My One-Week International Journal Article Writing Workshop

I created this workshop in response to demand from institutions outside of the United States. It is a guide to the complex world of journal article publishing and is designed to give writers practical experience in publishing article in peer-reviewed journals. The goal of the workshop is to aid participants in taking their papers from classroom or conference quality to journal quality and in overcoming anxiety about academic publishing in the process. The course has largely the same content as my U.S. based courses, but it is slightly altered for scholars who may not speak English as a native language and who may be unfamiliar with the U.S. publishing world. I travel to the interested research institute or university and do intensive work with participants for two two-to-three-hour sessions a day for five days (generally Monday through Friday although sometimes Sunday through Thursday). All participants also have a one-hour one-on-one session with me. Participants have writing they must do before our intensive week together and after it, with the deadline for submission occurring one to two months after our week together. During the sessions, I explain the publication process and shares strategies for achieving success in the academic writing arena, including setting up a work schedule, identifying appropriate journals for submission, clarifying arguments, organizing material, working with editors, using citation software, and writing query letters.

The host university dictates who can enroll. Those who most benefit are (1) graduate students who want to publish an essay they wrote for the classroom or part of their master’s thesis, (2) doctoral candidates hoping to publish a chapter from their dissertation in progress, (3) postdoctoral fellows aiming to establish themselves, and (4) faculty under pressure to publish for jobs or tenure. Enrollment is limited. No more than fifteen participants will be accepted into each workshop to ensure the quality of the experience for the participants. Since it is a workshop, with the group aiding each individual during the workshop, more than fifteen participants quickly becomes untenable. ​The host university is responsible for the costs of my transportation to the university, lodging, and meals, as well as the workshop fee itself. Since publications are essential to getting a job or tenure at many universities today, this workshop is a strong investment in the future of your graduate students and junior faculty.

To reduce my travel schedule, I often decline offers to teach this workshop, since institutions can use my workbook Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success to run workshops without me, by organizing interested faculty and graduate students into groups and assigning the book. 

To learn more about the workshop, you can see images from my international workshop in Malawi or watch the video of me explaining a bit about the need for the workshop, made during the international workshop in Indonesia.

Selected Praise for the International Workshop

“I liked the to-the-point, instrumental, practical nature of the workshop. To my mind such a workshop should be mandatory for all research staff.”

“This course should be compulsory for all academic writers. It provides essential information about the writing and publishing process which most people have to learn on their own through lengthy trial-and-error processes. Here it is passed on in a very efficient (and fun!) way.”

“The course would be very useful for many environments outside Europe and North America where training of this kind is never provided. There are lots of clever people around, they just need good advice and proper stimulation.”

“The workshop has been one of the better social events at the institute for some time. A lot of fun and joy and laughter combined with serious work.”

“The message that ‘you can get published’ is the workshop’s biggest achievement.”