Tell us! What do you need?

We’d like to use OpenLab to make this workshop series more effective for everyone. Our plan is to keep the pages and some of the posts public but make the interactive posts for participants private so only each year’s cohort can read each other’s responses to the prompts we’ll post. This way, we can support each other but keep our conversations limited to each other and learn collectively.

I would like to run a post every mid month to ask the group to reflect on goal setting and progress. If you would like a reminder to do this more often, please speak up! Would every two weeks work better?

Reflect on what kind of accountability you need. A hurrah or a (reminder) nudge? Do you need support from your fellow workshop members? Share your successes with the understanding that progress is progress whether you’ve written or not. Time spent brainstorming, immersed in primary research, or reading all are all worth reporting. If you’ve been overwhelmed with teaching and haven’t had time to make progress, reflect on whether or not you can create small, achievable goals for the next weeks and for the month.

Additionally, before every workshop, participants will have an opportunity to ask the next workshops convenor questions and after each workshop, participants can reflect on the most valuable thing they learned from the workshop and, if relevant, how they might employ what they learned.

Please comment below. I would prefer not to take time away from our next speaker on November 2 so hopefully I can briefly summarize our group response either on OpenLab or at our next workshop.

Preliminary lit review exercise (due before next workshop)

Please consider doing the preliminary literature review assignment before our next workshop on Monday. The results will not be public.

This exercise will be helpful if you are

  • unfamiliar with the journals in your field
  • different aspects of journal publishing including
    • copyright and open access
    • journal metrics
    • methodologies and scope (“fit”)
  • at the stage that you are exploring target journals
  • concerned about accidentally publishing in a predatory journal

This exercise will teach you how to close read two journals and may help move you forward. Literature reviews can quick or in-depth and thus be helpful at different stages of your writing process. I hope you find at least one article that excites you and makes you feel good about your own scholarship.

Borrowing ebooks by interlibrary loan

Our library colleague Prof. Kel Karpinski who oversees Interlibrary Loan let us know that although some libraries have agree to loan entire ebooks, publisher restrictions have prevented the loan of entire ebooks. So, for now, continue to request individual book chapters a few in one request and waiting to request additional chapters from the same book. Kel will keep us updated if the picture changes.