The Pain of Writing

Writing is painful. Sorry, that tends to be everyone's reality. It is hard work to think through complex ideas and find the best way to present them so that someone else can understand them.

A few general thoughts, first if you find it very hard to write, I recommend this book:

Saltzman, J. (1993). If You Can Talk, You Can Write. Grand Central Publishing.

As you can see, it is an older book, so it is available very cheaply online. It will reduce your anxiety and will help you get something down on paper. I strongly recommend reading your paper aloud; you will catch many errors. If nothing else, read to your dog or cat, they will find you fascinating! You will reduce the number of needed corrections by simply rereading your paper carefully.

Be prepared and open to many revisions. Your reviewers have had much more experience in writing at this level, trust their guidance. At a doctoral level, revisions are simply part of the writing process. Professionals have to rewrite their papers many times, keep in mind that the final article you see in the journal has little resemblance to where it started. As an example, a recent article that I wrote with colleagues went through 25 revisions (yes, I counted!).

What should you look for in revisions? Read a sentence aloud and see if you can restate it more clearly. You want to be very precise in your meaning. Let me give you an example from one of my papers that I wrote with some colleagues. Here is the original draft of the first few sentences of the paper:

By 2020, one in six American citizens will be elderly or over 65 years old (U.S. Census, 1993). The number of oldest old individuals over 85 years old will reach 6.6 million in 2020 and is expected to triple by 2050 and reach 18-19 million (Administration on Aging [AoA], 2010). The rapid growth of the elderly and the oldest-old population is a growing concern to the healthcare system, as it must prepare to provide increased support services.

Here is the final version:

The 2000 U.S. Census (2001) reported 4.2 million people were over the age of 85 (1.5% of the population), this group has been designated the “the oldest-old” by demographers, and is the most rapidly growing age group.  Currently the cost of health service utilization for the oldest-old averages $22,000 per year compared to $9,000 for individuals 65-74 years old (Krause, 2010).

What is different? The 2^nd version is much clearer, concise, and more to the point that the first.

Why publish?

Why should you go through all of the work required to get your paper published? Publishing your paper means that your work is added to the professional literature. As the basis of science is building on other people's work, your paper becomes the next step in the evolution of the topic. Having it be peer reviewed, means other professionals who are experts on the topic have given you advice and helped you to make it a true contribution.

Publishing is also a step in getting yourself recognized as an expert in your own right. It establishes that you are a professional and knowledgeable about your field. Publishing is not an easy task, it often requires careful work and the willingness to put your work in front of experts, but it is worth it in the long run!

Anonymity

One of the most common reasons I return a newly submitted manuscript is because the authors did not remove all identifying information, such as the where the study was done (or the IRB location). Why is this important? The basis of peer review is that it is double blind, meaning the author does not know who the reviewers are nor the reviewers know who conducted the study. Everyone has personal biases, and making the review anonymous provides some safe guards.

From the reviewer side, he or she may know the author or the institution and if the reviewer was aware of it, he or she might be easier on the author or tougher based upon their beliefs. From the author side, they may feel the need to argue or complain to the reviewer if he or she was known. Keeping it anonymous provides distance for both parties.

Why your article is accepted

An interesting article on why an editor might accept your paper. https://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-accepted-your-article

Researcher Interview: Dr. Dick Larkin

Dr. Larkin is a core faculty member in the School of Public Policy and Administration

1. Please briefly describe your current research.

Early in 2015 Drs. John Dickey, Ian Birdall, Kwang Sik Kim, and I published the book, Supernumerary Intelligence: A new approach to analytics for management. Since the publication of the book I have been collaborating with Drs. Dickey and Birdsall to refine our work in the field of supernumerary intelligence. Our efforts center on finding ways to assist managers in all sectors of society to identify, organize, analyze, and report various types of data and information to produce better planning and management decisions. We have developed a multistep process for planning and management decision making that is aided by a proprietary computer program, Quantitative Cyber Quest (CQC), and an open access data base, the Public Administration Genome Project (PAGP). Our goal is to provide managers with the tools necessary to incorporate quantitative and qualitative data with experiential knowledge into a rational planning and decision making process.

A second related research area is data visualization. My wife Dr. Martha Larkin, who also works at Walden in the Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership, and I have been exploring how to present data in meaningful ways to various types of audiences. With the advent of big data and analytics we are being overwhelmed with information that is not always easy to comprehend or act upon.  Our goal is to discover how to tell stories with visual representations of data that improve the understanding of the information being presented and aid in making useful decisions based on the data.

2. How did you come to be in this area of study?

Dr. John Dickey was my major profession during my PhD work at Virginia Tech. We remained in contact after I completed my degree and we started collaborating on various projects. Dr. Dickey developed CQC and PAGP and we started using them in our work. A little later I met another one of Dr. Dickey’s former graduate students, Dr. Ian Birdsall, when he became a contributing faculty member in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Walden. The three of us share both personal and intellectual interests and our research collaboration is the outgrowth of those interests. Dr. Dickey laid the groundwork and Dr. Birdsall and I hopefully have been able to contribute to his efforts.

My interest in data visualization started when I learned of the work of Edward Tufte. I acquired some of Dr. Tufte’s books and was fortunate enough to attend one of his workshops in person. Several years later Martha attended a Tufte workshop and we started talking about how we could apply his work to our fields, share our knowledge with our colleagues, and advance the field of data visualization. 

3. What do like best about doing research?

The thing I like best about doing research is the opportunity it provides me to work with great colleagues like John, Ian, and of course Martha. We collaborate in an attempt to advance the state of knowledge in our chosen fields. When we have the opportunity to work together in person I enjoy the comradery and intellectual stimulation. I always come away from our sessions feeling energized and just a little smarter than before.

4. What do you dislike the most about doing research?

I think most of my Walden colleagues would agree that research is 20% inspiration and 80% perspiration. The literature reviews and brainstorming are of little value if you are not willing to do the far less enjoyable work of refining your work, testing it, and constantly writing and rewriting your findings to make them concise and meaningful.

5. Advice for new researchers who would like to be published?

The best advice that I think I ever received about being published was that at some point in time you must stop reading and start writing. Get your ideas down on paper, review them, and share them with others for their comments, suggestions, and yes criticisms. Present your work at professional conferences and seek out comments from those who attend the sessions. You also may be fortunate enough to have a journal editor who is interested in your research topic attend your session. Also, starting small and working your way up may be a good strategy. Find high quality regional or professional organization sectional journals and submit your work there. Once you become familiar with the peer review and publishing process you can move on to the more prestigious journals or book publishers.