Which of these journals seem to get more citations? (impact factors)

• Do the editorial guidelines seem sympathetic to the work I do?

• What are the open access policies of this journal?

Data Driven papers should contain :-

• What question is being addressed and why?• A description of the study and how it was conducted

• The results (data collected, analysis, findings)• Discussion (significance, limitations, claims to generalisation)

• Conclusion (implications, further work)

Data driven paper variations :

• Work-in-progress paper• Meta studies paper• Artifact paper And

don’t forget the pictures!

Method papers should contain:

What it isHow it worksWhat its good for (both utility and how its different)Any constraints Agenda setting paperConsciousness raising papers‘Look at me’ papers

Review papers

Are usually written every ten years or so - when someone (like a thesis writer!)

"bothers to read everything in a field" again summarises it and provides evaluative

judgment.

Theory papers should:

Refine or extend existing theory and / orcritique and debunk it and / orSet an agenda for new theory

Audience First?

They WONT want: Lots of information they already know a long winded literature review lots of process-focused information.

They WILL want: A tight, useful review of the literature Well supported conclusions A clear and well stated contribution to the field

Day 2:

An abstract for this workshopMany Doctoral students have to write journal articles for their PhD. While there is a lot of written advice on this topic, it is often hard to follow because it is not put in context with the daily activities of a professional writer ( Kamler and Thomson, 2006). This presentation collects the best parts of this advice and puts them in a temporal frame work, based on days of the week. This framework helps PhD students see writing a paper as a purposeful, step wise process, rather than a list of "dos and donts which are hard to operationalise.”

Write an abstract

• Start with a couple of sentences: • Aim (“This paper explores….”) • Main argument (“In this paper we argue that….”) • Method (“The study was conducted….”) • What’s new? (“this paper contributes to the debates on….”)

• Share your 4 sentences with the rest of your group

Pay attention to the verbs!

• Examines / Analyses• Reports on / Outlines• Argues / justifies / recommends• Compares / Contrasts• Discusses / Demonstrates• Shows / Refutes• highlights / Illustrates

Add a title… for now

Thesis Whisperer Jnr (aged 10 and 1/4) wants to do his PhD about “rocks” (with a side interest in gold). Dr Barry White advises there area range of theses Thesis Whisperer Jnr would write on this topic depending on how he phrased the title:

• As a question: “What do school children know about rocks with gold in them?”• As an exploration: “Rocks in ‘scrap heaps’ found in the Victorian gold districts”• As a statement: “Why most school kids are not interested in rocks (even if there’s gold in them”• As an investigation: “Rocks with gold in them: places they are most likely to be found”• As a hypothesis: “If rocks have gold in them, they are more likely to be dug up”• As a thesis: “rocks are cool, especially if there is gold in them”

Day: Three

“The spew draft”

What stops us ‘just writing’?

"They feared that what they wrote would be ‘wrong’ and unspecified people would

laugh at them” Howard Becker

Have you got useful notes?

• Good note taking helps you to avoid plagiarizing ‘by mistake’

• Ballenger (2004) claims good papers start with good note taking. As we write notes (with verbs!) we write parts of the paper, which saves time.

• Some note-keeping methods are • Researcher log book • Double entry note taking • Narrative note taking

Free writing

• Write as much as you can about “what’s new?” for 5 minutes.

• Just write.

• If you are stuck for a word use another/different / better word and keep writing

How to write 1000 words a day

• Write new stuff just after breakfast and before lunch. Cut and paste free writing into / around / through notes you already have.

• Use pomodoro technique to focus (25 min writing sprints with 10 min breaks between)

• Take the afternoon off

• Come back in the evening, outline, edit and rearrange your text

http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/how-to-write-1000-words-a-day-and-not-go-bat- shit-crazy/

Day: Four

“the scratch outline”

The ‘screen treatment’ method

Title: "Write an article in 7 days“

explain why you should write articles talk about the importance of doing research to find out the best place

to publish Talk about different types of articles in academia Talk about the importance of audience - explain how academic

audiences work Introduce the idea of a tiny text as a way of focusing for your audience Talk about the value of doing a spew draft

The Big List

Write everything you have as a list: – facts – issues – detail – Findings

Organise these in the best way to tell your story then delete those that are not essential.

Day: Five

“Cleaning up the mess”

Time to reassess

Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your work so far. Ask yourself:

• Do I have enough literature?• Am I making knowledge claims or just reporting?• Is this an argument - or a manifesto?• Is my data sufficient to the claims I am making?• Am I being sufficiently speculative?

.

Excessive ‘tinkering’ is a deferment strategy. If you find yourself endlessly polishing and not moving on, plan what to do the next day. Go straight to that section next time you open the document. At least you will be ‘polishing’

where it is needed.

Not working?

You might find yourself bouncing around between these steps for awhile. It usually is a

sign that you didn’t have enough stuff to make the kind of paper you are aiming for, or

you lack confidence in your ideas.

Day: SixToo wordy?Zinsser suggests you put brackets around words which could be cut or replaced:

“All writers (will have to) edit their prose, but (the) great writers edit (it) viciously, always trying to eliminate (words which are) ‘fuzz’ – (excess) words (which are not adding anything of value). Zinsser compares (the process of editing out) ‘fuzz’ to fighting weeds – you will always be slightly behind (because they creep in when you aren’t looking for them). One of my (pet hates) is (the word) ‘also’. If you search and replace all instances (of this word) you will find you can live without it and your writing will improve (instantly).(Likewise the word)’very’.”

Too many words?

• Using the strike through tool - can you live without it?

• Moving some text to footnotes• Starting a maybe later folder• Triaging your text paragraph by paragraph• Performing ‘bypass surgery’

http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/5-ways-to-kill-your-darlings/

Day: Seven

Kate Chanock’s 7 stages of resentment1. Outrage, noise, unlady like rejoinders2. Incomprehension3. More outrage4. One or two of the comments might make sense5. There’s a bit of truth in that one6. I’ll just have a go at doing what they said to do here7. Actually, the paper is a whole lot better for all those

revisions.

How will I ‘market’ this paper?

Your paper is one of thousands… how can you get itto be noticed? Some ideas:• Send it to authors you referenced• Tweet / blog about it• Lectures to professional gatherings• Write opinion pieces for the paper• Radio / TV• Make a film of it!

Some useful references on writing

• Becker, Howard (2007) Writing for social scientists: how to start and finish your thesis, book or article, Chicago University Press, Chicago.

• Ballenger, B (2011) The Curious Researcher, Longman• Becher, W (2009) Writing your journal article in 12 weeks, Sage.• Boise, R (2003) Professors as writers: a self help guide for productive writing, New Forum

Press• Chanok, K. (2008). Surviving the reviewing process and getting published, Journal of Academic Language & Learning. Vol. 2, No. 1.

• Kamler, B & Thomson, P (2006) Helping doctoral students to write, Routledge, New York.• Murray, R (2009), Writing for academic journals, Open University Press.• Rugg, G & Petre, M (2010) The unwritten rules of PhD Research, Open University Press, Maidenhead.• Silva, P (2007) How to write a lot, American psychology association

• White, B (2011), Mapping your thesis, ACER Press.• Zinsser, W (2003), On Writing, Pan McMillan.

Final thoughts•Writing a paper is what designers call a ‘wicked problem’.

•There are no right or wrong papers, just better and worse ones. The more you write, the better your papers will be.

•We hope this presentation helps you write more and more papers