Publish and Thrive Challenge

Welcome to Day 5 of the Publish and Thrive Challenge!

This week, we have considered ways to identify publishing venues, where to present our work, what rights we retain and/or give away when we sign publishing agreements, and approaches to increasing the visibility of our work. Now, let's hear from faculty and graduate students at UMaine, and a local fiction writer in Bangor (and a UMaine graduate!), all of whom have a wide range of publishing experience across disciplines and genres.

Your Challenge: Listen to Publishing Tips and Strategies from Local Experts and Authors, and Note at Least 3 Pieces of Advice You'll Carry Forward in Your Publishing Journey

Depending on your interests and potential writing projects, either watch the video below, of a publishing workshop we held in Fogler Library with UMaine faculty and graduate students, or visit Katie Lattari's blog, and read her posts titled 'The Path', which are engaging descriptions of how she went from manuscript to commercial publication for the first time.

This is a recording of a publishing workshop that took place in spring 2020. We covered everything from how to handle competing commitments, to ways of staying committed to writing, to strategies for surviving (and responding to) feedback/peer reviews, and how to become a better writer. Participants included (from right to left):

• Brie Berry, former PhD candidate in Anthropology and Environmental Policy
• Elisabeth Kilroy, former PhD candidate in Biomedical Science and Engineering
• Leah Hakkola, Associate Professor of Higher Education
• Jacquelyn Gill,  Associate Professor of Paleoecology and Plant Ecology
• Dylan Dryer,  Associate Professor of Composition Studies in the Department of English
• Shaleen Jain, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

The video is 2 hours long, so in case it's helpful, and you want to jump to spots of most interest to you, here are some topical time stamps:

• Initial advice from the panel (begins almost immediately)
• How to select a place to publish (begins ~18:30 minutes)
• How to become a better writer/storyteller; includes a brief discussion of this document (begins ~30:00 minutes)
• Collaborative writing (begins ~37:20 minutes)
• Working with your advisor (specific to graduate students, and begins ~49:25 minutes)
• Navigating competing commitments (begins ~1:01 minutes)
• Responding to feedback/peer reviews (begins ~1:13:30 minutes)
• How to draw attention to your work and/or increase its visibility (begins ~1:35:50 minutes)
• Why and how to be a reviewer (begins ~1:44:30 minutes)
• How to get started in writing and publishing if you're not in a research-intensive program (begins ~1:48:10 minutes)
• Final thoughts, including reading and software suggestions (begins ~1:52:30 minutes)

Further reading:

• Why Won’t Academia Let Go of ‘Publish or Perish’? 
• CV of Failures: Failure in publishing, and in academia more broadly, is common, and some would say, inevitable. You will experience setbacks, but please keep your chin up! Lean on your networks, or those people or activities that anchor you. 
• Additional insights into peer review include How to tell whether you're the victim of a bad peer review, and How to Receive and Respond to Peer Review Feedback.
• Tips for Building an Online Presence & Optimizing Social Media Use as a Grad Student
• "They say / I say" : The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (Book's description includes that it "demystifies academic writing and shows how to engage with the views of others")

Did you like this Challenge and want to engage further?

• Check out our Research Impact Challenge, which will help you describe the impact of your work and increase your visibility as a scholar!
• Check out our Finding Funding Challenge if you're interested in funding projects that later get published and presented at conferences!
• Learn about Research Data Management and its importance to your scholarly workflow!

Congratulations!

You've completed the Publish and Thrive Challenge! It's been a delight to spend this week with you. We hope you found these activities useful and thought-provoking for your work at the university and beyond. Keep in touch!