Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching
Volume 3 (2012) Issue 2
Tonette S. Rocco & Tim Hatcher (eds.): The Handbook of Scholarly Writing and Publishing. San Francisco
This handbook aims at providing academic writing and publishing skills
to faculty members, doctoral students, and other scholars. As a novel
contribution, the book unveils mystery and eases difficulty for target users,
since such conceptual and practical topics are rarely discussed in the research
literature. The current book accomplishes its purpose by giving specific
guidelines for writing and publishing skills. These skills cover more than
grammatical correctness and punctuation at a literal level; instead, they
involve both cognition and metacognition entailed by the scholarly writing and
publishing process. These skills include how, when, and with whom to write,
scheduling, giving and responding to constructive feedback, editing and
revising, as well as resubmitting manuscripts. The skill set reflects the
reality of the writing process from the first rough draft to the final polished
version.
The editors group twenty-one chapters
into four parts:
- Part One: Becoming a Published Scholar
(Chapters 1-6),
- Part Two: Improving Writing Techniques
(Chapters 7-10),
- Part Three: Preparing Scholarly
Manuscripts (Chapters 11-16), and
- Part Four: Reflecting on the Writing
and Publishing Process (Chapters 17-21).
Part One (pp. 1) comprises six
chapters. Written in the first person, Chapter One (pp. 3) gives an overview of
why to write, how to write, and how to write in collaboration. By way of
sharing personal experiences, the author of this chapter, Tonette S. Rocco,
contextualizes these questions and answers to make her statements convincing
and persuasive. In the section on writing tips, Rocco suggests making to-do
lists to organize and prioritise projects, and keeping an idea list to write
and publish.
Chapter Two (pp. 13) informs
readers about how to publish in peer-reviewed academic journals and non-refereed
professional journals, by examining the following seven topics:
·
searching for and selecting
topics,
·
writing and revising the
manuscript,
·
mechanics of manuscript
preparation,
·
deciding where to submit the
manuscript,
·
working with editors,
·
seeking feedback,
·
and building momentum by getting
multiple articles from a single idea.
Chapter Three (pp. 26) presents
three doctoral candidates’ recommendations for making publications before
graduation, which, among other things, include using software (such as Endnote,
Excel, and Microsoft Onenote notebooks), filing and recording information, and
making outlines for drafts. To build writing skills, readers are advised to
give and receive constructive feedback, find time to write, and overcome
obstacles (for instance, the writers’ voice issue).
Chapter Four (pp. 44) presents
the issue of integrating reading with writing to be a self-critical writer and
develop scholarly discourse, which “entails finding something out and then
demonstrating to others why it is significant” (p. 47). In doing so, self-critical
writers can learn to evaluate others’ argument. To help scholars develop their
roles as self-critical writers, this chapter includes a “figure of dimensions
of claims and their vulnerability to rejection” (p. 55) and an exhibit called
“linking a critical approach to your reading with a self-critical approach to
your writing” (pp. 59-60), for the purpose of self-checking.
Chapter Five (pp. 62) discusses
writing for publication with tension, using several true-to-life narratives of
being graduate supervisors, writing teachers and researchers, and graduate
students.
Chapter Six (pp. 75) gives a
rationale for and an approach to publishing articles from a dissertation or
thesis.
Part Two (pp. 89) comprises four
Chapters Seven to Ten. Chapter Seven (pp. 91) lists stylistic mistakes that new
scholars may make. These pitfalls include verbosity, ambiguity and
insubstantiality. Verbosity refers to wordiness, contrary to being concise.
Ambiguity may result from a poor choice of words or illogical deduction.
Insubstantiality contains oversimplification and gross generalization. Such
mistakes are displayed with examples in their original and revised versions, so
that readers can easily compare the two versions. This chapter also provides
methods to avoid these pitfalls—revising, contextualizing, balancing and
modeling.
In Chapter Eight (pp. 102), the
author of this chapter, Monica Lee, believes that good writing is about
“communication, experience and authenticity” of a real person (p. 103). Good
writing has a voice “that draws us in and engages us as readers” (p. 103). The
use of voice is about the meaning conveyed by “emotion or personal experience”
(p. 103) of oneself to others. To help develop a scholarly voice, Lee presents
a useful tool kit.
Chapter Nine (pp. 115) draws the
readers’ attention to common problems which affect the quality of writing,
including those of form and structure, logic and sequencing as well as
organization. It also mentions improving readability by checking grammar, spelling
and punctuation.
Chapter Ten (pp. 125) focuses on
conceptualizing and articulating a research problem and a purpose statement. Analytical
skills are a key factor in this context.
Part Three Preparing Scholarly
Manuscripts (pp. 143) consists of Chapter Eleven to Sixteen to provide
guidance to specific types of academic writing.
Chapter Eleven (pp. 145) discusses
literature reviews as the foundation of a study. It provides Cooper’s Taxonomy
(1985, 1988, & 2003) in the fields of psychology and education to structure
such reviews. The development of reviews entails six characteristics: focus,
goal, perspective, coverage, organization and audience. The characteristic of focus,
which is picked here as an example, means the type of literature review:
reports of research outcomes, research methods, theoretical literature, and
practical or applied literature. The author provides three tables to guide
writers on how to analyze research and theoretical articles in this chapter
(pp.153-156). After writers have analyzed the literature, they can draft
reviews. The author of this chapter, Susan Imel, lists questions as prompts to
convert the information from literature analysis to drafting reviews. She
states that drafting reviews is not linear and needs reflection at different stages.
Chapters Twelve to Fourteen deal
with qualitative and quantitative research papers as well as those of mixed
methods. Chapter Twelve (pp. 161) gives some formats and models in figures (pp.
162-163). Chapter Thirteen (pp. 179)
deals with the probability of having quantitative manuscripts published.
In Chapter Fourteen (pp. 191), which
addresses mixed methods, the authors - Isadore, David and Carole Newman - contend
that there is a gap in literature in this field by showing proof that the two
authoritative research organizations, the American Educational Research
Association (AERA) and the American Psychological Association (APA) do not provide
standards for publishing mixed-method research. Accordingly, the authors
collect and present mixed-method designs from Tashakkori and Teddlie (2003),
Tashakkori and Newman (2010) and Tashakkori, Brown and Borghasie (2009).
Chapter Fifteen (pp. 209)
explores the field of writing theory and conceptual and opinion articles, which
are less structured and more informal. There are five steps to follow in
writing theory articles: conceptualizing, operationalizing, applying,
(dis)confirming and refining (Lynham 2002). Conceptual articles are more
abstract and the concepts they present are not proven yet, compared with theory
articles. Opinion articles, rarely reviewed, cover editorials, forums,
letters to the editor, and book reviews. The author of this
chapter, Gary N. McLean, offers suggestions for writing each type.
In Chapter Sixteen (pp. 222), the
authors Tim Hatcher and Kimberly S. McDonald address the question of how to
write and publish nonrefereed manuscripts, for instance, editorials and book
reviews. The authors provide advice by giving numerous examples, mainly in
the field of human resource development (HRD).
Part Four (pp. 237), as its title
“Reflecting on the Writing and Publishing Process” suggests, emphasizes the
process of writing for publication.
In Chapter Seventeen (pp. 239),
Robert Donmoyer associates writing with reviewing articles. The author discusses
five aspects to teach a writer how to become a reviewer: decentering as
experiencing and practicing, grasping grammar rules, providing positive
feedback, learning through positive features, and comparing one’s own critique
with others’. In Donmoyer’s opinion, reviews should be simple, tacit, explicit
and not overwhelming.
Chapter Eighteen (pp. 251) deals
with the question of how to respond to reviewers’ and editors’ feedback. The
author, Stephen D. Brookfield, shares his personal experiences of submitting
articles and drafting significant revisions for most of them. Brookfield
Chapter Nineteen (pp. 262)
examines global and cross-cultural issues in scholarly publishing in terms of
journal exposure and coverage as well as underrepresented
non-native-English-speaking (NNES) international scholars. This chapter
pinpoints four specific problems and gives four recommendations thereafter. The
problems faced by international authors are: identifying a research topic,
designing a research study, language issues, and ethnic problems. By doing so,
the authors hope that NNES scholars can submit their manuscripts to
English-language Western publications and “reach out to a wider global
readership” (p. 271).
Chapter Twenty (pp. 274) presents
some advice for collaborative writing as coauthors.
The authors of this chapter, Ann I. Nevin, Jacqueline S. Thousand, and Richard
A. Villa, use tables and a model along with texts to provide six strategies for
writing in collaboration.
The last chapter of Part Four Writing
as Mentoring (pp. 293) explores mentorship in writing between faculty
members and doctoral students. A table (p. 305) is used to reflect four phases
of a mentoring relationship in the development of scholarly writing.
This last part of the book lists
shared resources as references under different categories for emerging scholars
who are evolving into productive writers. It is highly useful to anyone
developing or thinking about developing a manuscript.
This handbook has a large
audience, from emerging to experienced scholars, from doctoral students to
committee chairs. This book is written for all scholars in various disciplines.
Its primary audience is graduate students and emerging scholars. The secondary
audience is faculty members and journal editors. Part One and Part Three are
especially helpful, useful, relevant and applicable, especially to PhD students.
Part One is general and fundamental from a holistic view, giving the reader a
blueprint of scholarly writing. Part Three is specific and detailed. It covers
guidance of both research and conceptual papers, which can be uses for writing
term papers, conference proposals, journal articles, and finally, dissertations.
Part Four may be more beneficial to advanced scholars, since it provides expertise
in fields like reviewing or mentoring. The present book is comprehensive in
content: every step or detail of writing for publication is covered here.
Writing and publishing skills are
accompanied with a broad spectrum of personal and professional advice, which is
another merit. The book displays those skills with a personal touch, which
means that readers can clearly feel as if the chapter authors, with their
experience and expertise, were talking to them directly. This style of the book
makes readers feel closer to its authors and texts. From the very beginning, in
Chapter one, the author manages to build up a relationship of identification
and trust with her readers by self-narration “Neither my life experiences nor
my academic experiences prepared me for scholarly writing and publications” (p.
3), and thus, this rapport enables them as novices to head for the adventure of
scholarly writing and publishing with her. The following chapters are congruent
with the first one in terms of rhetoric and language, which are engaging and
well-written, using plain English to illustrate and interpret the scholarly
writing process, involvement, factors, challenges, and problems.
Thanks to engagement and close
readership, readers tend to be inspired by those insights and advice and to
reflect on their own experiences. Reading this book could also trigger the
readers’ previous knowledge in other types of writing or in their mother-tongue
writings in case they are non-English natives. Therefore, it bridges
connections from the well-known concepts or schema to novel ones. When reading
the present book, readers becomes more aware of and confident in writing and
submitting manuscripts to academic journals, these predicted and involved
challenges becoming conquerable to them.
The fourth merit of the book is
that it
was not written in an ivory tower far removed from the realities of the actual
writing. That means that the book is not purely
theoretical and conceptual. The Handbook of Scholarly Writing and Publishing
is a product of research and reflects the authors’ own experience as scholars, doctoral students and faculty members. The target groups
of readers of this book are the same groups as the respective chapter authors. This commonality
further bridges the gap between writing academic papers and transforming them
into publishable manuscripts for doctoral students and emerging scholars.
There are some weaknesses which, however,
do not diminish or belittle the overall value of the present book. For
instance, there is an array of discipline perspectives by chapter authors
coming from different fields such as special education, adult education,
communication or management. However, perspectives are not so comprehensive
since most of the chapter authors come from education or other fields of social
sciences. Hence, readers from other disciplines, especially with natural-science
backgrounds, may find it difficult to identify, and, thus, will benefit less
from this book in their process of academic writing and publishing. It is here suggestes that, in
upcoming editions, certain chapters be written by authors from a wider range of disciplines,
such as natural science, life science or engineering.
Moreover, the present book
collects chapters written by 34 scholars from different countries to show its
consideration of diverse readers with respect to different cultural and
language backgrounds. Nevertheless, only five of them are from countries in
which English is not the first language, and only three of the authors work in
non-English-speaking universities. Moreover, there is only one article titled International
and Cross-Cultural Issues in Scholarly Publishing (pp. 262) in the fourth
part, exploring academic writing from NNES scholars’ standing. Therefore, the
book is not really be global in terms of coverage and exposure. It appears weak
in lacking NNES scholars’ reflexions on challenges and their experience in
writing and publishing manuscripts. This
shortcoming can be overcome by integrating NNES scholars’ as
authors in some chapters, for instance, in those named Writing with authority (pp. 91) or Writing as mentoring (pp. 293). This can also be
done by inviting scholars from NNES
countries to write chapters and contribute their insights and experience in
scholarly writing and publishing, in particular, their way of writing in
English instead of in their respective native languages to compose scholarly
manuscripts and make them accepted by academic journals. In this way, this handbook will be more comprehensive,
global, accessible to a larger audience, and beneficial to a wider
range of readers from NNES countries.
From an overall
perspective, the Handbook
of Scholarly Writing and Publishing, is a well-organized, logical, engaging
and practical resource which can help emerging and experienced scholars as well
as faculty members and reviewers in general. In particular, the book may be
more helpful and beneficial to emerging scholars, regardless of their field of
study, due to its target readers, its coverage, and its language usage. The
choice of words is delicate, which means that there is no colloquial English,
jargon, or terminology which may frustrate NNES or international scholars. Its
merits consists in giving insightful advice, sharing personal and true-to-life
experience and offering guidance to scholars in many fields of study. The
merits of the book outnumber its shortcomings, which distinguishes this book
from others.
References
Cooper,
H. M. (1985). A taxonomy of literature review. Paper presented at
the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago.
Cooper,
H. M. (1988). Organizing knowledge syntheses: A taxonomy of literature
reviews. Knowledge in Society, I (1), 105-126.
Cooper,
H. M. (2003). Editorials. Psychological Bulletin, 129(1),
3-9.
Lynham,
S. A. (2002). Theory building in applied disciplines. Advances in Developing
Human Resources, 4.
Tashakkori,
A., Brown, L. M., & Borghese, P. (2009). Integrated methods for studying a
systemic conceptualization of stress and coping. In K. Collins, A. Onwuegbuzie
& Q. Jiao (Eds.), Toward a broader understanding of stress and
coping: Mixed methods approaches. Kyogle ,
Australia
Tashakkori,
A., & Newman, I. (2010). Mixed methods:
Integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches to research. In E. Baker,
P. Peterson & B. McGaw (Eds.), The encyclopedia of international
education (3 ed.). New York
Tashakkori.
A., & Teddlie, C. (Eds.) (2003). Handbook of mixed methods in social and
behavioral research. Thousand Oaks ,
CA
Xuan Jiang
Department of Teaching and
Learning