To support our graduate students and junior scholars at UNT, with their academic writing development, the Learning and Performance Quarterly hosted its first workshop this past Friday, March 1st.
The purpose of this session was to introduce graduate students to the Learning and Performance Quarterly journal, and engage in a discussion about scholarly peer-review, academic editing, and the publication process. Dr. Kim Nimon & Dr. Jeff Allen shared their experiences and thoughts on the publication process, and what it takes to submit an academic manuscript.
We discussed the steps from submission preparation, through correspondence, and all the way to publication, including:
- Understanding Academic Journal Types: A, B, & C Level
- Considering the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) for journal levels
- Using Google Scholar Citations & being critical with Google Scholar
- Filtering with the UNT Libraries Search – Summon
- Researching Academic Journals: Cabell’s Directory (hard copy in library)
- Scholarly Publication Process – how it helps your academic writing improve
- Effective Peer Reviewing – comments, feedback & effective suggestions
- Expectations & Considerations – the typical process is 9-12 months
- Developing Publishing Relationships – between reviewers & editors AND the editor & author; it’s a human process
- Attending Conference Sessions with the Editor – bring your manuscript, learn if they need papers, build a rapport
- key rejection reasons – format, grammar, APA, and theoretical frameworks
- How to get involved in the academic reviewing & writing process
- Using a plagiarism checker to review your manuscript before submission
- Communication with the editor & being timely with your peer reviews
During the session Dr. Nimon shared her own publishing experiences, provided the group with peer-reviewing and editor correspondence, and talked about what she looks for in academic manuscripts as an editor.
Although many asked to record the workshop; I decided not to as the open discussion, and Q & A format was really best served in person, and I think the conversation was more candid without the recording. You can thank the LPQ Assistant Editor, Tekeisha, for compiling notes from this session – here is the summary of what we discussed:
Besides encouraging our attendees to write, we also placed value in joining the peer-review and editing process. We suggested to sign up to review articles for the LP Quarterly AND other journals in their field. Being a peer-reviewer helps junior scholars gain experience in the publishing process, build a rapport with editors, learn about acceptable journal submissions, and hone their own academic writing craft. I suggested reading Rocco and Hatcher’s (2011) book, specifically “Chapter 2 – Publishing in Peer-Reviewed and Non Refereed Journals” to get their feet wet with starting the academic submission process, preparing a manuscript, deciding where to publish, and how to best work with editors.
Although I have seen this session before – I know that I left the workshop with some great takeaways from Dr. Nimon, and helpful ideas shared by scholars who have been through the full academic writing experience from submission to publication. A huge thanks to Dr. Nimon for her time and sharing, Dr. Allen for donating the book giveaways (who doesn’t LOVE winning the Rocco & Hatcher text or APA 6th edition book?), and, most importantly, thank you to those of you who joined us on a Friday night. I appreciate it.
In our efforts to be more developmental, the Leaning and Performance Quarterly would like to offer more in-person and online workshops on researching, writing, editing, reviewing, and publishing. It was great to see representation from other departments and disciplines across campus the other evening. We welcome others to join us for future LPQ Workshops as we consider other topics, including:
- Managing Your Writing Projects
- Forming Agraphia (Writing) Groups
- Writing Literature Reviews
- Drafting Conceptual Articles
- Secondary Data Analysis
If you have any topic suggestions or would be interested in participating – let me know. Feel free to write suggestions in the comments OR send a message to the LPQ Editors: LPQuarterly [at] gmail [dot] com.
FYI: The NEXT Call for Submissions is on Monday, March 11th at 11:59 pm CDT. Do you have your academic manuscript ready? Submit TODAY!
Reference:
Rocco, T.S. & Hatcher, T. (2011). The handbook of scholarly writing and publishing. San Francisco: Wiley/Jossey-Bass.
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