Advanced Academic Writing
The ability to write good academic texts is one of the most essential skills of a researcher. Communicating the insights from your research clearly and convincingly is essential for others to verify, use, and build on them. This course in advanced academic writing is aimed at PhD students with some prior experience in writing academic text and is aimed at further developing their writing skills. The course will focus on how to write a scientific article of sufficient quality to be published in an international scientific journal of high quality. The students will work on and develop their papers and give and receive feedback on written text as part of the course. The course will cover key aspects of academic writing, ranging from identifying an audience and conversation to more detailed issues of constructing sentences, paragraphs, and the different sections of an academic article. The course will also cover individual and collaborative aspects of the writing process, the process of publishing an article in a high-quality scientific journal, and writing for other audiences.
Students must fulfill the requirements for admission to the PhD program and the student must have completed a course at PhD‐level in research methods.
Students should have some experience on writing academic articles or have passed the digital course MET9010 “Introduction to Academic Writing”.
In addition, participants are required to have collected some empirical data to be developed into a scientific article/working paper. Students without empirical data at hand for the first workshop would not be admitted to the course.
The course has a limit of 15 participants. In case of demand over this limit, the criterion of selection will be the amount of course work previously done in the doctoral program.
KKnowledge
The candidate...
- can understand the purpose of academic writing and the concepts of target audience, scientific debates, and conversations in academic writing
- can evaluate the structure of an academic article
- can understand the process from conducting research to developing an academic text that is publishable in scientific journals
- knows different genres of scientific writing and the functions of the various parts of a research article
- knows the scientific publishing process
Skills
The candidate...
- can identify and set up a proper structure of a scientific article
- can develop paragraphs conveying scientific arguments
- can write the different sections of an academic article
- can critically assess and evaluate academic texts and provide constructive comments on how the text can be improved
Competence
The candidate…
- can identify relevant ethical issues associated with academic writing and carry out his/her academic writing with scholarly integrity
- can manage the writing process of an academic article with sufficient quality to be published in an international scientific journal
- can manage collaborative writing processes
- can provide high-quality feedback on the scientific writing of other academics
- can reflect on and improve his/her own writing practices
- can target a text to the intended audience,
- can reflect strategically on where and how to publish his/her scientific research
Because the participation in the course is based on developing a draft of a paper with sufficient qualify for being published in a scientific journal, the course is organized in three modules/workshops spread over two semesters to allow for manuscript revision between each session. Each module consists of plenary lectures, group work, individual presentations, and comments on written work.
During the course, the research problem, the theoretical framework, empirical material, discussion, and conclusion will be discussed for each individual project. Between each of the modules, students should do a (re)writing process and submit improved revisions of the manuscript. The participants are also required to comment on each other’s papers.
Student workload:
The course consists of three 2-day workshops. There is considerable reading to do in the weeks leading up to the course, and the students must prepare for assignments to be presented and discussed at the workshops. The students also need to write a reflection note for course evaluation. Overall, we expect the time spent to be no less than 200 hours distributed as follows:
- 14 hours for pre-course assignment (900 words)
- 70 hours for reading course literature (400-500 pages)
- 36 hours for workshop sessions (physical)
- 30 hours for assignments during the course
- 50 hours for final reflection note (maximum 5000 words) to be graded pass/no pass
The students must participate actively during all three course modules. The following compulsory work needs to be completed during the course to get credits:
- Submit a pre-course assignment
- Present an overview of writing styles in 3 selected target journals
- Submit 2 reviews of other students’ papers
- Submit 2 revisions of your paper in accordance with the targeted scientific journal profile based on comments received during course sessions and reviews
- Submit a response letter to the comments received on your paper.
The final assessment will be based on submitting an individual reflection note (maximum 5000 words). The reflection note should contain 1) a description of how your paper has developed during the course and reflections on how and why it has improved, 2) a reflection on your learning during the course, and 3) a plan for how to further develop your academic writing skills. The reflection note will be graded pass/not pass.
The course is offered on a PhD‐level. It aims at students who already have collected some empirical data, and students with empirical data will be prioritized. The participators may have different professional backgrounds, however, the main disciplinary approaches should be within the broad field of business and management.
