Publishing in journals

Overview and research

Publishing during candidature can be very helpful to students in four particular ways:

• They are able to get their work 'into the slipstream of academic ideas, and so avoid [their] thesis becoming just 'shelf-bending' research, sitting in a university library and slowly bending a shelf over the years' (Dunleavy, 2003).
• They develop the skills necessary for publication.
• They gain explicit, and generally very helpful, feedback on their work.
• Examiners, particularly those in the science/engineering disciplines, view publication during candidature very positively when making their decision regarding the thesis.

However, candidates often require considerable help with publishing. Support from staff skilled in helping candidates to write can be particularly helpful, especially if this support is in conjunction with:

• Working in journal clubs and reading groups to identify the characteristics of the genre in which the candidate will be publishing.
• Modelling and close support in the first instance by supervisors.
• Explicit 'teaching', perhaps to a group of candidates, of the skills of writing for journals by a member of staff who has considerable success with publishing.
• Attending 'Meetings with the Editors' sessions often held as discipline-specific conferences.
• Providing candidates with effective self-help strategies.

Candidates are highly trained to read for content, (what a text says); they can also train themselves to read for what a text does (how it is put together) and learn how to deconstruct texts so that they become more aware of the distinctive features of articles in journals they are targeting. This involves reviewing composition processes of relevant journal articles from the following perspectives:

1) Cognitive features (how information is treated in the writing)

2) Linguistic features (including disciplinary language usage); and

3) Structural or organisational features (composition processes in the different parts of the journal article).

From Gail Craswell, author of Writing for academic success: A postgraduate guide

Candidates are likely to require support and advice on how to respond to reviewers' comments. Some reviewers are likely to be fairly blunt in their comments and candidates can find this hurtful, in which case they want to 'drop the whole thing' or, they get so annoyed that they want to respond in a fairly aggressive manner, neither of which is helpful.

The above text was based on the following research:

Craswell, G. (2005). Writing for academic success: A postgraduate guide. London Sage.

Day, R. & Gastel, B. (2006). How to write and publish a scientific paper. 6th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Dunleavy, P. (2003). Authoring a PhD: How to plan, draft, write and finish a Doctoral thesis or dissertation. Hamps: Palgrave Macmillan.

Murray, R. (2005). Writing for academic journals. London: Open Univ. Press.

Wellington, J. (2003) Getting published: A guide for lecturers and researchers.London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Mullins, G., & Kiley, M. (2002). It's a PhD, not a Nobel Prize': How experienced examiners assess research theses. Studies in Higher Education, 27(4), 369-386.

Ideas and tools

Support from staff with specific expertise in writing is particularly helpful in conjunction with:

• Holding a discussion with the candidate and the supervisory panel regarding (joint) authorship of papers (this can be a fraught area and is very discipline specific). Generally, guidelines for supervisors suggest that this topic should be clarified early in candidature even with more confident students who have reported 'quaking at the thought' of having to address the issue of authorship with their supervisor.
• Modelling and close support in the first instance by supervisors.
• Identifying school/centre expectations of candidates and staff reading the drafts of others and providing feedback.
• Explicit 'teaching', perhaps a group of candidates, of the skills of writing for journals by a member of staff who has considerable success with publishing.
• Runing an in-house seminar on journal article publishing: Use a panel to get discussion underway: Panel make-up preferably would be:
  • Editor (or someone on the board) of a refereed journal in area;
  • A practised reviewer of papers for a refereed journal in the area (how they go about assessing papers).
  • A later-year PhD student or post-doc who has recently been through the process of submitting an article for publication (tips on this as a 'learning' process).

Authorship

If you are concerned about attributing authorship the Vancouver Protocol has some useful advice.

Authorder®, a web site designed by Suzanne Morris at The University of Queensland, has some helpful ideas on author order.

The attached Authorship Guidelines have been sent through by Stephen Dann (College of Business and Economics),

Picking a doctoral candidate manuscript from 100 paces

Editors can often pick a candidate's paper because it either:

• Tries to cover a 100,000 word thesis in a 5000 word article, or
• It provides one 'chunk' of a larger piece of work without the context that exists with the larger work, or
• It has almost as many pages of references as it does text.

Candidates can really use help in trying to identify exactly what it is they are going to use from their work as the focus of the article and

ANU information

The Academic Skills and Learning Centre has a staff member specialising in research student assistance.

The Centre for Public Awareness of Science has workshops and staff members specialising in science communication.  

 

For College-specific information contact:

Currently ANU colleges are compiling information for students publishing in journals. In the meantime, contact the College Associate Dean (HDR) for more general college information.