Publish or Perish: tips for navigating the modern publishing landscape

Event title: Publish or Perish: tips for navigating the modern publishing landscape

Event date: Thursday 23 May 2024

Event start time: 08:00 UK (BST)/ 09:00 CET/ 17:00 Australian Eastern time/ 15:00 Western Australia/ 15:00 Singapore

Event mode: online via Zoom

Event format: 9-min proposition presentation from each panel member (3 in total) with key points and triggers for consideration, followed by discussion and questions from attendees.

A/Prof Jason Lodge is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Director of the Learning, Instruction, and Technology Lab in the School of Education and is a Deputy Associate Dean (Academic) in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at The University of Queensland. Jason’s research with his lab focuses on the cognitive, metacognitive, and emotional mechanisms of learning, primarily in post-secondary settings and in digital learning environments. Jason currently serves as Lead Editor of Australasian Journal of Educational Technology and Editor of Student Success.

Jason's proposition: If you do good work, the rest will take care of itself. The obsession with metrics has created perverse incentives with dire results.

Dr Alison Purvis is an Associate Dean Teaching and Learning at Sheffield Hallam University (UK) and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) with 25+ years of higher education experience. She is actively researching in the areas of higher education practice and leadership, digitally enhanced learning, inclusive practice, physiology of exercise, and public health. Alison is a senior editor at the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP) and a director at the Open Access Publishing Association (OAPA). She is passionate about open access publishing where the academic community support each other to publish quality articles, challenging the predominant for-profit model of publishing.

Alison's proposition: For successful publishing in any subject area the systematic review provides an essential initial step that should not be skipped. By undertaking a robust and thorough systematic review, authors will understand the breadth and depth of a topic area. By including an assessment of quality as a core part of the method, authors will also recognise the constituent components for a paper to be recognised as high quality. Therefore, the process of methodical review will provide authors with a clear understanding of the gaps and dominant research to guide their own subsequent research to fill those gaps which will avoid unnecessary duplication and empower research groups to develop articles in specific topics which are more likely to be published. The quality of the methods and the written article overall will also be improved because authors will have a much closer understanding of the components of a high-quality paper. If you haven’t completed a systematic review, are you missing out an essential step?

Dr Joanna Tai is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University. Her research in assessment focuses on inclusion and diversity, feedback literacies, developing evaluative judgement, and student experiences across the university and workplace. She is currently undertaking funded projects on feedback literacy (Australian Research Council) and inclusive assessment (Australian Collaborative Education Network; Council of Australasian University Leaders in Learning and Teaching). Joanna is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a member of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Health Professions Education, and the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction. She has a background in medicine and health professions education.

Joanna's proposition: Making one’s work and ideas public is an expected part of academic life, facilitates collaboration and shares valuable expertise. Though we might all feel there is some luck involved in our work becoming cited, there are strategic decisions that can be made in terms of what, where, and with whom to publish. Reflecting on one’s underlying values and motivations for being an academic can help in making decisions in the evolving landscape of academic publishing.