Publishing in Scholarly Journals: Part II—Is it an Attitude or Technique? It's a Technique

✍ Scribed by Marlowe H. Smaby; Judith Crews; Trae Downing

• Book ID: 102870418
• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 585 KB
• Volume: 38
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0011-0035
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1556-6978.1999.tb00573.x

✦ Synopsis

This is the second in a series of two articles on publishing in scholarly journals. The series began with "Publishing in Scholarly Journals: Part 1-1s it an Attitude or Technique? It's a n Attitude" (Smaby 81 Crews, 1998). We proposed overcoming doubts about one's ability to write successfully by considering publishing as the prime component of professional development for career academicians. Second, aspiring authors should develop self-discipline for targeting, conceptualizing, organizing, and managing their writing efforts. Third, beginning writers need to understand and accommodate to the editorial and publishing process.

In this second part of the series, we focus on the technicalities of writing for publication in scholarly journals. We believe aspiring authors need to know the common technical writing errors reported by editorial board reviewers. This knowledge, combined with behavioral changes, will aid the aspiring author to improve the quality of manuscripts they submit for publication. These behavior changes, described by Smaby and Tamminen (1985) as a self-control method, were developed to help school counselors take charge of everyday problems they faced in their jobs. The method was based on previous studies by Bandura (1 982), Goldfried and Merbaum (1973), Mahoney and Thorsen (1974). Watson and Tharp (1973), and Westling and Louis (1978). This self-control method involved redefining problems so counselors could take responsibility for changing their attitudes and actions toward problems, assessing ineffective behavior, and setting u p plans for positive change. In this article, we have adapted the self-control method to help aspiring authors anticipate and correct technical writing problems when submitting manuscripts for publication.