Writing Publishable Journal Articles in the Humanities

elective courses

The course focuses on three kinds of issues – namely, discovering the standards and expectations that journal articles need to meet, as pieces of writing, in selected fields of the humanities, understanding and evaluating those standards and expectations against a broader methodological background and existing practice, and developing the skills necessary to produce first-rate written work by actually writing a paper on the results obtained during the course.

Writing articles in the humanities serves many functions. At the most mundane level, published papers are taken to provide a criterion of the researcher’s credentials. More importantly, however, because the process of writing is intertwined with the process of thinking, which in turn is closely related to the process of communicating ideas, the quality of the writing is often indistinguishable from the quality of the research. It stands to reason that there are a variety of explicit and implicit standards and expectations a journal article ought to meet to attract the attention of the scientific community or even get published. Some of these standards and expectations are quite general whereas others are likely relative to the discipline or field; some are probably reasonable while others, not so much. Either way, it is good to know what the standards and expectations are, and be able to meet them.

This course has three aims. First, to discover what those standards and expectations might be. Second, understand why the standards and expectations are such as they are and whether they need adjusting. And, third, to develop, or at least start to develop, the writing skills necessary to succeed in producing first-rate papers.

To accomplish the first aim, we are going to start with an overview of guides to academic writing and then select several fields of the humanities (the selection will depend on the students’ interests and background) and apply the methods of philosophy of science to determine the various kinds of qualities that papers in those fields are expected to have. Those methods will include an analysis of referee guidelines and other resources published on journal websites as well as an analysis of writing samples (e.g., comparing various qualities of the writing in highly cited articles to those in uncited ones, in articles published in top-tier journals vs. second- and third-tier ones, etc.). With those in place, we are going to compare how well the practice conforms to the guidelines, and then try to provide a plausible methodological or practical rationale for any of the discrepancies we find. This will allow us to evaluate both the practices and the guidelines – accomplishing the second aim. Finally, we are going to combine everything we have learned and write up a paper (draft) discussing our findings with a view to getting it published.

Belcher, W.L. (2019). Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Boice, R. (1990). Professors As Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press.

Kane, T.S. (1988). The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mehta, N. (2016). A Writing Guide for Professional Philosophers.

Pinker, S. (2014). The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. London: Penguin.

Sword, H. (2012). Stylish Academic Writing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

P8S_WG.1 knows and understands a variety of standards and expectations connected with academic papers in selected fields of the humanities

P8S_WG.3 knows and understands the methods of research used practice-oriented philosophy of science

P8S_UK.1 can communicate research in writing to such a degree as to be able to actively participate in international academic discourse

P8S_UK.4 can participate in international academic discourse in selected fields of the humanities

P8S_KK.3 is ready to acknowledge the significance of knowledge to solving cognitive and practical problems.

Students are expected to be advanced speakers of English (C1 or C2 level). Two unexcused absences are permitted during the semester. If the student has more than two unexcused absences, extra work will be assigned to make up for them. Failure to complete the extra work will result in the student’s failing the course.

A passing grade will be given based on: in-class participation, in-class presentations, writing assignments. The student’s workload associated with the course will not exceed 70 hours (3 ECTS).