Academic writing is a process full of pain, struggle, frustration, and you name it… but academic writing is also satisfying, engaging, and meaningful to name a few of the many positive aspects. Especially the feeling of getting a paper accepted for publication is a very enjoyable and satisfying moment. “Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success” by Wendy Laura Belcher is a basic and accessible introduction to academic writing aimed at newcomers to the art of writing.
Academic writing is a tough discipline requiring practice and practice means writing. The book advocates that practice does not necessarily equal doing as much writing as possible, but rather writing frequently. Frequent writing, as in writing daily, is an essential takeaway. This hands-on book not only gives an introduction to what academic writing is but also specific advice and suggestions about how to structure and implement good writing habits. The foundation and part of the framing of the book are to guide the reader towards revising an unpublished paper into something publishable.
The book takes the reader through the entire process from getting started such as dealing with writing obstacles, to structure a paper, writing academically, and finally submitting and handling rejections and revisions (and rejections is a steadfast companion in academic writing). The book is full of different forms that can be used to make specific plans and notes to support the writing progress. If you like me do not like to make notes in books several of the forms can be downloaded from the author’s website. This book is not a silver bullet guarantying high-quality publications but provides an interesting hands-on approach filled with anecdotes about systematical structure a writing process, things to consider, and steps to take. Research questions, choice of method, and arguments are still up to the author. The “Twelve Weeks” part of the title should not be taken too literally. This is mainly how the general composition of the book is framed.
A topic that is explicit and implicit brought up several times is that tasks need to be finished. In all academic disciplines, authors are struggling with finishing different aspects of writing a paper such as finding the appropriate related literature, reading enough material, documenting the findings, etc. The book stresses that tasks must come to an end and provides advice about how to end different tasks. Besides providing advice about the “perfect” writing process the author also recognizes that it’s impossible to do everything perfectly. The book contains several tips and tricks for speeding up some tasks, what to keep the focus on, and what to skip or pay less attention to.
The main intended audience is newcomers with a past experience based on writing college reports and authors entering the publishing game. The book is also slightly aimed at US-based authors as several pieces of advice are specifically focusing on this group. However, this is only a detail. Authors all around the globe will benefit from this book.
The described processes are intended for the humanities and social sciences. I also found it relevant for my field, Human-Computer Interaction, broadly speaking a cross-disciplinary field between natural science and social science. However, not all recommendations fit spot on with all scientific disciplines. For example, the book makes recommendations about which publishing outlets academic authors should aim for. For each type of outlet, the book includes a short description of advantages and disadvantages. This provides an excellent overview of outlets, but not all the advantages and disadvantages are true for all scientific disciplines. Conferences are described as less appealing and attractive outlets. In Human-Computer Interaction, several conferences are rated at the same level as top journals. The book should be considered a general framework for writing a paper, but you still need to get familiar with your particular research field specifications.
For authors already established in the world of academic writing, this book might be somewhat disappointing at first sight as it does not touch much upon improving writing habits or effectiveness, etc. of experienced writers. However, it both touches academic writing on a general basic level (e.g., how to structure a paper) and on a more detailed level (e.g., different approaches to opening a paper) that might be useful for experienced writers. Experienced authors can use the book as a reference book. For authors like me, that can be categorized as being in an intermediate state, several parts and steps are well known, but I sure did learn new things and repetition should never be underestimated. For example, the book includes a list of writing obstacles and how to fight or consider them. All authors have by guarantee been dealing with several of these obstacles, and chances are that most are at least still dealing with some. Also, the suggestions about good academic writing in English were useful to me. Especially since English is not my native language.
I wish I had been introduced to this book years ago. I can recommend this book to authors starting to write academic papers and students working on larger projects such as a master thesis. This is a good introduction going through all essential stages of writing and publishing paper. It will be an excellent read in your writing breaks. The lightness of the book also makes it a read that will not be seen as yet an obstacle during the writing process. This book should be provided to all Ph.D. students day one along with receiving the office key, access card, etc.