Tag: Academic writing

Writing

The power of writing in company

eleanormacpherson
Image created by generated by Stable Diffusion

To be a successful academic writer, maintaining focus is crucial. While this may seem like an obvious principle, it took me years to fully grasp its significance. This blog, the second in a series on strategies for academic writing, delves into the power of writing with others and how it can enhance productivity.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself trapped in a debilitating writer’s block. As a precariously employed academic, the inability to write was nothing short of disastrous. Papers and grant applications serve as the currency that secures the next academic contract, making the stakes even higher.

Like many people, my anxiety levels soared during this period. Endless worries consumed my mind. My children suffered from isolation and inadequate homeschooling, which fell on my unqualified shoulders. My family, residing thousands of miles away, became unreachable due to travel bans. The fragile state of the Malawian health system added to the weight on my shoulders. Insomnia became my constant companion, exacerbating the challenges I faced.

However, hitting rock bottom ultimately became a transformative moment in my journey. It was during one of those despairing nights, at 3 am, that I stumbled upon Rowena Murray’s Facebook group—a discovery that opened the doors to a world of structured writing retreats. Even amidst the pandemic, researchers ingeniously adapted Rowena’s renowned approach, originally designed for in-person events, and transformed it into virtual gatherings. Within this virtual space, I found solace in a community predominantly composed of women who, like me, struggled to balance their academic writing pursuits with their childcare responsibilities.

The approach itself was surprisingly simple yet remarkably effective. By joining the group, setting goals, eliminating distractions (such as phones, internet browsing, and email), and keeping the camera on to maintain accountability, I experienced a newfound focus solely on writing. Each session concluded with reflections on the progress made, with quantifiable measurements such as the number of words written or pages edited. Through this process, I gained fascinating insights into my own writing process:

  • I discovered how long it took me to write 100 words.
  • I recognized my tendency to get stuck on the first sentence.
  • I realized how little time I had previously dedicated to editing.
  • I learned that I was not alone in finding academic writing challenging.
  • I understood how sharing writing struggles with others could foster greater productivity.

Within this supportive space, women had the opportunity to share their writing struggles and celebrate their successes—a radical experience in its own right. It was here that I also met my incredible academic writing partner, Pip, with whom I continue to collaborate on a weekly basis. The impact of this approach is evident in my CV, boasting the publication of 10 academic papers.

If you find yourself grappling with a writing project, I encourage you to give this approach a try:

  • Consider asking a friend to become your writing partner.
  • Explore Rowena Murray’s Facebook group for a supportive community.
  • Experiment with Focusmate, a free platform that allows you to match with people working on tasks.

Although I have since transitioned away from full-time academia, the power of this approach remains ingrained within me. It has become an invaluable tool that I carry forward, empowering me in all areas of my life.

Writing

Finding focus in a distracting world

eleanormacpherson
Image created by generated by Stable Diffusion

To be a successful academic writer, focus is crucial. While this may seem obvious, it took me years to fully grasp its significance. This blog is the first in a series discussing strategies for improving focus in academic writing. Here, I explore the impact of our physical environment on writing productivity and provide practical suggestions to try.

In recent years, UK universities have been engaged in building projects, revamping old structures, and constructing new ones. These buildings often showcase glass, metal, and extensive open-plan workspaces. Although open-plan offices are designed to promote collaboration and communication, mounting evidence suggests that they actually diminish productivity and morale across various industries.

As a dyslexic academic, an open-plan environment posed immense challenges for me. Sharing a space with others led to an abundance of distractions, exacerbating the difficulty of concentration. The noise from phone calls, meetings, and even simple breathing hindered my focus. After returning to work from my second maternity leave, I discovered that my desk in a small shared office had been reassigned.

I was relocated to an open-plan building adjacent to the kitchen. While the space was flooded with natural light, it had a severe impact on my academic writing productivity, which, in turn, affected my mental health. I attempted to drown out the sounds of the microwave and co-worker conversations with headphones, but nothing could mask the constant smells and foot traffic.

Having been diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 7, I have always struggled with sitting and focusing. I mostly relied on my own coping mechanisms and remained silent about my difficulties. However, my experience in the open-plan office compelled me to request accommodation. Despite initial hesitation from my line manager, I persisted, and my request was eventually granted. Returning to an office with walls significantly improved both my writing productivity and mental well-being. I understand that not everyone can request an alternative desk, and advocating for such changes can be stressful. However, if you have a disability, it is worthwhile to raise the issue with HR or your line manager.

Creating a dedicated writing space that is comfortable and well-organised can greatly enhance focus and creativity. After years of trial and error, I discovered that I am most productive at 6 am, sitting at my desk at home with a cup of coffee, and I fiercely guard this time. But it took me years to uncover this routine.

If you are struggling with your writing, gaining a better understanding of what works for you can be tremendously helpful. The key to focused writing is shorter, concentrated writing periods rather than longer, more distracted ones. Set aside one hour to experiment, tracking your progress in each session. Take note of how the working environment makes you feel, and establish quantifiable goals such as the number of words written or pages edited.

Here are some strategies to consider:

  • Get out of the office: Find an alternative workspace, such as a university or public library, a café, or a meeting room—anywhere you can have control over your surroundings and minimise interruptions.
  • Utilise different spaces at home: If space permits, try sitting in different rooms at different times of the day. If you have a home desk, make it as inviting as possible. Keep your desk clear and use a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to ensure writing comfort. Consider setting an early alarm to get up and start your writing session at your desk.
  • In the office: If feasible, experiment with your working hours. Arrive early or stay later (while ensuring you take breaks and adjust accordingly—this doesn’t mean advocating for longer days) when foot traffic is lower. Try using noise-cancelling headphones and curate a playlist of familiar music that doesn’t distract you. While I’ve never enjoyed the sensation of wearing headphones, I can tolerate it for one hour. Remember to communicate to your co-workers that you are working on an important task and cannot be disturbed.

By implementing these strategies and creating a conducive physical environment, you can enhance your focus, productivity, and overall writing experience.

Writing

Can we ethically use #AI in #academicwriting?

eleanormacpherson
Image generated by Stable Diffusion an AI text to image model

I’m teaching an academic writing course for the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme. It is Week 11 of the 12-week course, and we focused on editing academic writing. During the session, we considered mistakes commonly made by junior academic writers and discussed strategies to improve the writing process.

One aspect of academic writing we spent time discussing was artificial intelligence tools (AI), and how academics can ethically engage with AI to help with the paper writing process.

ChatGPT is the latest in a series of artificial intelligence algorithms known as “large language models”. It has been trained on hundreds of millions of lines of text from the internet and uses this “training set” to generate text predictions in response to prompts or questions. Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been intense debate in the academic community about the ethics of using large language models in scientific manuscripts. ChatGPT has been listed as an author on papers posted to pre-print servers such as medrXiv and has achieved infamy by being banned by some academic journals.

Using AI programmes such as ChatGPT to assist with writing raises important questions about academic integrity, and how authors maintain originality and authenticity in their writing.

During my teaching session, we discussed ways in which junior academic writers could ethically use AI programmes to support their paper writing. Some examples include:

Inspiration: Most academics find starting to write an academic paper challenging. Knowing that we must fill the blank page with thousands of carefully crafted words can feel daunting. This feeling can be particularly acute when it’s early in your career. Getting those first few sentences down can feel like climbing Mount Everest. Novice writers often spend disproportionate time crafting the perfect first sentence. ChatGPT can help solidify ideas by entering prompts and editing the generated texts. One way to start is by entering keywords, research objectives or hypotheses and asking ChatGPT to generate ideas for the introduction helping to overcome early stumbling blocks.

Organisation: Develop a scaffold outline for each section of your manuscript. Once you have begun to generate your ideas on the page, you can use ChatGPT to help organise and develop a structure for your manuscript. You can use a writing exercise such as freewriting (an approach developed by Peter Elbow to help academics generate text) and then build on this using prompts in ChatGPT to develop headings and sub-headings to help organise your ideas more coherently.

Editing: Some excellent editors offer a wide range of beneficial services… but usually at a cost (monetary for professional editors, or time for supervisors and colleagues). Novice writers often have their academic papers rejected early in submission because their work does not sufficiently follow academic writing principles. Using ChatGPT to help edit sentences, by feeding the programme text written by students, and prompting the programme to remove superfluous words and make sentences more concise. This could help speed up the editing process without asking the programme to generate sentences from scratch, which crosses an ethical line. Using ChatGPT will not replace an editor, but it can help authors, particularly those who use English as a second language – or have dyslexia – to edit their sentences quickly. Switching to an AI programme such as Paperpal that comprehensively checks manuscripts for language and technical and grammatical style before paper submission could help to diversify academic publishing by giving authors a better chance at success. To successfully write academic papers, you need to engage deeply with your subject matter, writing extensively in your field, to present empirical findings you need to have rigorously analysed your data and demonstrate you have done this. AI programmes will do none of this work. They have significant limitations in terms of accuracy, context, and bias, they may suggest inaccurate information. ChatGPT should not be used for referencing academic papers. Therefore, use AI software to help bring out the best in your academic writing, but it does not replace critical thinking, which still requires many work hours.

Writing

Dealing with emotions and reviewers’ comments

eleanormacpherson

I once made the mistake of allowing my mother to read the revise and resubmit (RnR) for a journal article. Reading the reviewers’ judgements on my work left her furious. She wanted to write to them outlining why their critiques of my work were egregiously wrong. To be clear, my mum is not an academic, but just a ferociously protective mother.

Getting feedback from reviewers can trigger many emotions. The stakes can feel high, especially earlier in your career, when publications are so important for securing fellowships and jobs. As a dyslexic academic those emotions can often take me back to school when I frequently felt inadequate and frustrated when submitting work. Making time to respond to reviewers’ comments and reworking drafts can be daunting, especially if it has taken months and sometimes years to craft the first submission. Praise in academia is rare and enduring what can feel like constant negativity is challenging.

Here are some strategies I think are useful when managing emotional responses to reviewers’ comments:

  • If you have a negative reaction to an RnR, put it aside for 48 hours. During that time, resist the urge to look, but allow yourself to feel all your emotions. It is okay to take a moment to feel upset and disappointed, you have poured precious time and energy into crafting the draft.
  • Once you return to them, hopefully feeling calmer, try not to catastrophise and allow your inner critic to paralyse you. It is excellent news that you have received your comments. The journal editor has deemed it strong enough to be sent out for peer review and has secured reviewers who were willing to engage in your work, which is a great achievement; try to frame it positively in your mind.
  • Remember that acting as a reviewer is frequently unacknowledged labour and since the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer academics are making time to review. Another academic agreed to make time to engage with your work. At its best, the peer review process can strengthen your paper by helping you clarify your argument and the contribution your work is making; in the worst case scenario, at least someone has read your work!
  • Try to separate yourself from your work. As academics, our sense of self can be mistakenly caught up in our identity and sense of self. Try to remind yourself that the reviewer is not evaluating you as a person, just the words they see on the page.
  • Unfortunately, peer reviews are far from perfect, and reviewers can cross ethical lines and get things wrong. If you are concerned about a point, a reviewer has made you write privately to the editor handling the submission for clarification. I would not rush to do this, but instead, rebut it with evidence of why you feel the response has been misinterpreted. Be specific when making this case and clear in your reasoning, but try not to overwrite it. It is always a tricky balance between too much and too little detail but try to stick to the facts and move on.
  • When constructing the response letter, I always maintain politeness. I thank the reviewers at the start and try to maintain a positive tone, even in the face of the harshest comments. There is nothing to be gained by writing in an aggressive or passive-aggressive manner, it won’t help you reach the end of the process more quickly.

The reviewers’ comments that enraged my mother helped me substantially strengthen my paper’s argument, and it continues to be one of the papers I am most proud to have written. I will always be grateful to the reviewers for reading and engaging with my paper, despite the many hours it took me to respond.