Workshop+1


 * ASME & LIME Medical Education Research Development**
 * 4th Annual Yorkshire Regional Meeting**
 * Tuesday 14 June 2011**
 * Workshop: Writing for Publication Tutor: Rebecca O’Rourke **


 * Session Outline and Aims**


 * 1) **Introduction and welcome**


 * Round Robin: Names**

This workshop is the first of a series of three. The workshops will operate with a confidentiality rule – whatever we say or do this afternoon stays within these walls. We won’t repeat or break confidences. To introduce myself, I am an adult educator with no clinical practice experience. I was a member of the Lifelong Learning Institute at Leeds until its closure in 2009. My specialist field of research and teaching is Academic and Creative Writing, and I taught and supervised research students on the PG Clinical Education programmes at Leeds for several years. At the moment, I have a Research Fellowship at the University of Nottingham where I am conducting a public consultation - Talking about Death and Dying – linked to the development of research bids around communication and end of life. I regularly peer review articles for a range of pedagogic research and education journals and I am an Associate Editor for //Arts and Humanities in Higher Education//, an A-rated international journal.

I have many years experience of working with writers on their writing, often in the context of publishing their work but perhaps more frequently in the writing of the writing. This has taught me two things. First, that writing and publishing are “practices of mystery” – people know that writing and publishing happen, but are not always sure how or whether it will happen for them.

Can you remember the first time you met somebody in person who you had come to know through their writing? Did it feel strange? A little unreal?

If so, what you experienced was the process of mystification which writing and publishing generates. That process is rarely helpful when you come to do your own writing and publishing. Which brings me to the second thing I have learnt from my encounters with writing for publication, which is that writing is – for most people some of the time and for some people most of the time - a highly emotionally charged activity. Some people love writing, and relish publication; but I have met more people whose relationship to writing is ambivalent – and a few for whom ‘phobic’ would be a better description.

I have three ambitions for these workshops:
 * To demystify the process of writing and publication
 * To introduce you to strategies for developing good writing habits
 * To build your resilience as journal contributors


 * Activity: Complete Reflectionnaire**
 * Activity: Discuss in pairs**
 * Round Robin – Comments and Answer to Final Q**
 * Revise session structure if need be / appropriate and/or show how it fits what I prepared**


 * Writing for Publication**

Very occasionally, after presenting a paper at a seminar or conference, the author is approached by a journal editor who invites them to write up and submit their paper for publication. Very occasionally … Even when this happens, the conference paper has to be re-written before submission and it will invariably come back from peer review with several suggestions for amendment prior to acceptance. More frequently, a colleague or mentor – perhaps a supervisor or members of a project team – suggests either collaborating to write something or suggests that the author send a piece to Journal X. Sometimes an author has systematically reviewed possible journals and targeted one as part of a developed writing / publishing schedule which maximises the publishing potential of their research project/ Less frequently, the author reviews the range of possible journals in her field - or just picks one – and sends something to them. Having, of course, first read the Journal’s Author and Style Guidelines.


 * Questions for the Group: Who has experienced any of these routes to publication?**
 * How did it go**?

What I want to do next is to explore this process of reviewing and targeting journals, using some of the ideas developed by Rowena Murray. In Chapter 2 of her book, //Writing for Academic Journals//, Rowena Murray (2005) provides a method for analysing target journals which enables you to understand – in depth and detail – the kind of papers which the journal publishes, and the style and form you will need to adopt when submitting a paper to them. The analysis is very detailed – it may be too detailed for some, but it is undeniably helpful in providing a clear structure for writing. Rowena Murray makes the important point that this reading runs alongside the activity of writing about the writing you are planning to do. What you read will influence what you write. She cautions against the idea of waiting until you know exactly what you need to write before starting to write. You need to write iteratively or in layers – to snack, rather binge ….

What we are going to do is work in pairs to analyse the structure of a range of different types of articles. As we do this, two things (at least!) should happen:
 * 1) You will get a feel for the different types of journals and their articles which will help you to decide which you are going to target
 * 2) You will understood the way that article needs to be structured – in terms of its argument and its language – to appeal to the editor and reviewers..


 * Activity: Working in pairs – 1 article each – make a note of the style, structure and layout of the article. Use the Targetting Journals Checklist to help you analyse the article. Use Brown’s 8 and Murray’s 10 prompts (which are usually used at the drafting / writing stage and will be very helpful in writing your own abstracts and outlining papers!) to help you see how the structure is signalled and built up.**
 * Follow up**

We have meetings planned for Wednesday July 6th and 27th. I should like you to work on your goals –and your writing. We will negotiate the precise content of these sessions via e-mail. For example – read and respond to a draft; understand feedback on rejected / asking for revisions acceptances; explore writing processes, etc.

Contact details for Rebecca O'Rourke: create8@btinternet.com