The times they are a-changin’ and academic publishing is no exception. The rise of open access has made more research freely available but brings its own set of challenges. Generative artificial intelligence looms large across the sector as both friend and foe, and competition for space and visibility is more cut-throat than ever. Yet, the core academic skills of writing, editing and pitching remain crucial to success, alongside an understanding of what, when and where best to publish. This spotlight guide provides pointers on how to pitch your ideas and get them down on paper but it also explores peer review, open access and how to start your own journal.
First, find out why ‘researchers have a responsibility to publish’, from Walid Saad of Virginia Tech, who explains the many benefits of publishing for established scholars and students alike.
Get started on the road to publication
Take the first steps on your academic publishing journey by evaluating your place within the sector. The resources below offer guidance on how to know when your work is ready for publication, establishing where your research fits best, and crafting a proposal that shows why your ideas are worth publishing.
Anatomy of an academic book proposal: pitch your book to publishers with an irresistible proposal. Here are all the elements you’ll need, shared by Richard Baggaley of the University of Westminster.
Trying to decide what, where and when to publish research? While academic researchers often know why it’s important to publish their work, the timing, location and medium can be less evident, writes Walid Saad. His tips are geared to sharing research for maximum effectiveness.
How much should you publish? For reputation or promotion? Book or peer-reviewed journal? Publishing is a high-stakes issue for academics. Catherine Léglu of the University of Luxembourg looks at scholars’ motivations to publish, where and how often.
Are you ready to publish? Top tips on how to prepare your manuscript: from explaining the publishing cycle to outlining what makes a strong manuscript, Jing Tang of Elsevier walks early career researchers through key steps when preparing to publish for the first time.
How to pitch a book to an academic publisher: key considerations for researchers when choosing an academic publisher and preparing their pitch, from Victoria Pittman of the University of Bristol.
Writing advice for academics looking to get published
Pitching and reviewing is all well and good but will not get you anywhere unless you can first get your words down on paper or, more likely, a screen. Mastering the skill of academic writing takes practice and persistence – find out how to carve out the time you need to write, how to construct a solid abstract, then listen to 10 academics share their top writing tips in a special podcast.
Making the abstract concrete: strategies for writing effective abstracts for conference and research papers, by Steve Bateman and Yingchun Li of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
Time to write is a necessity, not a nice-to-have: how a project for academics to carve out writing time has grown from ‘power hours’ to writing retreats, community, increased well-being and higher-quality papers, as Rosie Wadman and Jess Macpherson of the University of Southampton explain.
A practical guide to writing a literature review: from organising key search terms to checking citations, this video by Bareq Abdulhadi of Al-Mustaqbal University offers simple, practical tips to crafting a literature review that will lay a sound foundation for your academic paper.
Don’t jettison traditional academic writing just yet: Academic writing is transforming – into comics, podcasts, installations – but that doesn’t mean bog-standard peer-reviewed papers are less key to institutional status or individual promotion, writes Pat Thomson of the University of Nottingham.
Creating an impactful visual abstract with no design experience: the basic principles of design offer guidelines for creating a scientific visual abstract. This guide by Lipsa Panda of Elsevier will take you from blank space to eye-catching, easy-to-understand graphics.
THE podcast: pointers on writing and publishing for academics: Ten academics, authors, publishers and postdocs share their advice on how to improve your academic writing and chances of getting published. They cover everything from tips to establish a consistent writing practice and how to find the hook in your work, to why your article might be rejected and how to bring in voices beyond just those writing in standard North American or British English.
Understanding peer review
A fundamental step in the academic publishing quality checks, peer review is based upon solid principles and, when done well, is a highly effective filtering and feedback system. But it can also be a vehicle for rude and unprofessional commentary and exploitation by publishers and researchers alike. These resources explore the benefits of carrying out peer reviews, how to avoid common errors that lead to rejection and how the whole process could be improved.
The pros and cons of peer reviewing: Weighing up whether to take on the role of peer reviewer? Arina Ziganshina of Dubai Medical University draws on her own experience to outline the upsides and downsides.
Give your academic paper its best chance of being accepted: Peer review is a key step in the journey to publication in that prestigious journal, but not every paper gets to this stage. Here are key reasons for desk rejection and how to avoid them, by Cheong Fan of Macau University of Science and Technology.
Peer review is frustrating and flawed – here’s how we can fix it: What would peer review 2.0 look like? Mark Humphries of the University of Nottingham offers ways to optimise the process for better efficiency and research outcomes.
Peer feedback: a burden for students or route to better academic writing? Asking students to give anonymous feedback on each other’s work can not only result in better writing skills but also offer them opportunities to try new approaches and refine assessment tasks, writes Alison Daniell of the University of Southampton.
The impact of artificial intelligence on academic publishing
Artificial intelligence (AI) brings huge opportunities for academic publishing, alongside well-documented challenges. It has the potential to streamline elements of the writing and review processes and help with the administrative side of running a journal. Here, academics explain how to work with generative AI (GenAI), instead of against it.
We’re living in a world of artificial intelligence – it’s academic publishing that needs to change: Scholars are using generative AI to assist them with writing articles, but should they be punished for it? The academic publishing community may need to change its mindset, writes Benjamin Luke Moorhouse of Hong Kong Baptist University.
Not replacing but enhancing: using ChatGPT for academic writing: Generative AI and how it can be used for plagiarism has provoked fear in higher education. However, the technology can also improve and accelerate your writing process if it is applied in a constructive, positive manner, explains Brooke Szücs of the University of Queensland.
Launching a journal and alternative publishing routes
If you are fed up with fighting to get your work in front of journal editors, who may take months to review your submissions, consider alternative routes to getting your work out there, from launching your own journal to using university repositories – as described in the resources below.
A DIY guide to starting your own journal: An antidote to frustrations with traditional academic publishing might be to launch a grass-roots open access journal. Here are the steps to consider, by Judith Johnson of the University of Leeds.
How to sustain a journal and beat the academic publishing racket: Starting a journal is hard enough – keeping it going is an ongoing challenge. Here’s how to maintain success in academic publishing, from James Williams and Asma Mohseni of the University of Derby.
Eight steps to launch a student-led peer-review journal: To help PhD students gain the skills required for publication and improve research literacy, consider an in-house academic journal, suggest Andrew Drybrough and Philip Montgomery of Nazarbayev University.
Making educational content open access can save lives: By making training resources for surgical professions available on an open access platform, RCSI and its partners are helping to address a huge number of preventable deaths each year. Ines Perić and Eric O’Flynn of RCSI explain how you can do something similar.
A guide to open access
The basic aim of open access, to make research and data freely available to all, brings multiple benefits, most notably faster dissemination and thus creation of knowledge. But how it is achieved is fraught with complications around who ultimately pays to publish scholarly works, the integrity of the review process and the resulting quality and reliability of open access journals. Here academics and librarians explain how it can be done well.
Open access: why and how to do it: Here, librarian Melissa A. Rothfus and master of information student at Dalhousie University, Catherine Gracey, offer insight into facets of open access publishing and the challenges relating to it.
Opening doors to knowledge: making data open access: Making data open access has become a cornerstone of transparent and collaborative research practices. Here, Jon Petters of Virginia Tech provides a brief guide on how to do it, emphasising accessibility, reproducibility and interoperability.
Unwrapping discovery: the importance of institutional repositories: Self-archiving in university repositories is an alternative academic publishing route to gold open access that can boost citations and diversify users accessing scholarly content, writes Nicki Clarkson of the University of Southampton.
Democratising research through open access journals: The rise of open access publishing has democratised knowledge dissemination, allowing researchers to share their findings with a global audience. Here, Corinne Guimont of Virginia Tech offers insights on running OA journals at a higher education institution.
Promote your paper to reach wider audiences
Your work is finally published! This may be cause for celebration but don’t relax just yet. If you want to ensure maximum impact from your published research, it’s time to promote your paper and make sure it stands out against the millions of journal articles published each year. Here are tips on how to get the word out to audiences within and beyond academia.
Life after publication: promote your work for maximum impact: Seeing your work in print is by no means the end of the story. Chris Tancock of Elsevier offers advice on how you can make your published work stand out and benefit from the broadest visibility.
How to be proactive when amplifying research papers: Conferences might be the first thought, but there are many options for furthering your paper’s reach – and they usually require you to take the lead, writes Ashleigh Johnstone of Arden University.
You’re a content producer now, part one: how to write articles for a mainstream audience: How does a scholar, trained thoroughly in academic style for academic journals, enter the wider world of general publishing? John Weldon of Victoria University explains.
Why is no one listening? Academic ways of communicating are often the exact opposite of what you need to draw widespread attention to your research, writes Simon Hall of the University of Cambridge. Here are simple ways to help your message reach its audience.
Get your research out there: 7 strategies for high-impact science communication: From news angles to dealing with trolls, here are seven areas to consider when sharing your findings with the media and wider public, shared by Christina Zdenek of the University of Queensland.
What’s the story? Creative ways to communicate your research: Early in your academic research, you should ask how you can creatively communicate it to a wide audience. The results may surprise you, says Steven Beschloss of Arizona State University.
Thank you to all the academics and higher education professionals who contributed their professional advice on this wide-ranging topic.
comment