Writing collaborative publications during your PhD

This guest post is by Kylie Budge, a PhD student in art/design education at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She is on the editorial team of the theteachingtomtom, in her role at RMIT University as a Learning and Teaching Advisor

Writing comes hard to some of us but, like most things, it does get easier with practice. One thing’s for sure, if you’re interested in an academic career post-PhD (or are employed in one now) writing and the ability to produce academic publications is a critical skill. Inger wrote a post a short while ago about why publishing during your PhD is a must for enhancing your career prospects. This post is more about how to get started in publishing and a look at collaborative writing as one way to make this happen.

Academic publications (journal articles, conference papers and so on) are either collaboratively written or sole-authored. I would strongly suggest trying the collaborative route for your first experience. However – and this needs to be emphasised – I’m not suggesting starting with a collaborative publication because it’s easy to do and sole-authored work is difficult. It’s not as simple as that. Despite the difficulties that can arise, generating and bouncing ideas off your writing partners is often less lonely, more interesting and more productive than doing it alone. Especially for a first-timer.

Getting started means finding people to write with. In my discipline, collaborative articles are often written by very small teams (2-3 people). In other disciplines (eg. the sciences), it’s common for large groups of authors to publish together. Even if you’re brand new to academia you already know one or two academics – your supervisor/s. You could consider writing with them, especially if you’d like to write about something stemming from your PhD topic. Chances are they will be interested in it too if they’re supervising your PhD project.

If you’d rather not write with your supervisor, then seek out people who are interested in similar topics and talk to them about what they’re writing about and your ideas. Over time your common interests will clarify and they might invite you to write with them,or you can be brave and suggest a writing project to them. Once you’ve got a couple of people (or more) to write with and a project in mind you’re ready to start. But before you do, there are a few other things to think about.

Collaborative writing involves a combination of writing and process styles. Not everyone works or writes the same way. It may take you a few experiences of writing collaboratively before you work out what your preferred writing process is and the kind of writing that suits you best.

Conceptualise the project with your fellow collaborators as much as you can before you start writing the article itself. This means talking together about what the article is going to focus on, particularly the contributions to knowledge. Try white boarding together as a group as you synthesise your ideas and clarify purpose of your article.

As you conceptualise the focus of your writing project, choose a publication or conference to target the final product of your labours. Wendy Belcher’s “Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success” has some great strategies. Consciously focus on the style of the publication or conference you are targeting as you write.

Set a timeframe to work in. What period of time suits the authors to have the finished article written in? Twelve weeks? Longer? If you’re writing for a conference a deadline will be set by the organisers, which can make this decision easier.

Make use of the great collaborative writing tools out there. I’ve used Google Docs for two recent collaborative projects with great success. Any collaborative writing tool that enables you all to write in the one space (thus saving version control headaches involved when emailing drafts to each other) is worth its weight in gold.

In the draft stage, ask each person to write in different colours so that it’s easy to see who has written what. This way if you want to clarify, or question, a part of the writing you know who has contributed the area and can work from there. At the final stage, when all writers are happy, you can then change the text colour to black.

Work out what the collaborative writing process will be in advance. Will each person write a section or not? Some collaborative writers are able to work quite fluidly, dipping in and out of various sections without carving out sections for specific authors to write. Other combinations of people are not able to work like this. There is no one right way in terms of process. But it is important to talk about and to work out an agreed process to try.

Discuss and review the article you are writing at regular points during the writing project. This keeps everyone on track.

When you feel ready, give a good draft of the article to a ‘critical friend’ to read and ask for feedback on aspects that you (the group of writers) nominate – eg. structure, flow, engagement of the reader etc. Ensure the critical friend you approach has academic publications and can give feedback with a degree of experience.

Collaborative writing can be hugely rewarding for early career academic writers, however, communicating honestly and well with your writing partners is key! An added bonus is you can establish some strong networks which can lead you into more exciting writing adventures in the future.

Have you written papers with others? Or with your supervisors? Do you have any tips or techniques to share – or traps to look out for?

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on home and place

Kylie Budge is a PhD student in art/design education at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She is also the co-editor of a new blog, the theteachingtomtom, in her role at RMIT University as a Learning and Teaching Advisor.

What do place and home mean to you? This topic has been swimming around in my head quite a bit recently. I’ve been preoccupied on two levels: in a physical sense and on a more figurative level in relation to the idea of academic discipline. This post has come about because I’m curious to see if others immersed in doing a PhD experience anything like this when they think about ‘home’ and ‘place’.

Firstly, on a physical level, I simply have too many places. By this I mean, during any given working week I have 4 physical places I use for PhD work and my part-time employment. For the PhD I have both a home study space and a space recently provided for me by my university, which you think would be ideal. I mean isn’t it good to have to have options? However, what I’ve found is it can also be somewhat confusing and disorienting. Questions like, what day is it? and, where am I going? frequently pop into my head. And not to mention the myriad of data storage questions it can generate!

I value my home study space for the quiet and solitude it provides. But, quite frankly, on some days both the fridge and the couch are just too enticing. And it’s begun to feel a wee bit isolating. This last part is a surprise to me. Going from full-time work (from years and years of teaching and working in busy, people-centred workplaces) to full-time study I thought I’d never be sick of the quiet and sense of being alone that comes with studying from home. I thought I’d be reveling in it, to be quite frank. And most days I do enjoy it.

But recently I started to feel very isolated and actually began to crave seeing people on my part-time work days. I never expected that to happen! So when my university recently offered a study space I tentatively said yes, and am presently trialling it to see if it will work. On my first day there I met 5 new people and was quite pleasantly overwhelmed. It’s too soon yet to say how that space will pan out.

My other two ‘places’ or ‘homes’ during the week are 2 different campuses at the university where I am employed part-time. So, together I have 4 physical places for study/work. Some people might find this too fracturing or to use my favourite word, discombobulating. What I’ve recently realised is that I thrive in the dynamism that all these different physical places provide. Well, for now I do. Ask me in 12 months and we’ll see if I have a different opinion.

The more figurative aspect of ‘home’ or ‘place’ I’ve been tinkering with is in the context of academic discipline. Caroline Kreber writes on the topic of academic disciplines and their role, meaning and power in universities. She highlights how much discipline matters to academics and the profound role they play in university pedagogy.

My PhD topic (creative practice and teaching of art/design in universities) perches me squarely on the fence of two (if not three) quite different disciplines. And while I understand that I’m not alone in this situation, it often provokes questions for me about where my disciplinary home might be. Or even if I have one.

Before enrolling, I went through quite a tricky period searching for supervisors because I (and my topic) didn’t fit neatly into most ways universities organise their disciplines and their academics. This created lots of days when I wondered if there was something wrong with my topic. Surely the fact that there is no easy or natural home for me is an indicator that something is not quite right, I thought (and sometimes still do).

I view with envy students who have a PhD topic which centres them squarely in a discipline without question. Such a disciplinary home must feel safe and warm and nurturing I imagine. Academically, you must know where to call ‘home’ and where you envisage working (in a disciplinary sense) once the PhD is done.

The strange truth is, I like both of my possible disciplinary homes and can feel quite comfortable in either – even if I often have this sense that I’m not going to be there for long. In a disciplinary sense, I feel very transient. Interestingly I’m starting to get used to this and it’s beginning to feel alright. Bourdieu wrote a lot about ‘field’ or ‘habitus’ and the play of power and agency, and the resulting anxieties when we have to navigate a range of these.

I think I know what he means in a disciplinary sense. However, I’ve also realised I don’t have to feel like a visitor in either discipline but can benefit from being able to move between and work within both disciplinary homes. It’s made me think that perhaps universities should start softening those disciplinary boundaries for those of us who don’t quite fit into one in particular. Who knows what creative outcomes might flow from such new spaces and places? What do you think?

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