The Center’s research seminars and scholar programs often lead to significant publication outcomes (in addition to informing practices on participants’ home campuses), so we routinely update this page to support our participants’ writing goals and those of other SoTL scholars.

Understanding the Publishing Process for Book-Length Projects (A CEL Blog Series)

"The review of page proofs will be your final opportunity to make any edits to the book before it gets printed and/or finalized for distribution online."

Academic Book Publishing: Reviewing Page Proofs

Our blog series on academic book publishing is chronicling each stage in the book production process. In this post, I discuss a process that happens near the end of production: reviewing page proofs. After a manuscript has been copyedited and…

edited collections create space for more comprehensive dives into a topic, including editors’ guidance on the interconnections among complementary work

Academic Book Publishing: Editing Collections

Edited collections showcase related work by multiple scholars and amplify shared themes among their projects. If the studies were published in journals, they might be scattered across issues, requiring readers to identify connections among them on their own. And even…

"A consistent naming convention will go a long way towards saving time and energy later."

Academic Book Publishing: Tracking Revisions of Your Writing Project

We’ve all done it. You know, you’re working on a writing project and you have every intention of staying organized. But then, all of a sudden, you have a folder with 43 documents in it—all named “helpful” things like draft2.docx,…

Academic Book Publishing: Making a Case for Your Proposed Book

In previous posts, I’ve outlined the general process for publishing a SoTL book and strategies for editing collections. Both posts note that part of the proposal process entails making a case for your proposed book. Why is your project worth…

A map of the world showing countries where users have downloaded CEL's open access books. At the top reads "A Global Audience: The books in the Center for Engaged Learning's Open Access Book Series have been viewed by scholars in 124 countries across the globe." In Dec 2019-Aug 2022: 20,736 unique pageviews. Countries with 1000+ pageviews: USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Japan. Countries with 100-999 pageviews: Ireland, Netherlands, Finland, New Zealand, Austria, Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong, France, South Africa, Malaysia, and Norway. Countries with 1-100 pageviews: most of the countries in Europe, Asia, South America, and several in Africa.

Open Access and Usage: Downloads, Citations, and Geographic Diversity

A common motivation for authors choosing to publish open access is a desire to reach a larger, broader audience (Pyne et al. 2019). And although usage statistics can be complex and many publishers are secretive about their print runs, research…

"What types of edits can you (and can't you) make at each stage of book production?" On the right, there are two screenshots: on top is a Word document showing edits made with Track Changes (copyediting) and below is a PDF of a book page in Adobe Acrobat with edits and comments showing (page proofs).

Academic Book Publishing: Making Edits during Each Stage of Production

The book production process is long, and it can sometimes seem complicated. Once you submit your book manuscript, you’ll have several opportunities to make edits. However, there are major differences about what kinds of edits you can make at each…

Considering Ethical Strategies for Collaborative Writing

Who is an author? Typically…

  • Group members who have made substantial conceptual contributions to the publication
  • Group members who have participated in data collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data
  • Group members who contribute significant drafting, revising, and/or editing

Different group members can take the lead on different presentation/publication goals, so discuss timelines and expectations for group members often. Include authorship discussions – preferably in the context of personal and professional goals – as part of your planning. In “Working with Coauthors,” Ann Nevin, Jacqueline Thousand, and Richard Villa highlight the importance not only of setting shared goals, but also of being attentive to individual goals:

Each coauthor needs to honestly share any individual goals. One author may have a personal goal of getting the product completed within the shortest amount of time; another may have as a goal to produce the most polished document that will have the greatest possibility of being accepted by a top internationally respected peer-reviewed journal. One author may be motivated to reach a researcher audience, while another may want to reach a practitioner audience. Goal conversations can spare coauthors from experiencing the distress that can occur when unspoken agendas, that is, hidden agendas, are not shared.

Nevin, Thousand, and Villa 2010, p. 280

Understanding these individual goals can help shape agreements about who might take leadership roles (and be listed as first author) on different publications. They also can guide conversations about how to acknowledge collaborators across publications. For example, you might agree to:

  • List everyone who collected and/or analyzed data on every publication and promote active writers in the author order, listing remaining members alphabetically; or
  • List everyone who collected and/or analyzed data on every publication and promote active writers in the author order, listing remaining members in reverse alphabetical order; or
  • Alternate between these strategies so that someone’s last name does not consistently position them first (or last) among the alphabetical listings; or
  • List everyone who collected and/or analyzed data on every publication, listing members in an agreed upon order that accounts for collective publication needs/individual goals.

Here are a few examples:

  • For one multi-institutional project, co-authors who take the lead on drafting, revising, and editing a manuscript are listed first, and most remaining co-authors are listed alphabetically after those lead authors. The team’s statistician is listed last.
  • In a smaller collaborative team, junior colleagues who need publications for promotion are listed first, since team members typically contribute fairly evenly to the research and writing processes.
  • For publications related to the Center’s work, the director’s and executive director’s names often are listed last (and only if they contributed to a publication) so that the Center’s leaders for a topic area (e.g., undergraduate research, global learning, etc.) are better positioned for name recognition within the associated scholarly community.

Since individual goals and professional careers change over time, teams should revisit their shared goals and expectations regularly.

Learning and Teaching Journals

The following journals publish research on learning and teaching:

This list is not exhaustive; please email suggestions. Also see the SoTL Journal List maintained by the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Central Florida.

Learning and Teaching Book Series

The Center for Engaged Learning is home to two book series:

Both series offer supplemental resources on the Center’s website.

Reference

Nevin, Ann I., Jacqueline S. Thousand, and Richard A. Villa. 2010. “Working with Coauthors.” In the Handbook of Scholarly Writing and Publishing, edited by Tonette S. Rocco, Tim Hatcher, and Associates, 274-292. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.