Academic writers should not despair when they received apparently negative critiques, according to Associate Professor Denis Cryle.

“Some people just focus on a critical sentence and forget the positive advice," he said.

Dr Cryle spoke last week to about twenty academic staff and postgraduate students about the techniques and styles deployed in journal writing. He presented a workshop as part of a series of research seminars organised for the Infocom Communications Research Group by Dr Chengju Huang.

The following is advice from Dr Cryle: In order to publish journal articles, we should also be using journal articles for research and learn to target one or two journals in our particular field for the article we wish to contribute. This may include drawing on work already published in the journal as part of your literature review. If we think of journal article writing as a discipline, we should set aside a sizeable block of ‘quality’ time and establish a multi-step process over several months, depending on the state and sophistication of the initial draft.

It is important to test out concepts and ideas by presenting them at a Faculty or University seminar or conference as a form of ‘quality check’. Even then, you will find that the writing up involves much more work than putting together a series of Powerpoint slides and summaries. These are useful at the outset in establishing conceptual and organisational frameworks, but you will need to elaborate further and possibly undertake additional research on selective points.

It is always tempting to rush journal article preparation when under pressure to ‘publish or perish’ but you should also have pre-submission strategies to avoid this including running your work past a colleague or supervisor. By then, you may be so ‘close’ to your drafts that you have forgotten to include something obvious. And then, you may need to run final checks of the literature to see whether something new has appeared, especially on hot topics.

It is rare that an article will not have to be amended in some way before publication but you should find this a relatively simple task if your preparation has been thorough. Reviewing is a labour of love and most of those involved are experienced academics who can provide impartial if sometimes critical advice. The feedback you receive will usually be more positive than negative and can be of lasting value if appropriately received.