Writing Research Articles |

Getting Published
Cheryl J. Craig, Ph.D.
Professor
Endowed Chair of Urban Education
Texas A&M University, USA
The first time to address this theme free of
 My Research Program
 My Research Method
Reviewing articles for over 20 Web of Science/
SCI/Tier 1 journals
On 3 Editorial Boards
Review Grants from National
Funding Agencies
Canada The Netherlands
Belgium
Kazakhstan
Czech Republic
Israel

Brazil
Australia
New Zealand

What Is Researchable And Able To Be Disseminated

The ability to see big and see
small opens the floodgates for
us being able “to wail the
right questions…”
Questions in This Discussion

Graduate classes
Bookended those
questions with my own
Conference presentations suggestions

A representative journal
editor at journal talks
The Organization of this
Presentation

Writing Articles

Getting Published
PART ONE

Writing Articles:
The questions others
have asked me
Questions
How do you know what to write about?

Why would someone be interested in my research?

How do you figure out the literature base? conduct a literature review?

What needs to be included in the research methodology section?

How much of my manuscript needs to be dedicated to data presentation?

What constitutes an effective introduction and an effective conclusion to a paper?

What about the references? Do readers really pay attention to them?

What needs to be included in an abstract?

1) How do you know what to write
about?
DISCOVERY
• The tensions and questions our
research participants and we
have lead us to DISCOVERY
ACCUMULATION OF RESEARCH
& ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH
• Through adding to the body of
research, I am aiding to the
ACCUMULATION OF RESEARCH &
ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH in
particular areas of the field
Key Forces

ACCUMULATION OF
RESEARCH AND
DISCOVERY
ADVANCEMENT OF
RESEARCH
2)Why would someone be interested
in my research?
 Hundreds of journals
Something drew you Many others share
in the field to which
to your particular your research
your scholarship can
area of focus interest
be disseminated
 “The pearl of
great price”— Discovery and
the seeing of advancement of
Having only one
research research in a
or two people
phenomena in very balanced
big and small way
way,
 Jean Clandinin:
 If every one of us as researchers in the room
went to the same classroom at the same time to
conduct research, there would still be plenty left
for others to research and write about!!!
The studies would be different because of different
combinations of Schwab’s commonplaces

Teacher

Milieu Learner

Subject Matter
“There is always more to know [and] know
about…”
---Schwab
The same teacher participant said:
The outcomes of the studies
differed because there were
different research questions and
different synergies that developed
between herself as a teacher and
each of the two researchers

Lee Shulman in the 1980s had two doctoral students who

worked with the same teacher participant…
3) How do you figure out the
literature base? conduct a
literature review?
My literature base is connected to how I describe my
research studies in my funding proposals and eventually in
the introduction and abstracts of my articles.

The descriptions/language I use point me in the direction

of the strands of research I am drawing on.
I try to not have more than four or five strands of literature
Within four or five themes
 Sub-themes
Pearl Metaphor paper in the
Journal of Curriculum Studies.

Teaching Metaphors
• Novel and Stock
Metaphors
• Emergent and Ascribed
Metaphors
 Beijaard, D., Meijer, P. C., & Verloop, N. (2004).
Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional
identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(2), 107-
128.
This article has been cited 1520 times in Google Scholar
and 316 times in the Web of Science:
Dutch Example
We confined our search for the relevant literature to the period
1988–2000, because it was in this period that teachers’ professional
identity emerged as a research area.
 (1) a general Web of Science search, resulting in 12 hits with
‘professional identity’ in the title and related to teachers and teacher
education; and
 (2) an ERIC search, resulting in 18 hits with ‘professional identity’ in the
title and/or as a major identifier and related to teachers and teacher
education (5 hits were the same as in the Web of Science search).
 In total, we collected 25 studies, three of which were not useful for our
purpose (though listed in the search systems, these studies were not
explicitly concerned with teachers’ professional identity).
 After reading the remaining studies (N=22), we consulted their lists of
references and collected an additional group of studies.
 We also found some additional studies by accident. These studies were not
listed in any formal search system but seemed important to us too.
Particularly in literature reviews, which can draw on only small numbers of
studies, this is a normal procedure to follow (Mertens, 1998).

Dutch Example Cont’d

We took the selected studies (N=22) as the basis for our analysis. These
studies were analyzed with regard to their
(1) Purpose
(2) definition of professional identity
(3) concepts related to this definition
(4) methodology, and
(5) major findings.
 Based on their focus of attention, the studies we systematically
analyzed can be divided into three categories:
 (1) studies in which the focus was on teachers’ professional identity
formation
 (2) studies in which the focus was on the identification of characteristics
of teachers’ professional identity as perceived by the teachers
themselves or as identified by the researchers from the data they
collected
 (3) studies in which professional identity was (re)presented by teachers’
stories told and written
 My personal suggestion
provides an example of the
number of research strands
and sub-research strands
 The Dutch example shows
how one can move from the
larger body of literature to the
number of articles that
specifically pertain to your
personal inquiry in a succinct
way
4) What needs to be included in the
research methodology section?
Research methodology sections now need to include:
• Research Tools/ Sub-Categories of Tools, How/When they will be
used and the Forms of Data that will be produced
• Overview of the research method, which often includes theoretical
origins and ontological/epistemological commitments
• Veracity of the Accounts
• Introduction to the Study (Description of Research Site,
Introduction to Participant, Introduction to Researcher/Research
Team, and so forth)
Also, research methodology sections frequently include
visuals and charts that are able to convey lots of
information in a small amount of space
5) How much of my manuscript needs
to be dedicated to data presentation?
A Blunt Response

Data

Data

Data
(6) What constitutes an effective
introduction and an effective
conclusion to a paper?
Introduction

1 page
 Use different language
than your abstract
 Include your key words
 Weave in your
highlights but employ
different expressions
Conclusion

A bookend piece to your introduction.

Introduction and conclusion need to fit together like a pair of
gloves
They should be outgrowths of one another.
Point to discoveries and suggest the additional accumulation
of the literature and/or advancement of the literature.
Explicitly tell your readers the nature of your discovery and how
it adds to literature accumulation and advancement
(7) What about the references? Do
readers really pay attention to them?
References as a form of genealogy.

• Show where thoughts are coming from and whose work

we are reading.
• Show intellectual roots (do not forget to cite your
advisors)
• Situate studies in the national/international literature
References

• Reveal whether researchers are parochial and local

in research outlook or whether they are broad-
minded and global (Reviewers really pay attention to
this point!)
Bibliographies

• Seasoned researchers use bibliographies to dig deeper

into particular ideas and to find pieces of literature they
can include in their current studies
Dutch Example
 In total, we collected 25 studies, three of which were not useful for
our purpose (though listed in the search systems, these studies
were not explicitly concerned with teachers’ professional identity).
After reading the remaining studies (N=22), we consulted their lists
of references and collected an additional group of studies. We found
these additional studies by accident. These studies were not listed
in any formal search system but seemed important to us too.
Particularly in literature reviews, which can draw on only small
numbers of studies, this is a normal procedure to follow (Mertens,
1998)
8) What needs to be included in
an abstract?
 Abstract
• Abstracts are between 5 and 8 sentences
• Other academics may follow your work on the basis of
your abstract
• Consider an abstract as an invitation to your writing
and research program
• Make certain your abstract provides all the pertinent
details as well as an invitational quality to the writing
Advice that Emerald Publishing offers
• Follow the chronology of the paper and use its
headings as guidelines
• Do not include unnecessary detail
• You are writing for an audience "in the know" – you can
use the technical language of your discipline or
profession, providing you communicate your meaning
clearly, and bear in mind that you are writing to an
international audience.
Advice that Emerald Publishing offers Cont’d

• Make sure that what you write "flows" properly, that

there are "connecting words" (i.e., consequently,
moreover, for example, the benefits of this study, as a
result, etc.) and/or the points you make are not
disjointed but follow on from one another
• Use the active rather than the passive voice, i.e., "The
study tested" rather than "It was tested in this study".
• The style of writing should be dense, and sentences
will probably be longer than usual
Emerald furthermore advises

• Cut out any unnecessary words that do not add to the

meaning, but
• Make sure that the abstract is not so "cut" as to be
unreadable; use full sentences, direct and indirect
articles, connecting words, etc. An abstract should be
continuous prose, not notes
Journals are requiring structured abstracts

• A structured abstract is one organized around

headings dictated by the journal
• Here is the structured abstract for my 2012 article,
Tensions in Teacher Development and Community:
Variations on a Recurring School Reform Theme,
which was carried by Teachers College Record
Structured Abstract Example

 Background/Context: Conducted in the fourth-largest urban center

in the United States, this research depicts how different reform
initiatives were introduced to one middle school context over the
decade from 1999 to 2009.
Structured Abstract Example

 Purposes/Objectives/Research Question/Focus of Study: The

study focuses on teachers’ experiences of three reform endeavors
and how tensions in teacher knowledge and community developed
as a consequence of each. The study’s overall purpose is to
contribute the often-overlooked teacher perspective to the
curriculum, teaching, and school reform literatures
Structured Abstract Example

 Population/Participants/Subjects: Nineteen educators,

including several main teacher participants as well as some
supporting teacher and administrator participants, contributed
anonymously to the narrative account
Structured Abstract Example

 Research Design: Narrative inquiry is the research method used to

excavate a story serial that emerged during the longitudinal research
study. Four interpretive devices—broadening, burrowing, storying
and restorying, and fictionalization—aided in the comparison and
contrast of three eruptions in teacher community that occurred as a
result of the different reform emphases. Presented in story serial
form, these eruptions suggest a rhythm to school reform. The article
ends with a discussion of the value of narrative inquiry in studying
phenomena at the interstices of teacher knowledge, teacher
community, school milieu, and organized school reform.
Connections between fine- and coarse-grained inquiries are made,
and the notion of stories traveling from one school site to another is
also probed. Finally, the idea of a perennial educational problem
being made public and visible through an innovative research
approach is taken up, along with some suggestions concerning how
school reform could more productively be lived.
PART TWO:
GETTING PUBLISHED
 • Some journals have very specific
missions
The things I have • Others have very broad missions
learned from • Target your article not only based on
being an Editor: the reputation of the journal, but also
how good the journal fits with your
paper’s content
Journals announce special
issues inviting paper
contributions at least a year in
advance of their publication
All editors do not see all
submissions to journals;
Only Editors-in-Chief see and
coordinate all submissions
Editors on different Editorial Boards play
different roles. My roles are:
• Escalation Papers (split decision papers)
• Arbitrator of leading scholars’ work
• Nurturer of beginning scholarship
• International reviewer
What are some common problems I
see with submissions?
Failure to speak to international
audience members in the
introduction, in the middle and at the
end of submitted manuscripts
Failure to include international
literature
Failure to adequately describe one’s
research methodology, particularly
how the data is interpreted
Leaving out a strand of literature or
including so much literature the
paper is incomprehensible
Presenting findings before presenting
one’s data (sometimes at the
exclusion of presenting data)
Weak conclusions because authors
have run out of momentum and/or
time
International Papers
Are authors disadvantaged because they come from
countries other than the United States and England?

My answer

“It depends”
But the explicitly
international journals—such
as Teaching and Teacher
Education and Teachers and
Teaching: Theory and
Practice—go out of their
ways to be international
• For each issue, editors make
certain there are 6 or so
countries represented
• Papers in particular issues are
disseminated around a theme
• Australian Journal of
Education and the Asia-Pacific
Journal of Education, for
example, welcome
manuscripts from all over the
world
Lastly, the personal advice I would
offer authors
 Keep a running list of your review
comments and address all of
those suggestions in all of your
papers
When you receive the revise and
resubmit decision, write the letter
to the editor outlining the changes
you will make before you revise
your manuscript. This way you
commit yourself to making the
changes.
Do not feel forced to make changes that
compromise your research program or your
personal integrity as a researcher. Make it
clear what you will change but also explain in
detail what you will not change and why
What is the original [idea]?...I suppose it is the source, the
deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in
nets of words and swings them shining into the boat…

(Le Guin, 1989)

Researchers are always “compost[ing]” in the hope
of “yielding idea-seeds” to grow new [research]
stories” (Le Guin, 1989)
 I hope I have answered
some questions that you
may have been too shy to
“wail” and

that I given some food for

thought for your future
writing and publishing
endeavors
I Welcome Your
Comments And Queries