Sharing knowledge – from ancient manuscripts to PhD publications

Tags

journal articles, publication, research writing

By Cally Guerin

At the end of June, I was lucky enough to attend the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) conference in Melbourne, Australia – the first face-to-face conference I’ve been to since 2019. This conference included a couple of papers directly related to doctoral education, but is focused on higher education more broadly. There were, however, many doctoral candidates reporting on their studies, many with a view to publishing their research.

Editing multi-authored academic publications: sharing experiences

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community building, editing, multi-authored volume, professional skills

Many doctoral writers publish their research as articles in special issues of journals, as chapters in book collections of essays, or as contributions to academic blogs. In this post we explore a little of the background work by editors that goes into producing those publications. Understanding the editor’s perspective can provide valuable insights into research writing. For editors, these projects can be satisfying, complex, frustrating, enriching and everything in between.

Co-authoring a PhD by publication: assigning percentages to who did what

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co-authoring, publishing from the thesis, thesis by publication

By Cally Guerin (with a lot of help from her friends Claire Aitchison & Susan Carter)

The thesis by publication (or article-based thesis) is becoming a common format in many disciplines and in many countries. While there are many advantages to writing up doctoral research (see on this blog, for example, Kalypso Filippou and Cally Guerin), this process does introduce some challenges of its own. One particularly difficult task is the expectation in many universities that any co-authored papers submitted for examination need to include a very clear indication of how much of the work was done by each author.

Ten tips for publishing out of the thesis

Tags

argument, audience, genre, publishing research

Ruth Albertyn is affiliated to Stellenbosch University and has been involved in critical reading, mentoring and facilitating workshops on article writing across disciplines for the past 12 years mainly at universities in South Africa but also in Africa and more recently in Belgium. In her experience, doctoral students seem to need additional support as they embark on the process of writing journal articles. Here, she offers ten tips for student authors and supervisors for facilitating the shift from thesis to the article genre.

Should doctoral writers do free work for academic journals?

Tags

journal article, Peer review, publication practices

By Cally Guerin

Doctoral writers are often keen to publish their work in highly ranked journals, thus entering the debate about whether or not academics should publish their work in journals run by the big publishing companies. This contention continues, especially with regard to COVID-related research. Those powerful academic publishers are accused of exploiting the voluntary work of researchers and scholars through the administrative and editorial load they undertake in organising and performing peer review, in making decisions about manuscripts, in corresponding with authors, and in finalising the published articles.

Even though I have many sympathies with the open access movement and applaud the efforts to make publicly funded research freely available to the public, I still do unpaid work for journals owned by big publishers. There’s value for me in reviewing submissions and in handling articles as an associate editor. I want to explain my reasons for doing this free work so that doctoral writers make informed decisions about what is right for them.  

Writing an article – how is it different from writing a thesis?

Tags

audience, authorial voice, literature review, thesis by publication, writing journal articles

by Cally Guerin

Some doctoral candidates come into their programs with extensive experience of writing for publication from their previous work or study. For most, though, it is a big jump from writing assignments for lecturers or a Masters dissertation to writing a formal article for publication in a high-ranking, peer-reviewed journal. There’s a lot of useful information out there about how to write for academic journals. In this post I want to focus on an aspect of this discussion that is rarely mentioned: how does article writing differ from thesis writing? Importantly, how can doctoral writers recognise and respond to the difference?