Write It Up: Practical Strategies for Writing and Publishing Journal Articles

by Paul J. Silvia

Write It Up is for anyone writing an empirical article in APA Style®, from beginners facing their first article to old dogs looking for new writing strategies.

Your academic writing will be more influential if you approach it reflectively and strategically. Based on his experience as an author, journal editor, and peer reviewer, Paul J. Silvia offers sage and witty advice on problems like picking journals; cultivating the right tone and style for your article; managing collaborative projects and coauthors; crafting effective Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion sections; and submitting and resubmitting papers to journals.

Write It Up

• readable and amusing, the book shows, step-by-step, how to plan and organize your academic writing; and
• uses real-world examples to illustrate how to improve writing style and write better articles.

Genres: Writing, Academia, Nonfiction, Academic, Research, Science, Psychology

221 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2014

Reviews

[Ivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Silvia writes for the sciences and much of what he writes is not as applicable for guys like me in the humanities, there were a few takeaways that I appreciated:

- Write to make an impact, not for mere publication.
- Realize each journal represents an audience. “By picking a few journals as you plan your research, you can craft your work and your manuscript to appeal to the audience you want to attract” (30).
- “The tone of your writing is like timbre in music, an aspect of personality that readers discern in an instant” (33).
- “In most scholarly articles you will find only two punctuation marks: the comma and the period, with the former dwarfing the latter. Ignorance about the lowly facts of punctuation, I’m convinced, underpins most of the ghastly writing we see in journals” (38).
- Silvia discourages contributing to book chapters since they are hard to track down and you are operating on a time constraint. Instead, he encourages writing in journal articles since they have a wider reach and many of them are available online.
- “Making a writing schedule guarantees time to write and shelters your writing from the inanity and chaos of the workweek. And after a couple weeks, writing at that place at that time becomes a sturdy habit, and writing is no longer something you choose, hope, or want to do. . . . Try it—start with 4 to 6 hours a week for writing. Four hours is enough to write most of what you’d like to write and more than most people spend writing” (220).

[David Lindelof · Rating 5 out of 5]

I guess I'll just follow the author's advice and not write a book review. :-)

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of practical tips for publishing scholarly articles, presented with some humor to keep it from being too dry. I like that he gives menus of approaches since there's not only one way to do any of this and that he explains his reasons for preferring one way over another. The best part is the beginning, where he tries to steer young people away from the quantity-over-quality, publish-or-perish mindset, and encourages them to try to do something meaningful.
I have given his previous book to proteges and they liked it. I think this one could be useful as well.

P.S. I got profoundly negative reviews for an academic paper recently. I used the advice from Dr. Silvia on how to respond to reviewers. I not only got the paper published but got an enthusiastic accompanying editorial (I think from one of the anonymous reviewers!).

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

For a relatively dry topic, this book was a joy to read because Silvia wrote in a personal, informal, and collaborative tone. It felt like he was beside me providing friendly yet honest advice.
Silvia provides helpful examples for just about every aspect of writing, from the crucial basics (tone and grammar) to the intricacies of IMRAD (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion) journal articles.

As a novice in scholarly publishing, I appreciated Silvia's decades of experience in academia. Setting clear boundaries is important in any relationship, but I've never considered its relevance for working with co-authors. For example, to set boundaries on the time co-authors spend on providing feedback on a manuscript, set a clear deadline, make comments opt-in, and send the paper through at said deadline.

The section on peer review was a good reminder that most papers are either rejected outright or sent to peer review. It was a relief to see that when editors recommend an R&R (revise & resubmit), they expect to accept and publish the work at some stage. Science is an iterative process, and rejections and reviews are not failures as much as they are opportunities to improve some aspect of your work. Nowadays, with preprint services (e.g., Arxiv, Psyarxiv), you could get your work 'out there' even before it is accepted at a journal. This is great because (1) more people can comment on, and provide feedback for, your work; and (2) your potential impact begins as soon as the first pair of eyes land on your preprint.

Speaking of impact, I thoroughly enjoyed Silvia's take on writing for impact rather than for mere publication. I liked how he encouraged readers to think of the paper's rhetorical purpose (what story do you want to tell?) before diving into the depths of writing. I completed a Psychology Honors thesis this year, and I certainly would have benefited from less time conducting extra analyses and more time honing my argument.

Near the end of the book, Silvia provides several tips for building practical impact. To me, these tips were geared towards two goals: (1) improving the quality of your work, and (2) gaining reads, citations, and "fundability" from publishing many articles in high-impact journals. I wholeheartedly agree with point (1). However, point (2) will not apply to everyone. I think your values will influence where you wish your writing will make the most impact. Someone who is not a great researcher but a loving parent might push for publication in order to stay employed and support their families. Someone who wishes to influence those beyond their academic sphere will write book reviews (cough cough), blog entries, and even twitter posts. If you are interested in these other forms of writing, or in building a writing habit, Silvia's How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing is a good starting point.

Note that if you are not fond of jokes in 'serious books', or if your research does not include at least some empirical work, you will probably find this book less helpful than I did.

I end this review with some of my favourite sentences from this book.

An unusually large proportion of participants were female, even by the standards of research conducted with undergraduate participant pools, and the proportion increased across the semester, which ran counter to the usual trend. We asked the experimenter—an Australian underwear model on a study abroad—for insight into this, but he had no suggestions.

Research should change minds and bring about new beliefs. What do you want readers to believe after reading your paper?

If failing to measure every possible thing on every possible subgroup is a limitation, then we are tacitly evaluating research in terms of how far it falls short of perfect knowledge, not how successfully it moves us out of ignorance. The first approach tries to create knowledge; the second tries to avoid uncertainty. Avoiding uncertainty is an ignoble aim for science.

When planning a new area of research, you can use a hypothetical review article as a heuristic for coming up with ideas for the research program. If you were to write a review article, what kinds of studies would need to be done? What problems would need to be tackled, and with what methods? What new ideas should be infused into the literature? Think about it, do those studies, and then write the review article.

[Vanessa Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an instructor to young (and older) PhD students, specifically providing guidance on the wonderfully wacky world of academic publishing, this book rocks.

It's not just a how-to for each individual section of a manuscript, it's also a bit like a personalised cheerleader, cutting off each objection and 'but what about' as it crops up.

Thank you, Professor Silvia, for having our instructors' backs. I'll be recommending this gem of a book to all of my students!

[Weathering · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book immediately after finishing the author's earlier work, How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. The two books are similar in many respects; the practical advice remains much the same, but both are also written in an engaging, often funny, style which makes them easy to keep reading. Both are also very clearly written for academic psychologists, writing psychology papers for publication in psychology journals. For readers in other fields, much of the advice is nonetheless relevant, but it's important to remember that things like standard journal lengths and relationships between coauthors do often work differently in different fields.

The difference between this book and How to Write a Lot is in their focus. How to Write a Lot was about the process of writing, and its main advice concerned making a writing schedule and sticking to it (though engagingly put and worth reading). Write It Up, by contrast, focuses on the mechanics of writing journal articles. Its advice is divided into three main sections: Planning and Prepping, Writing Your Article, and Publishing Your Writing.

The first section discusses how to pick a journal, diagnosing your tone and style in writing, and gives advice on working with collaborators. This section was useful, even in areas where the standards in my field are somewhat different (e.g. when working with collaborators, Silva suggests that one person write the bulk of a first draft, which I believe would be unusual in my field, where collaborations typically involve only two people).

The second section is the most field specific: the bulk of it is irrelevant to anyone who doesn't write in a field with a Methods-Results-Discussion format for articles. I nonetheless found the chapters on Introductions and "Miscellany" (footnotes, titles, etc.) interesting and engaging.

The final section is about the publication process, focusing almost entirely on submission to journals. This section is again widely applicable, though some comparative comments (on the relative status of book chapters, for example) may vary widely across fields. It also includes a chapter discussing how to think of your work in terms of a research program, which I found useful.

In general, I would recommend this book to anyone thinking about how to focus their writing on publication, after (or while) the initial hurdle of finding time to write things is overcome.

[Brien · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on writing I've read in a very long time.

[Philip Hultquist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silvia's follow-up to his How to Write a Lot is a solid writing book for those looking for motivation and advice on writing quality and productivity. The book has three parts: Planning and Prepping, Writing the Article, and Publishing Your Writing. In part one, Silvia emphasizes selecting the journal before writing to tailor your approach, tone, and style. Part two looks at the nuts and bolts of each section, mostly assuming you are a quantitative psychologist. Some of the advice appears to transfer to my field in political science but not all. If you aren't a quantitative psychologist, you have to use discretion in following the advice, though much of it applies. The best advice in the book, in my opinion, deals with style. Silvia has an informal take on writing style that I find very refreshing, giving folks like me cover to not cater to the pet peeve crowd who freak out about splitting infinitives and demonstrative pronouns. Silvia follows his own advice in this book, making it highly readable.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

DNR: chapters 4 to 8.

Very engaging writing style with several 'laugh out loud' moments. I would have like more "practical strategies" as insinuated by the title — such as edicts on time management, outlining, co-author emailing, etc. — but the gist of the book centered on "learning by doing", which I largely agree with and legitimizes leaving some of these parts out.

DNR the second section because it was too nitty-gritty for my immediate needs of drafting and contextualizing my long-term publication goals. Nonetheless, it was a very useful and entertaining read.

[Printed Pages and Coffee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this a really good book; while I didn't blaze through in less that three hours as I did with How to Write a Lot, I did get through it quite quickly out of sheer interest in what Silvia had to say next. It contains solid publishing advice peppered with comical anecdotes, which are an excellent method of getting the reader to remember a point you're trying to hammer home. This is very much worth your time if you are writing academic pieces for publication!

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed HOW TO WRITE A LOT and even in the week or so since reading it, it’s helped my writing. This follow-up is a bit drier, but still less so than your average set of writing advice. An encouraging, straightforward tour of the nuts-and-bolts of journal articles. It certainly doesn’t feel as groundbreaking, and much more of it was review for me, but it’s a very solid compendium of advice and strategies that I’m sure I’ll come back to parts of in the future.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a longer read than How to Write a Lot, but it has a lot of helpful, useful information and the same wit that I’ve come to appreciate from Silvia. As per his suggestion, I won’t spend much time on this review ;)

[Farhan Samir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great advice specifically for writing lengthy IMRAD journal articles and good writing advice in general. Not as useful for conference papers---which are the significant venues for some fields---where articles have to be concentrated into 6-12 pages.

[Gregory Belaieff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very silly writing style that is vexing, Silvia tries very hard to be funny but ends up being annoying. He does offer a few good pieces advice for writing research papers but nothing that isn't already self evident.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring. Dry. Probably excellent for academic paper pusher wannabes.

[Jose Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book.

Good synthesis on how to write scientific papers, including ideas on how to build a research program. Strongly recommended to graduate students.

[Karin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise, clear, practical guide for academic writing for publishing in research journals. I’m using it and referring doctoral students to it.

[Allyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great guide to writing a research paper-who would have thought this subject could be funny and entertaining?

[Michael Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! The content relates directly to publishing in my field (structural engineering) and will be useful to those publishing in any discipline of science or engineering.

[Emine Ozturk · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can find good hints to write and publish your academic paper! The references in the book are useful and provide practical strategies!

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, interesting, helpful. This is what a book about writing should be.

[Mtd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a well-written book on academic writing. Paul's clever insights and humor make this an enjoyable read!

[Julia Kerrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, really, really, really, really, really, really helpful.

[Mary Shelton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silvia doesn't just give practical advice; he gives examples of good and bad practices in dozens of exhibits, so you can see exactly what he's talking about. And his writing is vivid and funny.

His first writing book, How to Write a Lot, was so good that I shared it with my daughter, who writes some literary criticism but mainly fiction. She was the one who turned me on to this book. Even though Write It Up focuses on writing for science journals, most of the advice applies to writing for publication in general. This was the very best written and most useful book I've read this year.

[Ahmet · Rating 4 out of 5]

The excess humor should be pruned liberally out of this book in the next edition; at the beginning it is indeed fun but having to read jokes with the same monotonic style over and over gets exhausting by the end. It goes roughly like this: “Here is what you should or should not do in academic writing, and this is like the other funny thing about the furniture in my house or about my cat or whatever irrelevant wit I can think of.”

Overall, I like this book. It is full of useful information for beginner academic writers across multiple disciplines, not only psychology.

[Nate Claiborne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is helpful with some basics and orientation to journal article writing. The actual chapters on writing articles are geared for psychology articles (which have a very specific format) and so not as useful for writing in the humanities (like biblical and theological studies). However, because of the insight on tone in writing, how to pick journals, and putting together a good introduction, it's worth checking out.

[Wawan Kurn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dapat hadiah dari salah satu dosen kampus, baca ini dan minta bantu buat jurnal. Duh, saya rasa buku ini penting. Tapi satu hal yang ingin saya catat, bahwa ada perbedaan antara peneliti di sini (Makassar, mungkin juga Indonesia) bahwa mereka membaca hanya bacaan penelitian saja, tidak membaca karya Sastra. Padahal di buku ini, penulis beberapa kali menyebut nama penulis besar yang dijadikan rujukan untuk menulis.

[Ailsa Haxell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A particularly good section on collaborative writing and on collaborators.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful and provides some unique thoughts about writing even for someone who has been in academia for some time. There is actually quite a lot in the one concise guide.

[Jude · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as How to Write A Lot