Citation

Söderland, Lars, and Jaclyn M. Wells. “Preparing Graduate Students for Academic Publishing: Results from a Study of Published Rhetoric and Composition Scholars.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, vol. 18, no. 1, 2017, pp. 131-156, Web.

Summary

In this article, Wells and Söderlund attempt to shed light on how faculty experiences with publishing can help to improve graduate students’ level of preparedness in entering the world of publishing academic articles. Though the authors acknowledge that some scholarship has been dedicated to helping professionals in their publishing process—in the form of self-help books and articles—the same scholarship has not extended to preparing graduate students. Through interviews with twenty recently-published faculty in the field of composition and rhetoric, Wells and Söderlund investigate how and when these faculty become adept at navigating the publishing of academic articles.

Throughout the interviews, the authors identify several themes: learning how to publish occurs mostly after graduate school through trial and error, mentorship and collaboration positively influence publication, and management of time, duties, and projects is a key factor in struggles and successes. In light of these themes, Wells and Söderlund deduce that graduate students can be more prepared to successfully publish through the structure of their graduate programs. The authors pose some suggestions, including making it a practice for faculty to speak explicitly with students regarding their own experiences with publishing, for practice in submitting academic articles to be built into the graduate curriculum, and for time frames realistic to the professional world to be imposed within a graduate program where plausible.

Quotations

• “Some findings suggest that the types of writing students do in graduate school differ from what faculty members write the most. Seven participants claimed that they had learned how to write particular types of documents (literature reviews, dissertations) in graduate school, but they had not mastered the kinds of writing they do most often as faculty members (conference and grant proposals, journal articles).” (140)
•  “When we asked interviewees to describe the resources they relied on most as writers, we deliberately left open what we meant by resources. We hoped that the way participants defined the term would itself prove significant. In response to the question, eleven of the twenty focused first or most vehemently on people.” (142)
• “Our findings suggest that mentors of graduate students should be direct in explaining the publishing process in particular.” (146)
• “The rejection process was instructive to inchoate scholars when reviewers provided enough specific feedback that writers were able to gradually intuit what goes into a strong article. Interestingly, this means that reviewers are sometimes given the responsibility of teaching new writers what it means to write for publication.” (146-147)
• “At later stages of graduate school, students are generally focused on one major project, the dissertation, and are kept accountable partly by their adviser. In this way, graduate school may not naturally help students develop processes that will still work when they are faculty writers.” (149)

Reflection

At the start of this article, I was intrigued with the idea of two published authors struggling with the concept of how to publish, and how to learn to publish. “With each other,” they write, “we expressed embarrassment about our writing habits, anxiety about the review process, and a general sense that we really should know more, by this point, about how it all works” (131). I suppose what drew me to it was the relatability of that embarrassment, the peak into someone else’s date with impostor syndrome. As the authors presented responses of interviewees it became increasingly clear that most, if not all, of them had felt similarly at some point.  As Wells and Söderland even point out themselves, their proposed solutions seem rather obvious, such as the idea that faculty share insights into their own experience.

I chose this article out of a selfish curiosity without a thought as to how to build this into my own pedagogical practices. However, I believe it can be applicable to teaching first-year college students. Transparency, a concept I love and frequently champion, is a massive part of this article from start to finish. Wells and Söderland suggest building academic publishing into graduate school curriculum on multiple levels, in project time-frames, faculty testimony, and assignments that role-play the submission process. The entire article exists out of a desire for transparency.

Perhaps this same transparency should be encouraged in our 101 classes? Not in personal information, but in the bigger hows and whys and in approaching a curriculum as a mentor. I could see this applying also to minute details—to make no assumptions as to when our students can fill in the gaps. One would have to be intentional in these practices as to not be condescending and also to approach students from a place of humility and collaboration. One way in which this transparency could be faithfully approached is through model writing. This approach could avoid condescension while still aiming to maintain transparency in the classroom.

I anticipate that I will remember this article as I’m stressing about potential publishing, or if a peer approaches me for feedback. And I do believe that transparency levels power and promotes collaborative learning. Other than that, I don’t think that this article will prove useful in regards to pedagogy. At least not in the foreseeable future.

Ultimately, this article shows a limit peak into how to prepare graduate students for academic publishing. Nor does it address whether that learning is more appropriate elsewhere. Though there are several strategies that Wells and Söderlund suggest to address grad students’ general lack of preparation for academic publishing, the suggestions are vague and at times obvious. It seems that Wells and Söderlund’s desire to shed light on “the things we talk about in bars but not at conferences, in Facebook chats but not in journals” was incomplete at best (138).