Journal Article

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Journal articles are one of the mainstays of academic careers, especially in terms of sharing your research with peers and creating academic impact. Writing for journals requires discipline and requires you to understand your work, focus on the details, and get to the point. Peer review upholds quality and can provide useful feedback. Every project should generate at least one journal article.

  • Identify feasible journal articles at the outset of a project and sort authorship early (who and in what order)
  • Consider whether you can build journal papers up from your blog posts (see Blogging)
  • Consider where you wish to be seen to be publishing, and impact factor, and write for those journals
  • Follow the journal guidelines, it’s not the time to go off-piste
  • Build your storyboard and ensure you cover what you did (methods), what you found (result), why it’s important (discussion), top and tail it with an introduction and conclusion
  • Peer review will provide you with useful feedback, but ensure you pitch at the right level, too high could waste time and too low could waste your efforts.