Publishing

Carolyn Miller has a collection of her publications online and available. (She was a professor of mine at NCSU.)

Clancy Ratliff recommends the idea and posts a review of hers.

What do you think? Should we put all our work online so that someone clicking on our name can find it all? How do non-superstars get publications to agree to this?

This weekend one of my goals has been/is to finish a paper for publication. I began the paper last March or so, gave it at a conference in May, and worked on it a bit throughout the summer and at the beginning of the Thanksgiving break. I need to actually get it sent out, so that’s on my agenda for the weekend.

But, of course, why write when you can read education blogs? So, I found a post by Academic Cog that so speaks to where I am and how I am and why I have been putting this off.

I spent the morning finding and rereading all of my notes-and-quotes and drafts of that one old article I never finished, and have been trying to figure out where to go from there.

It was exhausting. I think part of it is that the article is exhausting.

Yes, exactly.

However, if you keep reading, you discover that Academic Cog figured out a way out of the morass. Hopefully I will as well.

The image is from orangeusd.k12.ca.us.

By the way there is an interesting and relevant article in the latest MLA Profession 2010 called “Valuing Digital Scholarship.” The article does not mention wikipedia though (but does mention “wiki sites” in general and in passing)!

It does bring up the questions of legitimacy in online and digital media however. An interesting quote they quote:

“…in its ‘Report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion,’ the MLA asserts, ‘Departments and institutions should recognize the legitimacy of scholarship produced in new media, whether by individuals or in collaboration, and create procedures for evaluating these forms of scholarship’ (11)” (178).

GCaye on a CHE thread brought this up on a thread about referencing Wikipedia pages you have edited on your CV. (General consensus is NO.)

I think that eventually digital scholarship will be worth more than it is right now in most places. I certainly hope so, since a lot of my work is digital. However, I will also say that oftentimes, the digital is simply a new medium of production and is not significantly different from the paper versions.

For example, my article in Scribe is online, but is no different than it would be for a print journal. On the other hand, my article in The CEA Forum is online but includes hyperlinks, which does make it different. Kairos, on the other hand, is very digital scholarship intensive. The most recent article on Topoi, for example, is a video.

Right now the school I am at values digital scholarship at the same level it values paper scholarship, so I have not had to fight for the acceptance of my work. That is a positive and valuable attribute of my college.

I am working on my MLA paper on “Avoiding Academic Rigor Mortis” and, as always, refining my CV. I was reading through a thread on the CHE and it was about whether you are suited for a teaching-intensive university.

Then someone suggested questions be composed for a research-intensive university.

Here is a research one (relevant to social and natural sciences that are article oriented):

What series is most similar to the number of articles you published this year, have in press, have under review, have in preparation?

A. 4,3,4,4
B. 2,1,3,3
C. 1,0,1,4

Numbers can be adjusted according to discipline. But not very funny.

This made me laugh because my numbers this year are incredibly high (almost inflated, since I have only been publishing the last two years). My numbers would be
D. 11, 6, 1, 16

The 16 are actually written and I could send them to an SC within a day. I didn’t count the 8 that are in earlier stages of preparation.

My numbers last December would have been
D. 8, 5, 14, 6

Does that mean I am a research person? No, it doesn’t. What it means is that I have found that publication is necessary for hiring, even at the CC level, and I have made it a priority to get my work out and published. (Note I only have one out right now. That’s something I need to correct this week.)

I am in a text-field, so I don’t have to have years developing data. I did one data-driven article which is complete, but not published anywhere. (In preparation that wasn’t counted I have one additional data-driven article. But I have the data, not the article.) I have two primary-source resource rich articles. The others are all knowledge-driven, pedagogically-based articles.

My numbers for 1988-2008 would have been
D. 0, 0, 0, 0

There was a second part to the post:

Here’s another:

A. I have too many good research ideas to follow up on, so I give many away to students and colleagues.
B. I always have some good ideas that I’m working on.
C. I find it hard to come up with really good ideas to work on.

I think I would have to say A right now. I have helped three fledgling professionals (in the same situation I am, older and trying to break in) get works accepted at conferences. I have suggested works to one of them that I could do without a lot of effort, because she needs the experience. If I had grad students or even interested upper-level undergraduates, I could give them additional work that could become a publication.

So, I guess, right now, I am in the “research-intensive” phase of my life.

If you average out my work over my lifetime since leaving graduate school, I have about one article out for each year, about one article in press for each year, about one article in preparation for each year. That doesn’t make me a strong research person.

What it does say is that if I think it needs to be done, I can get it done.

I’ve done most of these while teaching 5/5 (2008-2009) or 6/6 (2009-2010). Note that this semester, at a new job, I am teaching 4.5 and have only submitted two things, one of which has been published.

The end of the year is a good time for reflection and this tells me some things I might not have thought about otherwise.

Fifteen months ago I sent off four short experience posts for the book Publishing for Profit and Promotion. I immediately received an acknowledgement of the receipt of my texts, along with the notification that the entries would be collated and I would hear from them soon.

I did not hear from them again.

This has recently tickled my fancy and got my mind to dreaming up scenarios or, at least, enrobing previously-experienced scenarios for this re-visioned stage appearance.

Perhaps, like my encyclopedia article on the reproductive experiences of missionary women in the twentieth century, too few people submitted and the work will not, after all, go to press.

Perhaps, like my series of letters addressed to various physicians over the course of my life, the publisher withdrew from the publication of the work for no noted reason.

Perhaps, like my primary-source rich chapter on Civil War holidays, the publisher vanished from the pages of history due to the economic recession.

Perhaps, like my series of poems accepted to a work on mothering, the publisher has decided that too many of the authors are from the same geographic region (Rochester, NY), because those of us from other places (Houston, TX) did not identify our cities?

Perhaps, like my work on important themes in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, the work is being published but my notification has been destroyed by the summary closing of a school-owned email account. Having searched for that online this week, however, I am happy to say that it, at least, has seen the publicaton dawn (twenty-odd days ago, in fact).

Publishing for Profit and Promotion, however, seems not to exist anywhere besides hopeful grad students’ curriculum vitae and ancient CFP’s.

Perhaps the grad students are more accurate in their representation of the first email as an acceptance than I thought? But, having perused the emails once again, I see that my email was sent to them at 4:30 on a Saturday afternoon (hardworking academic that I am!) and that they replied promptly, one might say even excessively promptly, at 5:10 that same afternoon. (Clearly I am not the only hardworking academic.) I do not think that one can read unconditional acceptance in this:

Thank you very much for your submissions. We will get back to you once we’ve collated the pieces.

Although, perhaps, an unwary grad student would assume that since collation means “assembly of written information into a standard order” (as per Google’s web definitions) that they are all being accepted. From my lofty perspective of multiple rejections, I figure they are much more likely to be organizing what they have and accepting and rejecting those based on appropriateness and/or quality in comparison to the rest of the works they received. Certainly, however, an overeager grad student (or adjunct) might be forgiven for assuming they meant acceptance, if not for that forty minute turn-around time.

There is hope for publication soon/eventually as the editor’s previous works of collations are available through a strong publisher whose work I have come to admire (Parlor Press).

So the question now becomes:
Should I hold off a bit longer in the hopes that this long-expected tome will be birthed or should I repurpose these short pieces (outside of my 2011 MLA presentation of which they form a significant part) into blog posts?

They are the perfect length for a quick read and would give me four days’ worth of posts to augment my present post-holiday perspectives. I know that in some fields, and for all I know my own, over a year to publication is not unheard of. The due date for the original anecdotes was October 1, 2009. Mine were turned in September 19, 2009. (Yes, I know. You are amazed at my promptness. Perhaps you will admire even more the previously unrevealed fact that I sent my book to the publisher two whole weeks before the deadline?)

I am not yet determined on a course of action, except to compose this blog post which muses on what, after all, happens to received-yet-not-accepted/rejected-academic-writing when it enters NeverNeverLand.

In the spirit of full-disclosure, I will note that I had not realized quite how closely my MLA presentation on “Avoiding Academic Rigor Mortis” parallels the title of the publication. I have some other anecdotes to send out, if the editors need more.

The image is from Kitty Kitsch.

“Utilizing Scholarship to Improve Teaching”

Dr. Suanna H. Davis
English professor, Houston Community College: Central

For most of my experience as an adjunct, I focused exclusively on teaching my students. That was a mistake. “Students suffer when instructors stagnate—and although this certainly can happen to full-timers, it is built into the structure of contingent appointments” (Thompson 43) due to the fact that adjuncts rarely have the financial or temporal resources to support professional development. Realistically full-time adjuncting necessitates teaching classes at multiple campuses —increasing the possibility of burn out. This hazard really extends to all teaching faculty, since teaching-focused colleges regularly require heavy course commitments, which situate full-time faculty in a similar predicament, albeit with greater institutional support.

Wanting to regain my commitment and engagement with the profession, I began looking for opportunities to participate outside of the classroom. Conferences seemed to offer the opportunity to change my emotional and professional trajectory. And they have. Regular participation in conferences has reinvigorated my classroom by expanding my teaching repertoire. Each conference I attend offers opportunities to learn from other professionals in a model of cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, and Newman 456). Sometimes I can immediately apply what I learned at the conference to my classroom, such as when I attended the medieval conference a week prior to teaching British Literature I in the May miniterm. I built an assignment on the Exeter Riddles based on four different presentations (Thomas P. Klein; William F. Klein; Cavell; Petty) and used versions of the handouts from three of them. Other times I have been given a new direction for deliberation, such as when I attended the Hemingway conference even though I only teach a single Hemingway story in my freshman writing about literature course. I learn so much when I attend conferences and that helps me remember how much fun it can be to learn.

Conferences have also allowed me to share my successful strategies for the classroom and thus have helped me once again see myself as part of a community participating in the “professional knowledge landscape” (Cladinin and Connelly 24). As a result of this, I act as a member of the discipline. During my participation in a professional development event created specifically for adjuncts (Page) on one of my campuses, I heard about the need for a new course. Since by this time I felt renewed confidence in my teaching, I approached the relevant chairs and secured the opportunity to create and teach those classes.

Taking part in conferences has helped me focus on the scholarship of teaching, making my work more contextually driven. This professional engagement has led to “increases in student achievement” (Fullan and Hargreaves 2), which is the goal of my teaching. The next step beyond conferences is publishing, a step that few adjuncts devote time or effort to, despite the fact that doing so can differentiate them from the hundreds of other applicants applying to the same limited pool of full-time positions. My personal revelation of the necessity of pursuing publication came more than a year after I began looking for and attending conferences again. The exigencies of the modern academic position appear to require publications for hiring and certainly reward them in tenure and promotion, even in the most teaching-focused schools. One position for which I was a finalist went tot eh candidate with publications, a circumstance a dean in the final interview made clear. While publications are not proof of our effectiveness as teachers, it is documentation of our commitment to the profession. Teaching-focused articles can illuminate our beliefs and practices to an audience searching for proof of our hireability.

As instructors there is a bonus to connecting our pedagogy to scholarship. The scholarship of teaching offers the opportunity to improve our profession and is an area in which adjuncts, as the quintessential roving scholars, can contribute effectively. Pedagogy scholarship can illuminate our own teaching and help develop stronger classroom activities and better pedagogical tools across the discipline.

Works Cited
Cavell, Megan. “Looming Danger and Dangerous Looms: Violence and Weaving in Riddle 56.” The 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies. May 14, 2010.
Cladinin, Jean and Michael Connelly. “Teachers’ Professional Knowledge Landscapes: Teacher Stories—Stories of Teachers—School Stories—Stories of Schools.” Educational Research 25.3 (1996): 24-30. Web. March 9, 2010.
Collins, Allan, John Seely Brown, and Susan E. Newman. “Cognitive Apprenticeship: Towards a Synthesis of Schooling and Apprenticeship.” Knowing, Learning, and Instruction: Essays in Honor of Robert Glaser. Lauren Resnick, editor. New York: Routledge, 1989. 454-460. Web. 1 November 2010.
Fullan, Michael and Andy Hargreaves. Teacher Development and Educational Change. London: Routledge, 1992. Print.
Jarma, Donna. “Elephants in the Room?: Teach ‘Em to Sing.” Two-Year College Association: Southwest. Oklahoma City, OK. 31 October-1 November 2008.
Klein, Thomas P. “Rune Names and Riddling in the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem.” The 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies. May 14, 2010.
Klein, William F. “Can the Riddles Be Translated?” The 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies. May 14, 2010.
Page, Suzy. Adjunct Certification Program. Lone Star College: Kingwood, Kingwood, Texas. Spring 2009.
Petty, Christina. “A Clever One-Liner: Evidence for an Alternate Set-Up of the Warp-Weighted Loom.” The 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies. May 13, 2010.
Thompson, Karen. “Contingent Faculty and Student Learning: Welcome to the Strativersity.” New Directions for Higher Education 123 (Fall 2003): 41-48. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 September 2009.

Dr. Suanna H. Davis
English professor, Houston Community College: Central

A friend of mine from when I was teaching ft at the SLAC is now a PhD and teaching Hebrew. He talks in a recent post about the need for peer review for online journals.

In short, the distinction between print and digital media matters far, far less than the path to publication, for most forms of research. Only if that path goes through an academic editor’s hands, and more desirably through several peer reviewers’ hands as well, will tenure and promotion committees consider the work to be “scholarship.”

This is an important aspect of credibility for journals in general and particularly touches on my thoughts as we reconsider the course for Central Thoughts.

A 330-Word Guide to Writing Book Proposals is written by a person who says he/she “was a book editor (200 titles), a magazine editor (1,000 + articles) and, briefly, a literary agent.”

There’s no sense in investing a huge amount of time in something that isn’t going to be published and for which a writer is not going to be paid.

Contract first. Book second. Hear me now or hear me later after you’ve wasted a year or more of your life.

At any rate, I had an email exchange today with a writer who is struggling with the proposal. I sent that writer this document I dredged up from the depths of my back-up hard drive. It struck me that it might be of use to other suffering writers. And so, here it is.

Van der Leun then goes on to give five easily understood rules.

Also, you could look at this post of notes I took from publishers on How to Get Published.

I don’t have any high impact journal publications, but I mostly publish what-works articles. That’s the pedagogy of teaching, which is the same stuff that I like to read.

However, The Chronicle of Higher Education had an interesting article on the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research.

It’s worth reading, especially if you also read the comments to get both sides of the story.