Research-Based and Anecdotal Tips
for Improving Scholarly Productivity
Tips for Selecting a Research Topice
- Choose a topic that you know a lot about, you care about, and is novel.
- Look ahead and determine where a professional conversation might be in a year or two.
- Read to stay in touch with mass media in order to spot trends and emerging issues.
- Follow local, state, and national legislation.
- Stay in touch with professional organizations.
- Recognize the merits of research that your discipline would consider an applied focus.
- Find links between the upper division courses you teach and what you research—student questions and comments can trigger new ideas.
- Take risks, pursue innovative paths toward scholarship—after you garner credentials.
Tips for Time Management
- Write in brief, daily sessions--start slowly by writing in fifteen-minute sessions, and gradually build up to two-hour sessions.
- Set and maintain firm limits on the length of your writing sessions.
- Make writing a moderate priority—do not do it during evenings, weekends, or vacations.
- Avoid marathon writing sessions.
- Through self-examination and trial and error, determine your best time of day to write.
- Don't find time to write…just do it. Don't find time…make time.
- Make differentiations between "important" other tasks and "urgent" other tasks that interfere with writing.
- Recognize and acknowledge what is being sacrificed to make writing time.
- Professional "balance" has less to do with the relationship between different types of work, and more with their integration.
Tips for Setting and Sharing Goals
- Set immediate and long-term writing goals and write these down.
- Set goals with balance in mind—overly aggressive writing goals are at the heart of burnout.
- Break the article into short segments, and target completion of individual segments.
- Compliment and/or reward yourself when you meet your goals.
- Do not place unrealistic demands on yourself to write under perfect conditions and in a novel, significant fashion.
- Make your whole plan for research and writing public.
- Have others remind you to write.
- Make social contracts with others to write.
- Hold yourself accountable to others.
- Make writing something you do before you give yourself access to something you prefer to do—reward yourself.
- Chart when you will write and how much you accomplish.
Tips for Collaborating with Others
- Work on multiple research projects simultaneously.
- Find a mentor:
- approach a colleague who is an accomplished writer;
- choose someone who has published in a variety of journals; and
- choose someone whose writing style is similar to yours.
- When collaborating, discuss issues early in the project and set guidelines for collaboration.
- Share early drafts with trusted colleagues.
- Start conversations on campus and in disciplinary and interdisciplinary groups about work that the community sees as worthwhile.
- Educate your colleagues about the nature and significance of work you are doing.
- Make yourself available to colleagues, rather than expecting them to catch up with you.
- Network with local and national colleagues.
Tips for Managing the Writing Session
- Establish one or a few places where you will do most of your scholarly writing:
- should be a place where you will not think about doing other things; and
- make the writing spot comfortable, but free from temptations.
- Assemble necessary tools (dictionary, reference material) prior to beginning a writing session.
- Avoid temptations to begin the writing session by first cleaning the writing site—organize it at the end of your session.
- Limit social interruptions during your brief, daily writing sessions:
- close the door;
- posting a writing schedule on your door;
- communicate with others that interruptions must be limited; and
- unplug your telephone.
- Overcome self-consciousness by writing quickly and without editing (freewriting):
- freewriting establishes momentum;
- ideas will begin to flow; and
- freewriting can be fun.
- If you begin to get uncomfortable with your writing, revisit freewriting to remind yourself how to cope with impatience.
- Each writing session should account for "getting in" and "getting out"—stop in the middle of a paragraph to make it easier to begin writing next session.
- Don't finish the literature review first—read as you write and write as you read.
- Engage in frequent "mental writing"—think, doodle, sketch, make notes and ideas will begin to jell; a sense of organization will emerge.
- Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
Tips for Formatting and Style
- Spend inordinate time on the abstract—it is often the key to determining if your article is read, once it is published.
- Organize each paragraph, section, and paper around a key sentence.
- Always report descriptive statistics before inferential statistics, accompany means with standard deviations.
- Distinguish between a finding, a conclusion and a recommendation.
- Write the introduction after the rest of the paper is completed.
- Questions to ask yourself to initiate an effective introduction:
- In one sentence, what is the purpose of the document?
- What surprising information is conveyed in the document?
- Do the results contradict expectations?
- Did the people that you interviewed say something shocking or highly interesting?
- Did your survey reveal an expected attitude on the part of respondents?
- Be very generous with headings and subheadings.
- Keep subjects and verbs close together.
- Keep modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) close to the words they modify.
- Keep pronouns close to their antecedents.
- Use an active voice when writing.
- Be sensitive to gender specific language.
- When writing effective conclusions, consider these questions:
- What are the broad implications of your work?
- What recommendations can you make based on the material you have presented?
- Would it be appropriate for you to speculate on what will happen next?
- What do you want readers to do once they have reviewed your document?
- Should they agree with you about the validity of the argument or theory?
- Should the reader change their teaching practices?
- Should they pour their creative energies into examining an innovative research question?
- Did you pose a question in the introduction that can now be answered?
- Is there a way of extending the metaphor that was presented in the introduction?
Tips for Submission
- Select a journal whose audience has an interest in your topic.
- Contact the editor of the journal before submitting—this will increase the recognition value of your submission and might lead to other potential writing opportunities.
- Read several issues of a journal to gain insight into the acceptable style, topic, and length of manuscript.
- Read suggestions to contributors.
- If you have a question, call or write to the editor.
- Send a query letter to determine if your topic will be something the editors will consider:
- keep the letter brief;
- tailor it to the interests of the journal's readers;
- succinctly describe the contents of the manuscript—do not summarize it;
- note the length of the article if the manuscript is finished; and
- state why the topic is important.
- Revise your manuscript to conform to the journal's format.
- Be sure that you have correctly followed the journal's submission requirements.
- Do not be vague in who you address your submission to—even if that means having to call the publisher to determine who you should address it to.
- Do not try to catch the editor's eye by using colored paper, decorations, non-traditional typeset, etc.
- Use good quality, white 8 ½ x 11 paper, and make sure the type is plain, clear, and dark.
- Double-space text.
- Use standard size print (12 point).
- Use standard size font (Times).
- Use one-inch margins all around.
- Print on only one side of the sheet.
- Do not send business cards—if you must, only use your name, address, and phone number.
- Do not staple or bind your manuscript--paper clip short manuscripts, and put a rubber band around large manuscripts.
- Put an identifier (paper title) on every manuscript page.
- Type your full name and address on the cover letter, self-addressed stamped envelope, first manuscript page, and any clips, photos, illustrations, or other material you are including.
- If photos are included, prepare them in accordance with the editor's instructions, writer's guidelines, or journal style sheet.
- Never send anything that cannot be replaced.
- Include the following items in the cover letter submitted with the publication:
- demonstrate that you are familiar with the editor and journal;
- Address the editor by name and relate the current submission, if possible, to earlier works published by the press;
- offer a dynamic overview of your project and its significance;
- explain how your work contributes to scholarship;
- explain your qualifications for doing the work and, if possible, mention other publishing credits;
- while you certainly want to avoid the impression that you are submitting a rough draft, you may find it useful to express your willingness to make any changes that the editor or editorial board deems necessary.
Tips for Editor Feedback
- Develop a thick skin, a really thick skin.
- Anticipate criticism—let others do some of the anticipation for this.
- Find ways to agree with and learn from criticism.
- Resist the temptation to indulge in scripts of victimization.
- A rejection letter may not be a comment on the quality of the manuscript.
- A rejection might mean that a journal has a sufficient number of articles on the topic of question, but your manuscript might be right for another journal.
- If accepted, expect changes.
- Consider feedback with an open mind.
- Keep in mind that editors can be wise counselors and good teachers.
- Read reviews.
- Reread reviews while comparing them to your manuscript.
- Put reviews and the manuscript aside for at least a day—do other work to get past the emotional response.
- Consider how you will respond to each point.
- Revise according to the recommendations and/or write a brief response/rationale for points you prefer not to change.
- Return revisions promptly.
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