Somebody once said: "You don't need to be smart to graduate from Stanford, you need tenacity." The same could be said of getting academic work published. The Writing For Publication Workshop at the GALE SIG mini conference on June 20th demystified the publication process - from APA Guidelines, to Blind Reviews to Vetted Publications - and offered tools to help participants start writing for publication.

Amy Yamashiro led the workshop by introducing the speakers and handing out brochures defining technical terms in the academic publishing field, a list of academic publications with contact information and a self-questionnaire each particpant used to generate their own writing ideas and form them into concrete plans.

Brent Culligan outlined the academic publishing process, the paper trail that leads from the writer to the journal editor to reviewers and which almost always leads back to the writer because of the need for revisions or because of rejection.Writers need to be clear in their thinking and pragmatic in their approach, he stressed. Having chosen a subject to research, be sure to do a thorough literature review. Journals will not publish a contribution that does not at least attempt to fill a gap in the existing literature. Be clear about the purpose of the article - is it an experimental study setting out to prove a hypothesis? If so,  get in touch with someone who can advise about statistics and project design. Being clear about statistics at the outset will save a lot of trouble and needless work later on.The third thing to be clear about is the audience. Here is where homework on the journals themselves pays off. Look at the Information for Contributors in the journals, study past issues to see what kind of articles they publish. Finally, have another journal in mind in case the first one rejects your article.

Brent advised against multiple submissions but acknowledged that writers can generate more than one publication from the same research, adjusting the content and application to a different purpose and audience. Keep notes of everything you do as you go along, and finally, think of the "look" of your article - get your own editor to find grammatical and other problems before you submit it to the journal.

It is important for the manuscript to look finished or polished, that is, clearly written, following the journals standard organising format for research papers, watching that the sections follow in the right order. Looking at the published articles in the journal where you will submit your manuscript, can show a writer this. A finished look involves proofreading and correcting any simple typing mistakes as well as being sure to follow all manuscript formatting requirments according to the APA stylesheet. All of the presenters stressed this point, since editors are very busy and they do not want to give their time to edit a writer's work who does not follow the guidelines and produce a finished article.

Many of the issues that were covered in the first half of the workshop are adressed in an article which was handed out to workshop participants entitled, "Academic Publishing: Suggestions from a Journal Editor" by George Braine which appeared in the Sept. 1998 issue of The Language Teacher. This article addresses the special problems of manuscript preparation and working with the editors, which Brent touched on at the workshop.Braine suggests how to generate multiple articles from the same project without offending copyright law. Especially useful in conceptualizing the time it takes to get published, Braine documents one of his articles from the time of inception to publication, just to show how long the publishing process can take.

In the second half of the session, Christine Pearson Casanave spoke on finding an appropriate outlet for your writing as well as how to establish collaborative writing groups. Outlets for writing can come in a lot of different packages; and with some forms such as the monograph the author has more editorial control than in journal publication. Christine spoke about the difficulty in getting the monograph to comply with institutional specifications which is the downside to choosing a monograph. Mostly, Christine focused on establishing collaborative writing groups, and what guidelines need to be followed to make sure the group functions well as a source for honest manuscript criticism. The composition of the members in a group are important to achieve a balance. The group needs a kind of "powerless leadership". One member needs to be the organizer, calling meetings, reminding members of deadlines and managing negotiations. Wielding power is not the point here: the leader needs to manage rather than dominate. Another member needs to be the stickler for detail and be able to help with final editing and proofreading. Finally, group members need a strong reason for writing; a shared understanding of the look and the destination for their writing, which means the type of journal or other publication where the piece will appear. Writers need to have mutual trust, an openness to suggestions and a willingness to listen. Most of all, writers need tenacity.

Using the email as a forum for manuscript critiques was discussed. Can collaborative writers/editors more openly express constructive criticism via email or in a person-to-person writers group? Several workshop members had opinions on this issue.

The collaborative writing group aspect I found to be very helpful for me(Kim). Most of the time I find myself writing alone. I read other professional papers and journals and even Ph.D dissertations in my area of interest, to see what's been done in the past and what research is now being done.  However, there is something more that I get from other people, in a writers group, something that feeds me as a writer. It answers the larger question that perhaps all of us have asked ourselves, in our "already-too-busy" lives, " Why write ?" Of course, many of us write because we need academic publications to advance in our careers or to get tenure. But at the deepest level the answer that comes back to me is, "to share with other teachers."

From listening to other workshop participants, I heard this similar need being voiced, the desire to share their teaching research and/or teaching techniques with others in our field. And that's what academic publishing is all about: finding out about what stimulating research is being done now, and what teaching techniques other people are using. Then looking at our own lives and our teaching histories, to see what unique contributions that we can make to the field. And the more that readers become writers, and teachers become researchers, we find that the process of writing is not so mystifying. It is just hard work.

Throughout the workshop, several journals, monographs and copies of the writers guidelines from various academic journals were passed out to workshop participants. In addition, a request for papers on gender issues from two journals were handed out. These are:

A Call for Papers: Gender Issues. Temple University Japan Working Papers in Applied Linguistics. This journal wants research papers on gender issues in applied linguistics; and submissions are open to people not associated with Temple University. Amy Yamashiro is the editor. Her email is: amy@gol.com The deadline for these submissions is Febuary 29th 2000.

A Call for Papers: Gender Issues. Temple University Japan Studies in Applied Linguistics. This journal is looking for teaching articles and isalso open to authors not associated with Temple University. The editor is Amy. The submissions deadline for these articles is Febuary 14th, 2000.

It is hard to find support in our academic publishing pursuits, yet the leaders of this workshop did just that. They were our mentors in a field that has become a necessity for those of us in academic teaching and is becoming increasingly more important to ESL teachers at all levels. Thank you to Christine Pearson Casanave, Brent Culligan and Amy Yamashiro!

This page last updated November 17th 1999

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