Developing a Publishing Culture: Strategies for getting your own and your students’ papers published
Margaret Cargill Researcher Education and Development Adelaide Graduate Centre University of Adelaide, Australia
Outline
• Introduction to the approach and this workshop
• Your biggest issues?
• Inducting novices into an international research community
• Papers for international submission: structure and standards
• Starting with Results: 4 key questions
• Introductions: the 5 stages
• Discussions: negotiating your knowledge claims
• Abstracts and titles
• Submission and beyond
• Local action: towards a strategic approach (throughout)
Introduction to the approach and this workshop
• CIPSE – Collaborative Interdisciplinary Publication Skills Education
• Originated as collaborative workshops delivered by me and a team of Adelaide scientists for CAS 2001-6
• In each, 30 scientists with completed data in related discipline areas wrote their papers over 5 full days
• Positive results, workshop evaluation published
• Scale and feasibility for wider implementation, e.g. NJU?
• This session type one option – your views requested
• My concern – not to lose the added value provided by a team of scientists plus language expert – best help for you
NJU student lecture series
• 23-27 October, 2pm daily, repeated 6:30pm
• Entitled “Writing a Scientific Research Article in English for International Submission: A 10-hr workshop series for graduate students”
• 210 at Lecture 1, 172 at Lecture 5
• 83 completed questionnaires at both lectures
• Preliminary data analysis on following slides
Confidence to write English article for int’l submission (n=83)
Confidence to deal with publishing process (n=83)
Your biggest issues?
• How serious are these issues in stopping you from achieving your publishing goals, on a scale of 1-5 where 1=not serious and 5= very serious
• Lack of time
• Your English competence
• Your students’ English competence
• Bias of international referees against Chinese papers
• Unreasonable pressure to publish
• Lack of an efficient method to tackle paper-writing
• Too much teaching
• Lack of access to the latest literature in your field
• Other (please give details)
Inducting novices into an international research community 1
• ‘Audience’ is crucial concept for successful paper writing – peer-review
• ‘Legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave & Wenger)
• Joining a conversation = listening before you speak (=reading critically before you write)
• Strategies:
• Journal clubs
• Shared database of relevant articles (Endnote file?)
• Shared process for keeping up-to-date with journals
• Conference attendance, internal seminars in English
Journal clubs in English
• Organised by an academic staff member
• All attendees read the same journal article, chosen by the organiser, before the session
• One attendee designated to lead the discussion
• Possible focuses:
• Summarise content?
• Identify useful language to re-use?
•
Inducting novices into an international research community 2
• Use the proposal process effectively to judge international location of the planned research
• Think about target journals early in the research process
• A range, depending on how important the results turn out to be!
• Keep abreast of the state of the field in these journals as the research progresses
• Work with the English professionals on campus to provide language development opportunities
Papers for international
submission: structure and
