Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success

I used this book with a writing partner, as suggested. I'm over three weeks in and enjoying it so far. I appreciate her step-by-step approach and the use of a writing partner.KINDLE EDITION IMPERFECTFor those interested in purchasing it, I wanted to note that the Kindle edition is imperfect, as indicated by other readers. For instance, the weekly tables that have the writing goals note "read until" sections by page numbers, which do not exist in the Kindle edition. Also, I suspect some of the sections to read are really supposed to be boxed off "additional information" as sometimes I felt the flow of the writing was choppy -- pages and pages of explanation on specific examples and then suddenly hitting a very short page with the day's assignment. It is likely that these issues would be easier to navigate in the print edition (with appropriate print distinctions) and the ability to physically flip back and forth, but it does make for some tricky reading within the Kindle edition. For instance, you might hit a huge amount of text that you're not sure if you're supposed to read for the day's assignment.Another example of odd Kindle formatting would be in the 2nd week, where you don't read till the very end of the chapter that you should be taking notes on your daily routine. Granted, you might have been doing this out of your own volition due to the earlier reference to time tracking in Week 1, but if you were just using the book and reading what you needed to bit by bit, you will have missed this until reading it at the end of Week 2.However, given that the Kindle edition is about half the cost of buying the actual book, and is very portable as an eBook, so I believe I (and many other PhD students) will be resigned to dealing with the little issues for the sake of our pocketbooks and convenience. And let's be honest, as a grad student, there's plenty of inconvenient stuff we have to put up with in our day to day lives, it's really not a big deal to have to deal with a book.DOES REQUIRE SIGNIFICANT TIMEFinally, I have to agree with another reviewer that the amount of time Ms. Belcher requires is a very lowball estimate. There is no time given for additional data analysis (assuming that most of what you need to do is a rewriting of previously written paper) and even the exercises can take you a good amount of time (in addition to the writing and editing on the paper that you are supposed to be doing). My partner and I have started tracking the time we spent on the assignments as it is not insignificant (1.5 to 3 hours a day), and we haven't hit the serious re-writing of the paper yet. Then again, you can't really expect a publishable journal article over 12 weeks in just 30 min a day, can you?I will update when we are done with the program and let you know if my thoughts have changed!

I thought this book would be perfect for me. I'm a "plans and systems" person. The author breaks down a series of tasks into a plan to write and submit an article. Each week, you have a bunch of tasks to complete that take 1-4 hours per day - usually closer to one. It's realistic. It's precises. It's behavioral. All my favorite things!Why didn't I like it? The time-frame was WAAAY off. First of all, the author (Belcher) doesn't allow any time for data analysis, so the '12 weeks' assumes you already have your data and have it fully analyzed and ready to go. Think, conference-paper-or-dissertation-article-in-need-of-publishing. So, this book won't help you if you're in the early stages of writing, which are usually the hardest. Secondly, Belcher doesn't leave nearly enough time for the actual writing and editing. In my experience, when I've retrospectively added up all the hours spent on drafts and revisions of an article or chapter, I'm looking at approximately 5 hours for each single-spaced page I write (about 90 minutes per page with 3-4 revisions). Since articles are usually about 20 pages, we're looking at nearly 100 hours just to draft and revise. This does not include background literature reviews,outlining, or formatting.Belcher's plan will guide you through 6 weeks of planning and outlining (a bit excessive - I think 2-3 weeks would do it) and ONLY TWENTY-ONE HOURS of combined editing AND revising! (I am looking at the book as I write this review, so that's an exact figure). Also, she allows only ONE hour to devise all illustrations, graphs, and charts, and a skimpy SINGLE HOUR to format the article to be consistent with the journal guidelines. I think that alone takes about 6 hours.Completely undoable but a really great idea. Some strengths of the book: she allots plenty of time for planning each week, documenting how you spend your time, and getting ample feedback from colleagues. If you follow this book's plan, expect to insert about 8 extra weeks of writing and editing. That brings the timeline up to 20 weeks, which is still pretty good. Two articles a year ain't bad for the humanities and social sciences. If the timelines were shifted to reflect the reality of how many hours it takes to edit, it would be a 5-star book.

This book is actually proving me wrong!!! I didn't imagine how it would work but it does and its got me back into my writing and feeling very positive and inspired. The author is very helpful and practical. I feel confident I will get my article finished in the time plan. I think this is worth buying if for example you have recently got a PhD and feel a bit overwhelmed by the pressure to publish.

This book relieved my writer's block first and foremost by taking away the shame connected with it. Noting how common writer's block is among academics, and how little academic work acutally gets published helped me face my emotions about writing. Belcher's book gives concrete pointers for how to get started again. One major thought she conveys is that everybody can write at least 15 minutes a day, no matter how busy their schedules are. It works! A slow start does help you develop your ideas. The only thing I would have liked to hear more about is generating new ideas for articles. Belcher bases her 12 week writing program on preparing a draft that you already have for publication. There are still loads of tips about how to go about getting into writing again, though.

This is an excellent guide to article writing and is equally appropriate for lengthier research work.It can be adapted to chapter writing for example. It is based on a 12-week course but could be done in a shorter time depending on one's personal experience, style ,etc.It is well-rooted in the experiences of a wide number of peoople so is not just one person's views, despite the authorship. There are many relevant examples. What I particularly liked about it was that it is realistic about an individual's motivation, (or lack of it!) reluctance to write more than 20 minutes a day, and so on.I thoroughly recommend it.

Have been steadily working my way through this book and it's really useful. It's not a quick fix (12 weeks in still 3 months after all!) but it's well paced, good common sense advice of the sort that we all know really but forget too easily in the rush to do everything at once that is so typical of academic life (at all levels of experience!).

I rarely write reviews about books. Mostly because I just haven't found a book that exceptionally delivers what it promises without being dry.I am on week 2 of the workbook and I cannot extol the virtues of this book enough. Any early career researcher/ doctoral candidate struggling with writing and is serious about improving needs to read this book.