2 How to Develop Scholarly Projects

The path from the desire to write, to the original idea, and then to Publication is often fraught with chaos, feelings of self doubt, error, and frustration. This is why it’s often said that it’s easier to critique then to invent. Few academicians can write a perfect first draft. Most of us require some time to wander around our offices, sharpen pencils, clean our homes, or browse through current periodicals. More precisely, most of us need some prewriting time__time to read more deeply about a subject, time for planning a research design, time for discussing ideas with colleagues. Prewriting also involves analyzing the rhetorical situation for a document, which we can do by asking numerous questions, such as “Who is my audience? What is my purpose? What voice do I hope to project?” While simple subjects may require little prewriting, most academic works require extensive prewriting. If you fail to give some careful thought to your rhetorical context, schedule, and goals at the onset of a scholarly project, you may find two years down the line that the audience for your project is too small to warrant publication, or that others have already done what you have set out to do, or that the methodology is severely flawed. Of course there are tremendous advantages to writing to discover ideas and form, yet you also must be practical plan your time so you do not waste it!
The writing strategies discussed in this chapter are designed to help shatter writing blocks and develop more polished first drafts, thereby reducing needless revisions:                    i
1. Become aware of the important conversations occurring in your discipline.
2. Consider collaborating with a colleague (or colleagues).
3. Analyze the economic and political constraints that impinge on how you write.
4. Analyze your schedule, break the manuscript into manageable sections, and establish due dates for first, second, and subsequent drafts.
5. Analyze the rhetorical situation for the document.

BECOME AWARE OF THE IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS OCCURRING IN YOUR DISCIPLINE
Within the past few years, we have become increasingly aware of the inherently social and collaborative nature of academic publishing. Understandably, we all differ in how social we care to be, but the bottom line is that what constitutes a significant contribution to the literature is often determined by what scholarly conversations are taking place, by what’s fashionable and what’s not. Instead of hiding away in a garret or basement lab, man academicians try to leam as much as possible about the various conversations in their disciplines. They can do this by reading assiduously; by attending conferences; by serving on professional committees; by serving as reviewers of journal articles, academi books, grants, and textbooks; by studying reviewers’ comments to submitted work; and by getting to know editors on a first_name basis.

Comprehensive Search of Available Literalure
Little is more disheartening than finding that the essay you have spent four months writing has already been written and published by someone else. To ensure that you are not reinventing the wheel, you should conduct a thorough investigation of the literature. The most comprehensive and efficient way to review existing literature on a topic is to do a computerized search. Essentially, via , computer modems, you have over 500 on_line indexes to choose from that can put you in touch with countless essays, books, pamphlets, and statistics. Also, many research libraries have CD-ROM (compact disc_read only memory) indexes available, which work much like on_line databases except that the information is stored on CDs. The primary advantage of the CD_ROM and on_line databases over traditional printed indexes is that they allow you to sift through thousands of essays in minutes. In addition to providing the full bibliographic citation for published materials, many computerized databases offer abstracts for indexed articles, which enable you to determine whether a particular source will be useful. A few of the databases, such as the Social Science Citation Index, allow you to determine how many times a particular document has been quoted by other scholars. Within seconds you can also take a look at each of the references provided in a bibliography and then access these sources to determine whether they will be useful. Some CD_ROM databases allow you to save the contents of a search on a floppy disc so that the user can review the search at home on an IBM or IBM_compatible computer.
Although searching procedures differ, most databases use the same vocabulary of subject descriptors as those provided in The Library of Congress Subject Headings. To determine which descriptors you should use to conduct your search, consult with a reference librarian or review Online Searching: A Dictionary and Bibliographic Guide, which offers a glossary of descriptors that are now used by on_line and CD_ROM databases.
Even if a computer search uncovers investigations similar to yours, you should not necessarily give up hope on your project. Because the act of writing generates new ideas, you can expect your ideas to gain forcefulness, maybe even elegance, with rewriting. Consequently, don’t immediately give up on a subject if other have already addressed it. In short, follow your instinct, yet proceed with caution.

Talk with Colleagues about Your Subject
Some academicians are reluctant to share their ideas with editors and colleagues. In part, this reluctance is a realistic response to those inconsiderate people who presents others’ ideas as their own. Yet the benefits of working collaboratively far exceed the risks. Your colleagues can be invaluable sources of support and inspiration; the ideas you generate with them can far exceed those you could develop by yourself. If you sense that intradepartmental rivalries will interfere with and taint any attempt to establish a community of scholars and authors, you may want to look outside your department. Colleagues at your home institution in a different department who are willing to read your work can motivate you to get the work done and can help you eliminate unnecessary jargon. By attending professional conferences, you can meet colleagues at other universities who are energized by your ideas and willing to exchange criticisms on manuscripts.

CONSIDER COLLABORATING WITH A COLLEAGUE (OR COLLEAGUES)
Coauthoring manuscripts can be highly rewarding. On the best of occasions, we can develop ideas collectively that are much stronger than any we could develop on our own. Developing professional friendships, discussing possibilities, seeing how others write, having your manuscripts revised by a trusted colleague, learning new research techniques these are some of the important benefits of collaboration. Yet colleagues can fail to fulfill their obligations. If they are busy working on other projects, if their professional work isn’t all that significant to them, or if they are going through some sort of life crisis, they can miss deadlines or produce shoddy work, requiring extra effort on your part.
Before agreeing to coauthor a manuscript, give some thought to how you and your coauthor (or coauthors) will work together and how your work will be evaluated by your institution. If you don’t feel comfortable sitting down with your colleague and mapping
out a schedule of duties and goals, then your project may quickly roll into the Twilight Zone of Group Think in which no one makes their best effort and no deadlines are ever met. While at the onset of a project you may be unable to delineate all of the necessary tasks, you should at least be able to agree in principle to the amount of time each colleague will give to the project, whether contributors will be equal or unequal in the amount of time expected of them, and whether authors’ names will be listed alphabetically, according to the amount of their contribution, according to their respective ranks, or according to the toss of a coin. You may want to consider the following questions1 before deciding to coauthor a project:

1. Do I like the prospective colleague? Do I want to spend time with this person?
2. Can the colleague and I establish an equitable work schedule? Are we going to divide the work into equal units or will one author assume the senior position? How will this judgment determine who is first, second, or third author?
3. If the colleague is senior in rank to me, will he or she perceive his or her role as a boss?
4. How will gender roles affect work assigllments? Will male authors expect female authors to take orders and do the typing and secretarial work?
5. Can I trust the coauthor to complete his or her tasks on time?
6. Will ego taint the collaborative process? Is the colleague flexible or rigid in perceiving how the work should be completed?
7. Does the coauthor pay close attention to detail?
8. Does the coauthor share a similar theoretical perspective?
9. Does the coauthor possess skills that I don’t have that are necessary to do the research?
In addition to honestly considering these questions, you may want to give some thought to how your institution will assess yollr collaborative efforts. While we need to examine more comprehensively how different disciplines reward collaborative projects, the early returns suggest that collaboration confounds the already murky peer_review process (see Ashton_Jones; Broad; Ede and Lunsford; Zuckerman). In the sciences, for instance, where the heavy costs of research often force academicians to work together, it is far more common for an article to be written by five or more faculty members than by a single author. Arnold S. Relman, editor_in_chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, has suggested that accountability diminishes when numerous scientists claim authorship (Coughlin). To ensure that all coauthors receive the credit they deserve, Relman has suggested that coauthors “sign a statement attesting to the fact that they actually had a hand in the research and are prepared to take responsibility for it” (Coughlin A6).
If you are going up for tenure or promotion, you may want to take Relman’s suggestion a step further and ask your colleagues to write about the nature of their contribution in the by_line to the document. People on the tenure and promotion committee may assume that your contribution to an article was secretarial rather than substantive in nature if you are not listed as first author. Unfortunately, I realize that this suggestion may cause more problems than it is worth. First, colleagues may disagree about the extent and nature of their contributions. Second, requesting that coauthors describe their contributions in a by_line may seem petty because it breaks with tradition. Because this request goes against the giving nature of collaboration, it may even jeopardize future Opportunities to collaborate with the same author (or authors).

ANALYZE THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONSTRAINTS THAT IMPINGE ON HOW YOU WRITE
I once worked with a newly minted Ph.D. in mathematics who enjoyed writing thirty_ to forty_page mathematical proofs. Because these extended equations were so difficult to read, this mathematician complained that no one wanted to read his work. He told the members in his scholarly writing workshop that journal editors had difflculty finding anyone willing and qualified to review his submissions. When a colleague in the workshop suggested that he write only ten_page mathematical proofs, the mathematician became upset. “To be really important,” he exclaimed, “the proof needs to be long!”
Clearly, you are wise to pursue topics that energize you. Yet if you hope to publish what you write, you must balance your passion with the passions of your audience. Writing thirty_page proofs when even leading experts dislike reading them is like putting your head down and trying to blast through a concrete wall. You may eventually succeed, but the endeavor will knock you silly. Sometimes, as the saying goes, it makes more sense to walk around a wall than to plunge through it.
When you first begin writing scholarly articles, drafting even simple documents may take an inordinate amount of time. With practice, you will soon learn to limit the amount of revising that you need to do. However, if you are a perfectionist, then you may always have trouble completing documents. After all, a piece of writing is seldom perfect. You must limit the amount of time that you invest in each document. Asking the following questions may help you juggle the need to revise with the need to get the work completed and published as soon as possible:
1. Ultimately, how important is the message? Is the material suitable for a first_ or second_tier journal or publisher?
2. Given timing and budgetary constraints, is the intended project feasible? Will the cost of the research or conference presentation exceed its ultimate value?
3. Are there any significant methodological problems?
4. Do I have the resources and time necessary to conduct the research?
5. Will this work be respected by the salary_tenure_promotion committee that will evaluate my work?

ANALYZE YOUR SCHEDULE, BREAK THE MANUSCRIPT INTO MANAGEABLE SECTIONS, AND ESTABLlSH DUE DATES FOR FIRST, SECOND, AND SUBSEQUENT DRAFTS
As any seasoned professor knows, the academic calendar looks deceptively simple. At solid colleges and universities, where teaching loads rarely extend beyond four courses a year, professors would seem to have large blocks of time to dedicate to their research. Yet experienced professors know too well how time can be absorbed by committee work, by service, by students who need help writing M.A. and Ph.D. theses, and by the demands of course_work. Consequently, you would be wise to set some time aside each day__even if it’s as little as thirty minutes to write, plan, and market scholarly projects. Asking the following questions may help you establish reasonable goals and schedules for completing writing projects:

1. If the document is likely to be a long one, how can I subdivide it into parts that can be written in a realistic schedule?
2. How much time do I have to draft the document?
3. When can I have a second or third draft comp!eted?
4. What reasonable date can I establish for completing this project?

ANALYZE THE RHETORICAL SITUATION FOR THE DOCUMENT
Prior to writing any document, give some thought to your orical situation. In other words” consider what audience you are addressing, what purpose unifies the document, and what voice most appropriate.

Audience Analysis
When beginning a writing project, you may understandably need to ignore thoughts about audience. Many of us first need to develop the idea so that we understand it before asking how other people will consider it. However, you can save valuable time by identifying your audience and its needs as soon as possible. By answering the following questions” you will be able to determine what information you need to provide and what voice you should establish:
1. Is there really an audience for the idea?
2. What assumptions can I make about my audience’s knowledge of the subject matter?
3. Is it possible that the document has multiple audiences? For example, might it be read by graduate students, teachers, scientists, managers?
4. What attitudes about the subject can I presume my audience has? In what ways is my audience biased? Is my audience friendly or hostile?

Purpose Analysis
You cannot know what information to leave in and what to leave out or even how best to organize a document until you know your dominant purpose for writing. By asking the following questions before you begin to write, you can save time and make your document more effective:
1. What is my primary purpose for writing? Am I attempting to report facts objectively? Am I investigating events? Am I analyzing issues or being persuasive?
2. Do I have competing or conflicting purposes for writing this document? If so, should I write two different documents or one document with distinct parts?
3. What crucial information do I need to shock, educate, or persuade my audience?

Voice Analysis
When attempting to simplify a complex concept, it is easy to overlook the voice and persona you are projecting. Yet readers are always looking for clues about who you are and how you feel about a subject. Even when you avoid use of the first person and personal references, your readers will be making judgments, rightly or wrongly, about what kind of person you are and about your professional abilities. All aspects of your text give the reader clues about your personality. The words and examples you choose, how you organize your text, and even how you punctuate your sentences affect the tone of your document. For example, no matter how solid your evidence is for a particular claim, you will not be successful if your readers think that you sound sarcastic or condescending. If you don’t sound confident, your readers will doubt you. To help establish the appropriate tone for your rhetorical situation before writing, consider the following questions:
1. What inferences do I want my readers to make about me as an author? Do I wish to speak with the voice of a senior scholar, a committed teacher, a benevolent advisor? Do I appear hostile or reasonable? Have I projected a pleading tone?
2. What sort of personas do the writers establish in the periodicals to which I want to submit my work?
FINAL COMMENTS
While time spent prewriting can help prevent extensive revisions, you must avoid the trap of excessive prewriting. The joy of academic writing is often found in the excitement experienced when new ideas shatter plans. Unfortunately, some academicians become so obsessed with prewriting that they never get around to writing and revising. They spend their careers researching ideas in library, procrastinating because they feel they need to know all about their subject before writing.
To avoid procrastination, you sometimes need to take the plunge and begin drafting. Trust your intuition. After all, you can always come back and do some additional prewriting if you begin to feel unsure about how to proceed. As I will explain in the next chapter, you can sometimes manage your time more effectively by trusting the generative nature of language to guide you toward an audience, purpose, and voice.

NOTE

1. To develop this list of questions, I drew on the essay by Mary Frank l:ox and Catherine A. Faver, “The Process of Collaboration in Scholarly Research,” on Evelyn Ashton_Jones’s essay “Coauthoring for Scholarly Publication: Should You Collaborate?” and on my own experiences as a coauthor.

WORKS CITED

Ashton_Jones, Evelyn. “Coauthoring for Scholarly Publication: Should You Collaborate?” In Writing and Publishing for Academic Authors. Ed. Joseph M. Moxley. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. 269-287.
Broad, Williarn J. “Crisis in Publishing: Credit or Credibility?” Bioscience 32 (1982): 645_647.
Coughlin, Ellen. “Concerns about Fraud, Editorial Bias Prompt Scrutiny of Journal Practices.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 February 1989: A4_A7.
Ede, Lisa, and Andrea Lunsford. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.
Zuckerman, Harriet A. “Patterns of Name Ordering among Authors of Scientific Papers: A Study of Social Symbolism and Its Ambiguity.” American Journal of Sociology 74 (1968): 276_291.