Presentation for the Doctoral Forum at European Conference on Information Literacy, September 2018 (Oulu, Finland). Some background on academic publishing and peer reviewing, tips for thinking about your audience and which journals to target, and some suggestions for managing the 'spaghetti' of academic writing!

1. Alphabet spaghetti:
process vs. mess in
academic writing
Emma Coonan
Centre for Innovation in Higher Education,
Anglia Ruskin University
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Information Literacy
@LibGoddess
Lentil alphabet soup
flickr.com, CC BY-ND 2.0

2. Molecular Cell 2009 35, 726-728DOI: (10.1016/j.molcel.2009.09.013)
Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Inc. Terms and Conditions

3. Molecular Cell 2009 35, 726-728DOI: (10.1016/j.molcel.2009.09.013)
Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Inc. Terms and Conditions

4. • Process vs. product
• Containers
• Audience
• Reading your writing
Aspects of writing

5. “Academic language is …
no-one’s mother tongue”
Bourdieu & Passeron, 1984

6. Containers

7. Presentation vs. article
Title
Structure
Tone and register
Use of evidence
Focus
Purpose
Catchy ‘hook’ vs. lengthy qualifiers
Free-form story vs. conventional divisions
Different levels of formality
References at end vs. literature review
Wide overview vs. laser beam
Description vs. investigation

8. Dissertation vs. article
Title
Structure
Tone and register
Use of evidence
Focus
Purpose
Narrow focus (but still some qualifiers!)
‘Accordion’ (iterative) argument
Different levels of authority
‘Audit trail’ vs. literature review
Deep dive vs. laser beam
Size of original contribution

9. Article vs. article
A paper written for your community’s journal will
differ from one written for a different or wider
audience

10. Audience

11.  Accept for publication without amendment
 Revisions required
 Major revisions and re-review
 Decline submission
Reviewer recommendations

12.  Accept for publication without amendment - almost never!
 Revisions required
 Major revisions and re-review
 Decline submission
Reviewer recommendations

13.  Accept for publication without amendment - almost never!
 Revisions required – take some time; make a list
 Major revisions and re-review
 Decline submission
Reviewer recommendations

14.  Accept for publication without amendment - almost never!
 Revisions required – take some time; make a list
 Major revisions and re-review – don’t panic
 Decline submission
Reviewer recommendations

15.  Accept for publication without amendment - almost never!
 Revisions required – take some time; make a list
 Major revisions and re-review – don’t panic
 Decline submission – submit elsewhere
Reviewer recommendations

16. • Critically and analytically
- not descriptively
- at paragraph and section level - not sentence
• Testing for weakness in argument and structure
- use the reverse outlining technique
• Detached mindset
- evaluate integrity of argument, not how far it matches your own view of IL
• Don’t just review what you see
- what is the author not saying?
- what literature hasn’t been cited?
How peer reviewers read

17. • ‘Resubmit’ doesn’t mean ‘Reject’
It’s been known for authors to react as though they’re the same thing
• Journals have a specific scope and remit
If your article doesn’t fit, our container is the wrong shape!
• Reviewers are writers too
… and we know it hurts to have your writing criticised
Remember …

18. Reading
your writing

19. Tell your readers …
• Focus and research gap
• Approach and method that underpin the research
• Rigour – the validity of your approach and findings
• Context – what you’re bringing to the conversation in this community
• The what, why and how of your research

20. • What is your research?
• Why are you doing it?
• How are you doing it?
What questions does it address ?
What further questions does it ask?
Why does it matter?
What will it change?
What interests – or frustrates - you about the topic?
What’s your approach or method?
How does it frame your findings?
How does it help you mitigate bias?
What / why / how

21. • Join (or start) a writers’ group
You can read why I love them in this blog post.
• Free-write and flat-pack
Don’t wait until you know what you want to say. Get ideas out of your
head so you can reflect on and develop them – then join them up later
• Keep a research diary
You can read why I love these too, in this other blog post.
Surviving the spaghetti

22. Slides 2-3: Alon, U. ‘How to choose a good scientific problem’, Molecular Cell, 2009.
DOI:10.1016/j.molcel.2009.09.013
Slide 8: Thomson, P. ‘Are you experienced (at writing journal articles)’, Patter, 2011.
http://patthomson.net/2011/10/29/are-you-experienced-at-writing-journal-articles/
Slide 16: Cayley, R. ‘Reverse outlines’, Explorations of Style, 2011.
http://explorationsofstyle.com/2011/02/09/reverse-outlines/
Slide 21: Coonan, E. ‘“Don’t get it right, just get it written”’, Mongoose Librarian, 2011.
https://librariangoddess.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/dont-get-it-right-just-get-it-written/
Coonan, E. ‘The power of the post-it: on studying, sensemaking and stationery’, Mongoose Librarian,
2014. https://librariangoddess.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/the-power-of-the-post-it-on-studying-
sensemaking-and-stationery/
References