Skip to main content
UploadLanguage (EN)Support
BusinessMobileSocial MediaMarketingTechnologyArt & PhotosCareerDesignEducationPresentations & Public SpeakingGovernment & NonprofitHealthcareInternetLawLeadership & ManagementAutomotiveEngineeringSoftwareRecruiting & HRRetailSalesServicesScienceSmall Business & EntrepreneurshipFoodEnvironmentEconomy & FinanceData & AnalyticsInvestor RelationsSportsSpiritualNews & PoliticsTravelSelf ImprovementReal EstateEntertainment & HumorHealth & MedicineDevices & HardwareLifestyle
Thesiswhisperer, profile picture
Uploaded byThesiswhisperer
211,292 views

Write that journal article in 7 days

This document provides a 7-day framework for writing a journal article quickly. Day 1 involves choosing an article type such as data-driven or theory. Day 2 focuses on writing an abstract and title. Day 3 is for "spew drafting" to get ideas on paper. Day 4 creates an outline from the spew draft. Day 5 involves assessing and cleaning up the draft. Day 6 has the author "murder darlings" by cutting unnecessary text. The final day addresses responding to rejections and marketing the published article. The document aims to make writing more approachable by breaking it into daily steps rather than an overwhelming list of tasks.

Education◦Technology◦
Related topics:
Academic Publishing•
Write that Journal Article - in 7 days! (or how to be a plotter and a pantser) Dr Inger Mewburn (a.k.a @thesiswhisperer) & Dr Judy Maxwell
(A caveat…) You can turn a messy bunch of 'academic stuff’ into an article quickly… but you must have: • Data, ideas or artifacts, • Preliminary analysis or thoughts
Day: Zero What sort of academic do you want to be?
This is an image of an early viva… … can you find the student? RMIT University©2008 Information Technology Services 4
What sort of scholar do you want to be?
Where will I publish? • Where do people I like to read seem to get published? • Which of these journals seem to get more citations? (impact factors) • Do the editorial guidelines seem sympathetic to the work I do? • What are the open access policies of this journal?
Day: One Choose your flavour…
What sort of paper will you write? Rugg and Petre (2003) claim journal articles can be understood as falling into genres: – Data Driven – Methods Papers – Agenda Setting / Consciousness raising papers – Review papers – Theory papers Writing in a range of genres shows your versatility as a scholar.
Data Driven papers should contain: • What question is being addressed and why? • A description of the study and how it was conducted • The results (data collected, analysis, findings) • Discussion (significance, limitations, claims to generalisation) • Conclusion (implications, further work)
Data driven paper variations: • Work-in-progress paper • Meta studies paper • Artifact paper And don’t forget the pictures!
Method papers should contain: • What it is • How it works • What it's good for (both utility and how it's different) • Any constraints
• Agenda setting papers • Consciousness raising papers ‘Look at me’ papers
Review papers Are usually written every ten years or so - when someone (like a thesis writer!) "bothers to read everything in a field" again summarises it and provides evaluative judgment.
Theory papers should: • Refine or extend existing theory and / or • critique and debunk it and / or • Set an agenda for new theory
Audience First! They WON'T want: • Lots of information they already know • a long winded literature review • lots of process-focused information. They WILL want: • A tight, useful review of the literature • Well supported conclusions • A clear and well stated contribution to the field
Day: Two “The tiny text”
An abstract for this workshop Many Doctoral students have to write journal articles for their PhD. While there is a lot of written advice on this topic, it is often hard to follow because it is not put in context with the daily activities of a professional writer ( Kamler and Thomson, 2006). This presentation collects the best parts of this advice and puts them in a 'temporal' frame work, based on days of the week. This framework helps PhD students see writing a paper as a purposeful, step wise process, rather than a list of "do's and don'ts which are hard to operationalise.”
Write an abstract • Start with a couple of sentences: • Aim (“This paper explores….”) • Main argument (“In this paper we argue that….”) • Method (“The study was conducted….”) • What’s new? (“this paper contributes to the debates on….”) • Share your 4 sentences with the rest of your group.
Pay attention to the verbs! Examines / Analyses Reports on / Outlines Argues / justifies / recommends Compares / Contrasts Discusses / Demonstrates Shows / Refutes highlights / Illustrates
Add a title… for now Thesis Whisperer Jnr (aged 10 and 1/4) wants to do his PhD about “rocks” (with a side interest in gold). Dr Barry White advises there are a range of theses Thesis Whisperer Jnr would write on this topic depending on how he phrased the title: • As a question: “What do school children know about rocks with gold in them?” • As an exploration: “Rocks in ‘scrap heaps’ found in the Victorian gold districts” • As a statement: “Why most school kids are not interested in rocks (even if there’s gold in them” • As an investigation: “Rocks with gold in them: places they are most likely to be found” • As a hypothesis: “If rocks have gold in them, they are more likely to be dug up” • As a thesis: “rocks are cool, especially if there is gold in them”
Day: Three “The spew draft”
What stops us ‘just writing’? "They feared that what they wrote would be ‘wrong’ and unspecified people would laugh at them” Howard Becker
Have you got useful notes? • Good note taking helps you to avoid plagiarizing ‘by mistake’ • Ballenger (2004) claims good papers start with good note taking. As we write notes (with verbs!) we write parts of the paper, which saves time. • Some note-keeping methods are • Researcher log book • Double entry note taking • Narrative note taking
Free writing Write as much as you can about “what’s new?” for 5 minutes. Just write. If you are stuck for a word use another /different / better word and keep writing
How to write 1000 words a day • Write new stuff just after breakfast and before lunch. Cut and paste free writing into / around / through notes you already have. • Use pomodoro technique to focus (25 min writing sprints with 10 min breaks between) • Take the afternoon off • Come back in the evening, outline, edit and rearrange your text • http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/how-to-write-1000-words-a-day-and-not-go-bat- shit-crazy/
Day: Four “the scratch outline”
The ‘screen treatment’ method Title: "Write an article in 7 days" • explain why you should write articles • talk about the importance of doing research to find out the best place to publish • Talk about different types of articles in academia • Talk about the importance of audience - explain how academic audiences 'work' • Introduce the idea of a 'tiny text' as a way of focusing for your audience • Talk about the value of doing a 'spew draft'
The Big List Write everything you have as a list: – facts – issues – detail – Findings Organise these in the best way to tell your story then delete those that are not essential.
Spider Diagram
Day: Five “Cleaning up the mess”
Time to reassess Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your work so far. Ask yourself: • Do I have enough literature? • Am I making 'knowledge claims' or just reporting? • Is this an argument - or a manifesto? • Is my data sufficient to the claims I am making? • Am I being sufficiently speculative?
Excessive ‘tinkering’ is a deferment strategy. If you find yourself endlessly 'polishing' and not moving on, plan what to do the next day. Go straight to that section next time you open the document. At least you will be ‘polishing’ where it is needed.
Not working? You might find yourself bouncing around between these steps for awhile. It usually is a sign that you didn't have enough 'stuff' to make the kind of paper you are aiming for, or you lack confidence in your ideas.
Day: Six “Murder your darlings”
Stephen King once said: “… kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
Too many words? • Using the strike through tool - can you live without it? • Moving some text to footnotes • Starting a 'maybe later' folder • Triaging your text paragraph by paragraph • Performing 'bypass surgery’ http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/5-ways- to-kill-your-darlings/
Too wordy? Zinsser suggests you put brackets around words which could be cut or replaced: “All writers (will have to) edit their prose, but (the) great writers edit (it) viciously, always trying to eliminate (words which are) ‘fuzz’ – (excess) words (which are not adding anything of value). Zinsser compares (the process of editing out) ‘fuzz’ to fighting weeds – you will always be slightly behind (because they creep in when you aren’t looking for them). One of my (pet hates) is (the word) ‘also’. If you search and replace all instances (of this word) you will find you can live without it and your writing will improve (instantly). (Likewise the word)’very’.”
Let it rest
Day: Seven Rejection (maybe).
Kate Chanock’s 7 stages of resentment 1. Outrage, noise, unladylike rejoinders 2. Incomprehension 3. More outrage 4. One or two of the comments might make sense 5. There’s a bit of truth in that one 6. I’ll just have a go at doing what they said to do here 7. Actually, the paper is a whole lot better for all those revisions.
How will I ‘market’ this paper? Your paper is one of thousands… how can you get it to be noticed? Some ideas: • Send it to authors you referenced • Tweet / blog about it • Lectures to professional gatherings • Write opinion pieces for the paper • Radio / TV • Make a film of it!
Some useful references on writing • Becker, Howard (2007) Writing for social scientists: how to start and finish your thesis, book or article, Chicago University Press, Chicago. • Ballenger, B (2011) The Curious Researcher, Longman • Becher, W (2009) Writing your journal article in 12 weeks, Sage. • Boise, R (2003) Professors as writers: a self help guide for productive writing, New Forum Press • Chanok, K. (2008). Surviving the reviewing process and getting published, Journal of Academic Language & Learning. Vol. 2, No. 1. • Kamler, B & Thomson, P (2006) Helping doctoral students to write, Routledge, New York. • Murray, R (2009), Writing for academic journals, Open University Press. • Rugg, G & Petre, M (2010) The unwritten rules of PhD Research, Open University Press, Maidenhead. • Silva, P (2007) How to write a lot, American psychology association • White, B (2011), Mapping your thesis, ACER Press. • Zinsser, W (2003), On Writing, Pan McMillan.
Final thoughts Writing a paper is what designers call a ‘wicked problem’. There are no right or wrong papers, just better and worse ones. The more you write, the better your papers will be. We hope this presentation helps you write more and more papers.