Crafting Scholarship in the Behavioral and Social Sciences

Crafting Scholarship helps readers improve their writing and publishing success in academia. Framed within the context of the editorial and peer review process, the book explores writing, editing, and reviewing in academic publishing. As such it provides unique coverage of how successful writers work, how they manage criticism, and more. Examples from successful scholars provide helpful tips in writing articles, grants, books, book chapters, and reviews. Each chapter features tools that facilitate learning including Best Practices and Writer’s Resource boxes to help maximize success, discussion questions and case studies to stimulate critical thinking, and recommended readings to encourage self exploration. A Facebook page provides an opportunity for readers to post writing updates and for instructors to share materials.

Highlights include:

-Insights on working with journal boards, reviewers, and contributors drawn from the author’s 30 years of experience in editing journal articles and writing books.

-Describes writing quantitative and qualitative reports, theory and literature reviews, books and chapters, grants, and book reviews.

-Identifies common problems academics face in writing and publishing along with practical solutions.

-Explores best practices in writing peer reviews, responding to reviewers and editors, and how to calculate and interpret acceptance rates and impact factors.

-Addresses how to write each section of a journal article and select keywords that facilitate digital search engines to help potential readers find an article.

-Includes examples of published work and tips on writing research syntheses using meta-analytic techniques or narrative analyses.

-Examines the practices of successful writers, the pros and cons of collaborations, what publishers look for, and managing criticism.

-Reviews pertinent empirical literature on the core topics of writing, reviewing, and editing.

Intended for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in professional development, writing in an academic field, or research methods taught in psychology, education, human development and family studies, sociology, communication, and other social sciences, this practical guide also appeals to those interested in pursuing an academic career and new and seasoned researchers.