Doctoral writing and career building

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academic publishing, research writing

By Susan Carter

I attended a talk where two professors gave advice to academics on how to develop their careers. Both began with stories of serendipity when outer influences changed their direction, and both spoke of their own naivety in some early choice making. Much of their helpful advice relates to viewing writing as a significant factor in developing an academic identity that is likely to affect career progression—or non-progression. Here I am summarising the points that were made and reflecting on them in relation to doctoral students and their strategy with writing and publication.

Doctoral students and those supporting them don’t always see writing as a big issue—in a recent questionnaire survey of doctoral supervisors [n226] I conducted, several from STEM disciplines kept insisting that my questions about writing were off track. They felt supervision was about teaching doctoral students how to do the research. The writing was not the issue. Their doctoral students ‘wrote up’ after the research as a sort of mopping up process.

But doctoral writing forms the basis for any academic career, and for any other career as a researcher than entails writing reports. In amongst the emotion of developing as a research writer, it is worthwhile using writing as the driving force to steer the career trajectory.

Both the professors at the talk said that good advice about career decisions was really important to novices. It should be sought from the right people. Some academics are genuinely keen to help and others less so—find those who want to mentor. Some know how things work and others don’t pay much attention to that—ask people who know. Some welcome new comers into their networks and knowledge and others don’t. Students should actively look for people whose advice will be really useful.

Novices are often reluctant to reveal ignorance of what they need to know. They need to ask. The process of building research careers inevitably requires continuously increasing understanding of how everything works. Snippets of advice included:

• never feel too humble to put yourself forward;
• you will need to develop strongly in teaching and service, but put your research and its writing first; and
• focus on writing and publication, and be strategic.

Supervisors should encourage research students to publish. It is sensible for them to collaborate to do so—this gives students the chance to leverage off their supervisors’ higher profile. Probably, despite other pressures, it is worthwhile to take the time to write up conference papers and publish them.

One of these prolific and influential professors had a mandate with research writing: ‘keep it personal; keep it passionate.’ Admittedly the context was within the Education Faculty, yet for many, especially in Social Sciences and Arts/Humanities, that advice works well. A sense of personal ownership of writing and a passion for the research can feed energy into the labour of writing.

Maximising publication value from a research project

These professors recommended developing a sense of continuity, so that research feeds into publication, and publication feeds further publication. If a research project can produce two or three articles instead of just one, then several well-focused articles will be stronger than one overly full and possibly less clear article. When a tangled article draft needs revision, one untangling solution is to split it into two articles.

For example, an erstwhile colleague of mine whose doctoral thesis looked at the globalisation of sumo wrestling drew three conference papers from his chapter on women and sumo: at sports, women’s studies and cultural studies conferences. That one chapter had the potential for three peer reviewed articles. I make the case that the principle of seeking different audiences and angling your findings towards quite different discussions and arguments is helpful. Although self-plagiarism is an anathema, many well-respected academics publish more than one article from the same research project, and, unsurprisingly, the description of methods and framing within literature are pretty much the same. Self-plagiarism isn’t always clear cut. In the overly audited environment of the 21st century, it makes sense to make as much use of your work as you can.

As well as making use of diverse discourses to enable shrewd publication outputs, ensure that over a few years you build a solid “research platform,” an area of expertise in which you can aim for high impact as a recognised expert.

Funding can make it challenging to delineate your research platform—you need to ensure that within funded projects there is a place for you to work in your niche area so that your research portfolio retains cohesion. Look across projects for common themes, so that you can write a more impressive academic biography. While funding is a two-edged sword, aim for prestigious funding and plan ahead to secure it.

My hunch is that academics who think writing is not important maybe haven’t recognised the skills that they have as writers, and need to do so in order to mentor doctoral students into being strong. And I was alerted again to the fact that writing and publication shape most research careers—it’s worth strategising.

 

 

 

 

 

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Getting published (in English)—it’s not just about language

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academic publishing, Getting publishing support, Publishing in English

Pressure—or the requirement—to publish during doctoral candidature is becoming increasingly common in many global contexts, to the extent that many doctoral candidates are aiming to put their work in the public domain in one form or another before finishing their degrees (Paré, 2010). Most high-ranking scholarly journals are English language publications, which poses very real challenges for those candidates and their supervisors who may not have English as a ‘first’ language.

This week’s blog by Mary Jane Curry (co-author with Theresa Lillis of A scholar’s guide to getting published in English: Critical choices and practical strategies and Academic Writing in a global context: the politics and practices of publishing in English) explores some of these issues.

By Mary Jane Curry

Getting published in academic journals isn’t easy—for anyone—but scholars who use English as an additional language may have a harder time with finding publishing success than “native” English speakers do. Contrary to common belief, though, these difficulties may have less to do with multilingual scholars’ language abilities and more to do with their ability to find resources and connect with people who can facilitate publishing success.

Which resources support publishing success?

As an academic working in the U.S. and earlier in the U.K., I can count on having the crucial material resources that support academic writing: First, a well-stocked university library that will get the books and journal articles I need, whether by purchasing them or through interlibrary loan (at no cost to me). Second, a department that provides administrative and research assistance (including graduate student assistants and a transcriptionist) and considerably supports my conference travel and other research expenses, including through internal research grants. The existence of funding agencies in both the U.K. and the U.S. has held out at least the hope of getting research grants, although they are highly competitive (and in the U.S., less interested in research on the geopolitics of publishing). Last but not least, having time to do research and write about it is essential—but challenging for scholars who work in institutions with heavy administrative and teaching loads.

From research Theresa Lillis and I have done on the publishing experiences of scholars in other parts of the world (Lillis & Curry, 2010), we know that these material resources are not available everywhere. But these resources matter, because success in publishing depends foremost on knowing the ‘conversations’ of your discipline and how your work can speak to these crucial debates. Scholars find out about these conversations through reading journals and books, going to conferences to hear what people are talking about, and by collaborating with others. So developing strategies to access this range of resources can be crucial to getting your work published (Curry & Lillis, 2013).

Which people can support publishing success?

The image of the solitary writer working alone in the attic is well out of date when it comes to writing for academic publication. Our research shows that beside colleagues, different types of people may support scholars in getting published: supervisors/advisors, peers/colleagues, and people we call ‘literacy brokers’ (Lillis & Curry, 2006). Academic literacy brokers are scholars who might work in your department, institution, or local area, or in another city or country. They know your discipline and they can tell you about upcoming conferences, help you write or revise a paper, and identify suitable target journals for a paper you want to publish. Language brokers are people who can help with producing the text—whether or not they know about your specific discipline, they typically focus on language use in paragraph- and sentence-level writing. But as helpful as language brokers might seem, our research shows that academic literacy brokers are the best bet for supporting publishing—their knowledge of the discipline trumps language brokers’ specialist knowledge of academic English.

How can you get access to these people and resources?

International collaboration and co-authoring are increasing every year. Scholars make connections with collaborators—one type of academic literacy brokers—by joining or creating academic research networks (Curry & Lillis, 2010): connecting with people in your institution; going to local, regional, national and international conferences; contacting scholars in your discipline through their webpages/emails/Facebook page/Twitter account. Joining organizations and groups specifically for postgraduates, which may seem counterintuitive, can also be a way to meet others in your discipline, who may remain peers as your career develops. In some areas of the world, formal networks have also been set up to support research collaboration, but the jury is out on whether these networks are more productive than informal networks. But they are worth knowing about. Network participation has helped scholars in our research to learn about and receive funding for research and conference travel, to access journals they can’t get in their contexts, and to co-author with colleagues across borders.

So is it harder for multilingual scholars to get published in English?

Getting published is not easy and current global politics of publishing increasingly push multilingual scholars to write in English—whether or not they are interested in doing so. So far, I haven’t said much about English per se. Clearly, to write for publication in English, it’s helpful to have some proficiency in English. While many people think translation is the answer, it’s often not an option, not only because it’s expensive but also because finding a translator who has the kind of insider knowledge that an academic literacy broker has is challenging. In fact, what we know, from our research and other researchers’ work, is that publishing success depends on knowing the ‘rules of the game’, having access to a range of resources, working in collaboration rather alone, and not giving up when faced with rejection or confusing and conflicting reports from journal referees (Belcher, 2007). While scholars working outside of well-resourced locations are often disadvantaged, activating networks may be a way to connect to both the social and material resources needed for publishing success.

Mary Jane Curry is associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Curriculum at the Warner Graduate School of Education, University of Rochester, U.S., where she is also director of the Writing Support Services.

References

Belcher, D. (2007). Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16, 1-22.

Curry, M.J. & Lillis, T. (2010). Academic research networks: Accessing resources for English-medium publishing. English for Specific Purposes, 29(4), 281-295. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088949061000030X

Curry, M.J. & Lillis, T. (2013). A scholar’s guide to getting published in English: Critical choices and practical strategies. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?K=9781783090594

Lillis, T. & Curry, M.J. (2006). Professional academic writing by multilingual scholars: Interactions with literacy brokers in the production of English-medium texts. Written Communication, 23(1), 3-35. http://wcx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/1/3

Lillis, T. & Curry, M.J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. London: Routledge. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415468831/

Pare, A. (2010). Slow the presses: concerns about premature publication. In C. Aitchison, B. Kamler, and A. Lee, (Eds.) Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond (pp. 30-46), Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Take your time – or get to the point?

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academic publishing, genre, thesis by publication, writing style

By Cally Guerin

I’ve had the opportunity to read lots of interesting papers written by doctoral students and colleagues lately, as well as reviewing journal articles. As I work through the various pieces of writing and line them up against each other, the styles used in different genres are clearly evident. This is especially noticeable when a paper doesn’t quite produce what one would expect of that genre. One of the challenges for any author working across a range of genres is adapting one’s own style to suit the current writing task. In particular, I’ve been noticing a tension between the more leisurely, discursive manner of a thesis, and the brisk pace of the journal article that needs to get to the point much more quickly and efficiently.

Having started my academic life in the world of feminist literary criticism, I find I’m drawn to the style of writing that takes its time to unpack each point of the argument in detail. But I’m torn between that and wanting to get to the main point quickly – like everyone else, I’ve got a lot of other stuff to read too! If the idea can be expressed adequately in 5 words, then why use 15 to make the same point? And too often, it seems that those extra 10 words are padding formed from empty jargon that poses as ‘intellectual’ but doesn’t really say much at all.

I think the ability to write in different genres (thesis, journal article, book chapter) is one of the difficult challenges facing doctoral students, who are expected to understand the differences of genre in quite nuanced ways in order to pitch their work to different audiences and different outlets. I’m very much in favour of the thesis by publication, and advocate that format most of the time. For those who plan to work in universities or in research institutes that require publication in academic journals, there are great benefits in learning how to write articles, and how to negotiate the reviewing and publishing process. Most will only need to write a thesis once, but will need to know how to write articles repeatedly during their research careers.

But just lately I’ve noticed a sneaking feeling forming deep beneath my general conviction that thesis by publication is mostly helpful. I’ve been wondering what might be lost along the way if the traditional thesis format is abandoned. Where else does one have licence to follow through on the fine detail of intellectual thought, to expound at length on a complex theory, or to work through the digressions and tangents that surround the core ideas?

And there are some very good reasons why we don’t always want scholarly work to be constrained by the demands of contemporary publishing practices, of tight word restrictions imposed by journals, or the costs of printing hard copies within the traditions of how many pages the existing machinery can bind together. Not everything can be fitted into such tight spaces; not all writing needs to be quite so dense. Maybe this represents one area in which inexpensive publishing in electronic media becomes so important in disseminating extended excursions into intellectual thought—a few more pages (maybe even quite a few) might not cost much more, but allows for the longer discussion of an idea. This extra space could apply to longer journal articles just as much as to books that otherwise would not find a publication outlet.

Perhaps this all points to the strengths of a PhD thesis format that allows for a combination of published papers and the more conventional framing chapters (sometimes referred to as a ‘thesis with publications’ or ‘hybrid’ – see Jackson 2013; Sharmini et al. 2014). Here the big introductory, context-setting chapter allows for more extensive philosophising on the topic. That’s the place to take up the more leisurely style of careful unpacking of big ideas. But the shorter, neater, more concise representation of the findings can be found in the article-length chapters forming the middle of the thesis.

This preference for different kinds of writing might also mark a tension between scientific and humanities writing. There’s obviously a place for the beautifully crafted sentence in science writing – and certainly, poetry can find a place in science – but it doesn’t always have to take a lot of words to get there!