Writing text for research posters

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academic posters, visual communication

By Cally Guerin

Recently I sat down to make a poster about the DoctoralWritingSIG blog for a higher education conference. I’ve made only a few research posters over the years; this genre is more common in some science disciplines than it is in humanities and social sciences. The exercise encouraged me to think about how this kind of research writing differs from that of a journal article or a thesis or, for that matter, a 20-minute oral presentation for a conference.

Poster prose is a little like reducing an 80,000-word thesis to a Three-Minute Thesis presentation: turning an article-length idea into a poster requires the author to focus in on the key messages of the communication. Posters encourage writers to extract the skeleton of the narrative they have developed in more fulsome terms elsewhere, to distill the key ideas of the work into neat dot points or short statements. This is not a time to be chatty; a poster gives us only the central message.

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A life in review: Writing tasks that academics do that we don’t talk about

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Academic reviewing, Peer review

This guest post is from Sue Starfield, professor in the School of Education and the Director of the Learning Centre at UNSW Australia. Sue’s interests include tertiary academic literacies, doctoral writing, writing for publication and identity in academic writing. If you enjoy this, you may like these related posts.

It struck me recently that I spend large amounts of my everyday academic life carrying out reviews of various sorts. Besides the ongoing feedback I provide to my doctoral students on their writing, usually through ‘track changes’, I do many other kinds of reviews. Quite a number of these are quite high stakes such as examining a doctoral thesis or reviewing a book proposal for a publisher for example. Yet it is difficult, if not impossible, to gain access to exemplars of these kinds of texts.

Hyland and Diani (2009, p. 1) noted that “what academics mainly do is evaluate”. As Langveldt and Kyvik (2011, p. 199) point out in their examination of the multiple roles researchers play as evaluators in the course of their academic lives, these roles often have a gatekeeping function as researchers “provide or deny access to opportunities for fellow colleagues to do research, to publish research, and to get tenure or promotion”. But if these review/evaluation genres are not publicly available, how then do doctoral students as early career academics learn to write them?

Peer review: what’s the fuss?

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open access, Peer review, publishing research

By Cally Guerin

We’ve posted a few blogs on this site relating to doctoral candidates giving and receiving peer review in writing groups, and the feedback that supervisors provide on writing. Another kind of peer review that PhD students can receive is that generated by journal reviewers, which raises a different set of concerns from those we’ve discussed elsewhere.

PhD students are often encouraged to publish their research in academic journals, but it can be quite daunting to send work out to an unknown audience who will judge whether it is worthy or unworthy of publication. Everyone has stories about receiving harsh, unfair reviews when they’ve submitted their work to journals. However much we try to tell ourselves and our students that ‘it isn’t personal’, it does feel personal at the time of getting negative responses. As Kate Chanock amusingly points out, the process can feel rather like going through the stages of grief – but in this case, it’s the Seven Stages of Resentment. Of course she is being tongue in cheek, but there is more than a hint of truth in what she says here.

Despite the problems with peer review, it underpins most academic work as the usual process for assessing grant applications through to publishing the results of those grants. It seems to be the best system we can come up with. So what are the problems?

One of the challenges in the system of peer review is the long delays this process can incur. It can be difficult for journal editors to find suitable reviewers willing to take on the work. Not only do many academics these days find themselves confronting ever-increasing workloads in their official jobs, but in most disciplines they are asked to do this extra work for no pay and no recognition by their institution. Editors must rely on the ‘gift economy’ operating in academia, hoping that reviewers will subscribe to the belief that what goes around, comes around – by doing their share of reviewing, someone else will review their own article when they later submit to a journal. Further delays occur when well-meaning reviewers agree to do the work, and then find themselves overwhelmed by other tasks and responsibilities. From an editor’s point of view, very subtle nagging skills are needed to coax this voluntary work out of reviewers; from an author’s point of view, a great deal might be hanging on the outcome of the review.

And when those reviews do finally arrive, how helpful are they? In most areas, the standard practice is blind review – double (where the identities of both author and reviewer are anonymous) or single (where the identity of the reviewer is unknown to the author). In theory this anonymity is sensible, and protects the identities of reviewers so that they can be frank about their assessment of manuscripts without risking damage to their own careers. Unfortunately, this anonymity sometimes allows those reviewers to be vicious in ways that they might consider highly inappropriate if they were to speak openly to the authors.

Whether the reviews turn out to be positive or negative, they are really just two or three people’s points of view – a fourth reviewer may want something else again. It’s perfectly possible to get contradictory reports from different reviewers, suggesting that there is always an element of chance in what ends up getting published. Even with the best intentions of attempting to be objective and constructive, reviewers can submit entirely different reviews of the same piece of research – they may have particular interests, specialised knowledge, or be focused on different aspects of the writing.

There are moves afoot to try to solve at least some of the weaknesses of peer review. One response has been to implement processes of ‘open review’, that is, where the identity of the reviewer is made public and reviews themselves published. While this might encourage more courteous behaviour on the part of the reviewer, the potential risks associated with a junior researcher criticising someone with a big reputation in their field remains. In some disciplines, everyone has a pretty good idea of what projects are being undertaken by other research groups and where the funding went, so that author identity is a matter of informed guesswork if not overtly known; in these situations, open review dispenses with the pretence of author anonymity.

Post-publication review is another model that might be useful. This allows publication of research and then invites anyone who is interested in the topic to review the work. Such an approach fits well with contemporary practices of commenting on social media. While this system might draw some ill-considered reviews and may or may not be anonymous, on the whole it would seem to be a good way of encouraging debate and ongoing conversations in the field.

In an era when research output is endlessly measured and quantified, the work of reviewing that output could perhaps also be measured in order to provide reviewers with more reward for their effort. Publons is one organisation that is trying to make it possible for reviewers to get some credit for the work they put into reviewing; another is the ‘R-index’ suggested by Gero and Cantor. These are both ways of recognising the work of reviewing as having a measurable ‘impact’ and contribution to the development of the discipline and the dissemination of knowledge.

All these concerns are becoming ever more pressing as the move towards open access gains momentum. As the whole landscape of academic publishing is changing, these are important questions for all researchers to consider, and pose major challenges for doctoral candidates, their supervisors and learning advisors supporting them. What’s your experience of peer review? Do you have any solutions to the current problems, or ideas about how the system might be improved? (Which reminds me, I’d better get back to finishing the review that is waiting on my desk…!)

Sexism, peer review and critical thinking

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Critical thinking, Peer review, sexism

by Cally Guerin

You may have been following the furore surrounding the peer review of an article submitted by two postdoctoral scientists, Fiona Ingleby and Megan Head. In case you haven’t read about it, they had undertaken a survey regarding gender differences in transitions from PhD to postdoc. The review they received from a PLOS ONE journal has since become the subject of much astonished discussion—for example, see Retractionwatch, ScienceInsider and The Conversation, as well as the ongoing talk in Ingleby’s Twitter feed.

In a nutshell, the reviewer suggested that the two female authors should “find one or two male biologists to work with (or at least obtain internal peer review from, but better yet as active co-authors)” in order to avoid their apparently “ideologically biased assumptions” and that higher publication rates by male doctoral students might be linked to the idea that “male doctoral students can probably run a mile a bit faster than female doctoral students”. Presumably, the reviewer believed that the comments were offered as scholarly critique; most others felt they were the product of ill-informed gender bias.

I’d come across this discussion just as I was preparing to talk to some doctoral students about critical thinking. It’s a topic that some students feel has been done to death, a regular feature in any kind of university preparation program. Yet at the same time, it’s a concept that many students still struggle to understand, let alone perform in their own work. It seems to me that critical thinking is exactly the skill or competence expected when engaging in peer review, just as much as it is expected to be demonstrated when writing a doctoral thesis.

It’s fine to tell doctoral students that they need to “think critically” and to offer their own opinions on the scholarship in their field, to assess the value of what they read, and to evaluate the arguments put forward by other researchers. But doing so is not always easy. Despite the issues raised by the story mentioned above, the academic journal articles students read are usually of a very high standard, having been through an appropriately rigorous review process. The point of that process is to assess the evidence and how it was generated, and to weigh up the claims put forward on the basis of that evidence on behalf of other readers. To some extent, then, the critical thinking of judgement and assessment has already been done for the reader.

The most useful approach to critical thinking that I’ve come across is that by Robyn Barnacle (2006). She provides a list of questions of the kind that we expect to see in advice about how to develop critical thinking (drawn from the classic handbook by Keeley & Bruce 1994/2007). But, much more interestingly in my opinion, Barnacle then goes on to broaden the concept to include the idea of critical thinking as generative, in that it creates the conditions for proposing new theories or ideas.

And perhaps most helpful of all, she makes the point that it is very difficult to be a critical thinker when one is a novice in the field. It is much harder to identify what has been omitted from a discussion if you haven’t yet read very much in the field; it is often difficult to imagine alternative points of view if you’ve only recently started to think about an idea. For doctoral students grappling with how to demonstrate their own critical thinking, this can be encouraging and comforting in equal measure—it is reasonable to assume that they will get better at critical thinking the more they learn about their topic.

Barnacle also reminds us that becoming a critical thinker is a transformative process and changes who we are and the way we approach the world. Critical thinking should create scholarly communities where peer reviewers will not write the kind of review received by Ingleby and Head; in parallel, critical thinking should also provide researchers with the skills to respond productively when they receive reviews where “critical thinking” appears to be based on misinformation.

What have you found useful in developing critical thinking skills in doctoral candidates? What has been key in extending your own understanding of what critical thinking might mean?

References

R. Barnacle (2006) On being a critical researcher. In C. Denholm & T. Evans (eds), Doctorates Downunder: Keys to Successful Doctoral Study in Australia and New Zealand. Camberwell, Vic: ACER Press.

M.N. Browne & S.M. Keeley (1994/2007) Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking. 8^th Edn. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Publishing while completing your PhD

Tags

doctoral publishing, Publishing from your thesis

Gina Wisker, (Head of the Centre for Learning and Teaching at the University of Brighton in the UK) has been a guest author for us before – here she writes on the challenges and delights of publishing during doctoral candidature. If you’d like to know more –check out her new book Getting Published: writing for academic publication http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/getting-published-gina-wisker/?k=9780230392106&loc=uk

Like a seven-year-old whose front teeth have yet to grow back, your PhD in process is both delightful and lovable, awkward and unfinished. You’ll nurture it as it grows. Publishing the right bit of it while you are writing the whole might look like procrastination (why aren’t you getting on with this huge task?) but could really help you focus on defining your contribution to knowledge, and refining your discipline language. As you proceed through the later stages of your PhD and into the examination, there is nothing so psychologically supportive as knowing you have been accepted as a scholar in your discipline community by having your work peer reviewed and published:

‘doctoral candidates who publish on early phases of their work – it moves them ahead quite substantially. Their identity shifts to one of ‘now I am a researcher’. There is no doubt in my mind that publication is central to being an academic.’ (Wisker, 2013)

You have already arrived, you have selected part(s) of your work to share, honed it, structured it, situated it in the literature, defended the methodology and methods, developed a lucid argument backed up by the data, and established your contribution to knowledge. That is what good publications do, and it is also what good PhDs do. However, deciding when and what to publish is a different matter.

When publishing through the course of the PhD

You need to pick the right part of your work and neither publish too much, too soon, too raw, nor hang on to all of it without sharing. Your raw chapters will not make publications – no journal will welcome your raw data, nor your introduction. Some might find space for a well turned out literature review if they publish these, but most will want a standalone piece that perfectly presents a contribution to knowledge in the field, using discipline language, and the language, format and focus of the journal. A journal article is less literature and methodology top heavy than a thesis. I suggest processing several journal articles from the journals to which you would like to submit, to see their interest, the way that articles are written for this journal, and the formats. Author guidelines are usually available on the publisher’s website for each journal, as are examples of published pieces.

Publishing from your PhD while you are completing it is, it seems, dependent on discipline, supervisor advice, and where you are doing the PhD itself (Dinham, and Scott, 2001; Hartley, and Betts, 2009). There are different expectations and different rules. In Scandinavian countries, and in the sciences broadly, internationally, you might well be expected to publish from your PhD early on. The Scandinavian PhD often involves, three to five (sometimes nearly published) publications and a theorised ‘wrap’, situating the whole of the work in the literature and the methodology. In other disciplines and contexts (for example, UK literature PhDs), you may still be advised by your supervisor not to publish until you have passed. In some other instances (where a patent is involved, the whole team in a funded project intend to publish together at the end of the project, or the PhD itself is considered a publication), you must not publish until you have gained the PhD and a few years have passed.

A study in Hong Kong found that students resented the time spent on publishing, taken away from their research (Kwan, 2010, 2011) and some supervisors advise against publication as detracting from your focus. So it is wise to select a part which lets your best work be seen in a good light, not something which takes you down a side road. If your best work is truly world class, you might want to wait until you have the PhD before you share it. Be proud of what you do submit – your work will improve from the publishing process – but don’t send in half written, half-baked work and expect the editor to finish it off for you.

When you have the reviewers’ comments back, you will need to be quite thick skinned to separate the advice from what seems like criticism. Review your work, make a plan to revise, let the reviewers know what you have revised and where, and if you have chosen not to change something (because of a good reason) let them know why. This is often done best in a grid and in an accompanying short letter.

In summary:

If you do publish from your PhD while it is in process, make sure you:

Check university regulations about publishing from the PhD in process.

Choose the right, exciting, readable piece of your PhD to publish first.

Pick a part of it that can stand alone. Make a case, clearly grown from your shortened, targeted versions of literature review, methodology and methods, data and discussion and so on and let your new knowledge, your contribution grow from these.

Find the right journal which accepts early career researchers as well as leading figures. Don’t necessarily pitch to the top journal first. Only write for and send to one journal at a time.

Research journal article rules for your chosen journal: the length, format, size and amount of data, charts, quotations and so on.

Reshape your work for the journal readership.

Produce a clear abstract and key words (so it is picked up on search engines), and a conclusion emphasising factual and conceptual conclusions, how you have added to meaning, knowledge and understanding.

Be ready to deal with reviewer comments, learn from them and re write accordingly – this is peer review.

Finally

Feel very pleased and congratulate yourself, and share the success, once the article is published (online, and in hard copy – usually several months apart). You are in print!

 

Bibliography

Dinham and Scott (2001) ‘The experience of disseminating the results of doctoral research’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 25(1), 45–55.

Hartley and Betts (2001) ‘Publishing before the Thesis: 58 Postgraduate Views’, Higher Education Review, 41(3), 29–44

Becky S. C. Kwan (2011) Facilitating novice researchers in project publishing during the doctoral years and beyond: a Hong Kong-based study. Studies in Higher Education: 1–19, iFirst Article.

Gina Wisker, (2013b) ‘Articulate – Writing, Editing and Publishing Our Work in Learning, Teaching and Educational Development’, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 50(4).

Gina Wisker (in press) Getting Published, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Podcasts

Gina’s podcast on publishing from your PhD at:

http://oasis-for-learning.net/file/view/264/publishing-from-your-phd

Gina’s podcast on publishing journal articles at:

http://oasis-for-learning.net/file/view/262/publishing-journal-articles

You can also listen to two podcasts by Gina via the following links:

http://student.brighton.ac.uk/videos/newvideos.php?ID=1172

http://student.brighton.ac.uk/videos/newvideos.php?ID=1173

Doctoral theses online: when copyright permission is not required

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Copyright and doctoral writing

By Melanie Johnson and Susan Carter

Our previous post looked at when copyright consent is required once a thesis is posted into a digital portal, and how to obtain permissions. This post explains the situations when copyright permission is not needed.

The law will vary from country to country. For example, in the United States all works created by the Government are free from copyright, whereas in New Zealand, government work is protected by Crown Copyright for 100 years from the date of publication.

Most universities have someone whose responsibility includes advising on copyright, so if doctoral candidates have a specific query, they should check with that person to find out what their national law requires.

In broad terms, in the following circumstances permission is not needed.

Copyright has expired

Works in which copyright has expired may be copied in full and dealt with freely. In New Zealand, copyright in literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works expires 50 years from the end of the year in which the author died; in Australia, the US and Europe and many other countries, copyright expires 70 years following the end of the year in which the author died.

In New Zealand, copyright in sound recordings, films and communication works expires 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work is made or communicated or made available to the public. If the identity of the author is not able to be ascertained by reasonable inquiry, copyright expires 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work is first made available to the public. Overseas, the term of copyright for these works varies with each jurisdiction and national law must be checked.

A less obvious protection exists for the typographical arrangement of a work. This means that a work in which the author has been dead for hundreds of years can be protected by copyright if the publisher brings out a new edition, whereupon the typographical arrangement is protected for a further 25 years.

Quoting from a work in which only the typographical arrangement is protected by copyright and not copying the format or layout means that you can use that work in that way without permission.

Creative Commons licences

Works on the Internet may be made available under a licence such as a Creative Commons (CC) licence which would allow you to include it in your thesis and post it on-line without having to request permission.

Creative Commons licences allow creators (licensors) to retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work. All work licensed under a CC licence must be properly attributed to the licensor.

Creative Commons offers 6 main licence types. Providing that the licence permits the original work to be copied and distributed online, it may be included in a thesis. The following link is to a Quick Reference Guide to Finding Creative Commons Material for Teachers and Students.

Although NZ Government works are protected by copyright the government has issued a directive to the effect that works subject to Crown Copyright should be made available under a creative commons licence.

If you are wanting to use work, including data sets, which are protected by NZ Crown copyright, then this link provides useful information on using NZ government works and how to obtain permission: http://ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources/open-government/new-zealand-government-open-access-and-licensing-nzgoal-framework/quick-guide-users/ Other countries are likely to also have government guidance, and someone at your own institution may help you find where.

Copying which is “fair”

There are certain exceptions in each country’s copyright laws which allow copies to be made for purposes which are thought to benefit society and for which the copyright owner would be unlikely to grant permission. This is generally classed as “fair” and may fall under “fair use” if you are in the US or “fair dealing” if you are in New Zealand, Australia or the UK. In New Zealand the “fair dealing for criticism and review” allows copying for criticism or review purposes. Any use of works under this provision requires that the original author is acknowledged with the usual reference needed for thesis citations.

No copyright

In some jurisdictions, no copyright attaches to certain works in the public domain. Under the New Zealand Copyright Act no copyright attaches to the following works which may be freely copied:

• Bills and Acts of Parliament
• Regulations and Bylaws
• Reports of Select Committees
• New Zealand Parliamentary Debates
• Judgments of any New Zealand court or tribunal. Note: Head notes are protected by copyright and may not be copied without permission
• Reports of New Zealand Royal Commissions, Commissions of Inquiry, Ministerial Inquiries or Statutory Inquiries

In the US, any work created by a federal (but not state or local) government employee is in the public domain, provided that the work was created in that person’s official capacity. However, state and local laws and court decisions are in the public domain. See more at: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/welcome/#us_government_works.

In general, those working with historical documents will need to ascertain early on whether these works are likely to be protected by copyright and whether or not permission is required.

Copying permitted

A final group of works are protected by copyright, but can be freely copied, including for commercial purposes. In New Zealand this includes:

• abstracts of scientific or technical articles accompanying an article in a periodical indicating the contents of the article;
• buildings and sculptures permanently on public display may be drawn, photographed or filmed – this does not extend to copying someone else’s graphic image, photograph or film of a sculpture or building on public display. As explained in the previous post [include link],s a separate copyright exists for the graphic image, the photograph or film itself, which belongs to the artist, photographer or filmmaker;
• text or images relating to a medicine imported by the Crown and published overseas by the copyright owner.

Commissioning

Commissioned works include photographs, computer programmes, paintings, drawings, diagrams, maps, charts, plans, engravings, models, sculptures, films or sound recordings. Ownership of a commissioned work varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In Australia, if someone is paid to create a work for private or domestic purposes, the person paying for it owns the copyright

The general principle, as well as the exceptions, can be modified by agreement. It is good practice to have written agreements with all the contributors involved in your publication project to ensure copyright ownership is clearly determined early in the process.

See more at: http://www.artslaw.com.au/info-sheets/info-sheet/copyright/#sthash.Bx1EmBJa.dpuf

Under current New Zealand law, the commissioner retains copyright whether or not it is for private or domestic purposes. However, the commissioner can contract out of the default position. So, unless there is an agreement to the contrary, the owner of the commissioned work also owns the copyright, which means they can use the work as they please. In the rare case when doctoral students commission someone to create a work, candidates must check any written agreement they are asked to sign to ensure that they retain copyright or have a licence to use the work for future purposes.

Note that the commissioning rule does not apply to literary works or musical works, so if a doctoral candidate commissions music or a text for inclusion in a work that they also want to include in their thesis, they should either ensure that copyright is assigned to them in writing or that the work is licensed to enable the thesis to be deposited in the repository.

If the creator is unpaid (in effect has given their work), then the work will have to be assigned to the commissioner by way of a deed for them to own copyright. The deed must be signed and the signature witnessed. However, only a nominal sum is generally sufficient to be regarded as payment.

In summary, where a work is commissioned and paid for and that work will form part of a submitted thesis, the candidate who has commissioned that work by default owns the copyright in that work—unless it is a musical work or a literary work. If ownership of the work is unable to be obtained, then a license or permission from the copyright owner to use that work is sufficient.

And to emphasise the take home message: all doctoral candidates should talk about any copyright issues early on as they make decisions about the doctoral route. Then, if copyright is required, they should get consents as early as possible so that submission of the thesis is able to go ahead smoothly.

Melanie Johnson, the copyright advisor at the University of Auckland, has explained copyright as it affects those posting doctoral theses on a digital portal in this post and the previous one. Make sure that you read both!