An interesting piece by Rob Kitchin about writing and publishing.

For the past few years I’ve co-taught a professional development course for doctoral students on completing a thesis, getting a job, and publishing.  The course draws liberally on a book I co-wrote with the late Duncan Fuller entitled, The Academics’ Guide to Publishing.  One thing we did not really cover in the book was how to write and place pieces that have impact, rather providing more general advice about getting through the peer review process.

The general careers advice mantra of academia is now ‘publish or perish’.  Often what is published and its utility and value can be somewhat overlooked — if a piece got published it is assumed it must have some inherent value.  And yet a common observation is that most journal articles seem to be barely read, let alone cited.

Both authors and editors want to publish material that is both read and cited, so what is required to produce work that editors are delighted to accept and readers find so useful that they want to cite in their own work?

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