This highly engaging and down-to-earth lecture explains the essence of academic writing. Along the way, it explains what editors of academic journals are looking for, why publishing is highly rewarding, and how to make academic writing easy. The hidden message is that there is ample reason why academics should have a positive attitude towards publishing. The infamous saying of ‘to publish or to perish’ should be brought to the graveyard, for good – academic life is much better!

Target: Any group of academic researchers
Goal: Improving publishing skills
Style: Lecture
Duration: One hour
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Top academic journals have an acceptance rate of 10 percent, or less. What could make your paper to be ‘that special one’? A better paper is not always a better study. Often, a better paper is a paper that presents its core message, its knowledge contribution, in a more effective way. A better paper is the product of a more skilled author. Since skills can be trained, in this interactive seminar we discuss how to increase the success rate of academic papers.

Goal: Improving publishing skills
Style: Seminar
Duration: Two hours

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The goal of this workshop is to uncover the essence of successful academic publishing. We move from magic to craft. What is the generic structure of an academic paper, how to survive the ‘so what?’ question, and what makes a paper acceptable for academic journals? This workshop aims at researchers with limited experience in writing papers for major academic journals. The workshop includes topics such as what makes a paper interesting and what determines paper quality, analyzing the structure of academic papers, formulating research questions, defining a contribution to literature, providing convincing evidence, understanding the hierarchy of academic journals, and developing a publication plan.

Case Material: Published articles from your own field
Goal: Improving publishing skills
Style: Workshop
Duration: Two days

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This workshop aims at acquiring the skills to design successful academic papers. Writing requires authors to decide about how and what to contribute to current understanding, and how to structure their story. In this workshop, participants assess and improve their writing skills by analyzing their own paper in terms of focus of the article, positioning in the literature, and the article structure. Building on the Basics of Academic Writing workshop, we discuss and provide training in identifying publishable parts of research projects, positioning the article, and developing an effective paper structure. Other topics include designing a compelling introduction, preparing the literature review, and writing the main sections (e.g., literature review, research design, data collection, data analysis, discussion and conclusion).

Case Material: Your own paper
Goal: Improving publishing skills
Style: Workshop
Duration: Two days

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How to write papers that successfully pass the academic review process and get cited? How to develop a paper structure that matches with the intended contribution? How to get a well written article? Building on the Basics of Academic Writing workshop, this workshop enables participants to assess and improve their writing skills by analyzing their own paper in terms of content, readability and publication strategy. Content topics include the paper’s positioning, the body of the paper, and the conclusion sections. Readability deals with making the paper easy to understand for readers. Publication strategy concerns the target journal (e.g., journal selection, optimizing the paper for this journal, and submission), the review process (e.g., strategies for paper revisions, effectively dealing with reviewer comments), and getting paper citations.

Case Material: Your own paper
Goal: Improving publishing skills
Style: Workshop
Duration: Two days

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What does it take to write papers for major academic journals? This masterclass has three main aims. First, what determines article quality as assessed by journal editors and reviewers? In other words: what makes a paper valuable and interesting for a peer reviewed academic journal? Second, what is the best strategy to write a paper? How to start? How to ensure progress, even when facing other pressing obligations? Third, how to make an article fit a journal? How to build on previous research? How to design a compelling introduction? The participants bring papers from top journals in their own field to the Masterclass. Both individual and group exercises enable them to analyze various aspects of these papers.

Case Material: Published articles from your own field
Goal: Improving publishing skills
Style: Masterclass
Duration: Two days

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The Writing Camp enables participants to finish their paper and to prepare journal submission. The participants need to have a draft paper that requires final polishing before submitting it to a journal or conference. The event allows researchers to finish a paper without distractions. Participants often bring a paper from their drawer, e.g., a conference paper that never became a journal paper, or a rejected journal paper. In a structured and supervised manner, participants develop and implement ideas to complete their article. The event takes a full week and is focused on actually writing the paper.

Case Material: Your own paper
Goal: Writing a paper
Style: Writing Camp
Duration: One week

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What does it take to do academic research with the potential for high quality academic publications, be it papers in peer reviewed academic journals or a successful PhD thesis? The workshop aims at further improving the research skills needed for academic publishing, and takes an output oriented approach. Topics include: relating research and publishing, getting focus in the project, reviewing literature to find promising knowledge gaps, qualitative versus quantitative research, developing conceptual models, and designing an empirical study for both qualitative and quantitative research. Case material: your own research project. Note: An adapted version of this workshop has been successfully used to further improve the research designs of multiple PhD projects that are part of a large, multi-year project.

Goal: Improving research skills
Style: Workshop
Duration: Two days

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What does it take to become successful in academia? This workshop aims at researchers in the starting phases of their academic career. Participants are guided along three lines. First, understanding: what skills are needed in academia? Crucial academic skills discussed in the workshop include research, writing, presentation, time management, perseverance, and collaboration. Second, reflection: how good are your current skills? Final, improvement: how to get better skills? During the workshop, participants develop concrete ideas for skills improvement. Their Personal Academic Development Plan identifies both the skills to improve and the ways by which they will improve those skills.

Goal: Preparing junior academics
Style: Workshop
Duration: Two days

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Like any professional, academic researchers can benefit from greater focus and awareness of choice. Where are you on your career path? Which direction do you want to go? How to get there? Personal and professional growth comes from periodic, guided reflection on these basic questions. Coaching is helpful for both junior and senior academics as it involves clarifying goals, reviewing the present, exploring the future, and breaking patterns. This service consists of one full day with 8 time slots for intense and confidential talks with an experienced and informed coach, who acts as a compassionate but challenging sounding board. This enables academic researchers to reflect upon their current and future career path, and to decide about the actions that will provide them with a more effective and meaningful life. The talks are in person or via Skype.

Goal: Enabling individual academics
Style: Coaching
Duration: One day+, 1:1 meetings, 8 slots of 45 minutes each

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