Graduate Studies

Academic writing is characterised by some key features, some of the most important being the use of formal language, clear communication and supporting your claims with established referencing standards. It is important to use accurate vocabulary, be objective and present a well-planned argument. Professor of Education Pat Thomson discusses finding your angle in a piece of academic writing and encourages us to ask a series of key questions:

1. What’s the paper about? (the field and the paper focus)
2. Who is the reader? (What’s the journal)
3. What does the reader already know about the topic? What’s the usual way that the topic is discussed? (What’s already in the scholarly conversation in the journal in particular and the field)
4. What’s the new approach that your paper will offer? (Why will the reader find this angle of interest?)

A very helpful list of top tips shared by journal editors during one of the workshops:

• Be brave and tread your own path!
• Focus on your topic and take your time to write.
• Look at how other writers make their arguments.
• Read journals to keep up to speed with what’s going on in your field.
• Read the editorial guidelines and submit to journals fitting to your work.
• Consider what’s been published this year, or last year. How does your article speak to these issues?
• Be resilient.
• Think about whether you might write to the editor in advance, to try to establish a relationship or gauge interest.
• Foreground your ‘big idea’ clearly and soon in your submission. In your opening paragraphs, in your abstract, and in your cover letter, try to be distinct with your big idea to get the attention and buy in of your editor and reviewers.
• Journals are a community and editors may well be connected in some way. Think about who the community you’re trying to speak to is.
• Include references to articles that have been published in the journal you’re targeting.
• Read and respond to editorial comments. You might choose what to respond to, or you might respond to everything, even if just to briefly acknowledge and explain why you don’t think this would be an appropriate change.
• If you really disagree with something in one reviewer’s approach, you can talk to the editor.
• Remember, you can withdraw your paper if you feel its integrity has been compromised (rather than your pride or your time!)
• Ideas feel like our own when we are working on our own, but they are influenced by a much bigger conversation. The review process can help you as you build something new to contribute to this conversation.
• We don’t write in isolation. There is generosity in reviewing papers to try to strengthen the quality of work. Sometimes we take our personal context as universal. A reviewer can help us understand what might not be obvious to a reader from outside this context.
• Being vulnerable is hard but it can allow your ideas to flow. But: choose your journal – does it value this approach?
• Different pieces take different amounts of time to complete, and to place.