The One-Week Workshop

    This workshop is a guide to the complex world of academic article publishing and is designed to give writers practical experience in publishing essays in academic journals. One of the first course-length workshops in the country with such a focus, it has helped participants get work into such leading journals as Political Geography, World Politics, World Development, PMLA, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of American History, Journal of Gerontology, Semiotica, Language in Society, and Popular Music, to name just a few. The goal of this workshop is to aid participants in taking their papers from classroom or conference quality to journal quality and in overcoming anxiety about academic publishing in the process.

    The workshop consists of eight sessions during an intensive four days at the host university (generally Thursday through Sunday), followed by a three-month distance revising period.

    During the sessions, the instructor explains the publication process and shares strategies for achieving success in the academic writing arena, including setting up a work schedule, identifying appropriate journals for submission, clarifying arguments, organizing material, working with editors, using citation software, and writing query letters. During the revising period, participants are led through a rigorous revision of an already written academic paper. They complete weekly assignments of reading and writing, receive feedback on that writing from the instructor, and then actually submit a final draft of the article to an academic journal.

    

Instructor

    Wendy Belcher has taught this workshop to hundreds at UCLA and around the world since 1998. Belcher designed the workshop based on her long-term experience as an editor, author, and student. She has worked for over a decade editing peer-reviewed journals and books for academic presses (including Oxford University Press, the University of California Press , and Routledge) and is currently the director of a small press at UCLA that publishes books and journals in ethnic studies. She is an award-winning scholarly writer who has published numerous articles and a book on West Africa. She has three master's degrees, two in the social sciences and one in the humanities.

Participants

    The host university dictates who can enroll. Those who most benefit are (1) graduate students who want to publish an essay they wrote for the classroom or part of their master's thesis, (2) doctoral candidates hoping to publish a chapter from their dissertation in progress, and (3) recent doctorates and junior faculty under pressure to publish for jobs or tenure. Enrollment is limited. No more than fifteen participants will be accepted into each workshop.

Schedule

    Participants arrive at the first session with a draft of a paper to be submitted for publication (e.g., a classroom paper, dissertation chapter, master's thesis, conference paper). For four days, participants attend workshop sessions twice a day ( 10:00-12:30 and 2:00-4:30 ) and have an individual one-hour session with the instructor. Over the next twelve weeks, participants read and fill out the writing workbook, revise their article, email assignments to the instructor every Sunday evening, and finally mail their article to a journal. The instructor is available for consultation by email once a week and by phone once a month.

Payment

    The host university is responsible for the costs of the instructor's transportation to the university and her lodging at the university. Please contact Belcher for the fee of the four-day workshop-which includes eight workshop sessions and individual time with the instructor. There is a maximum enrollment of fifteen and no minimum. This fee includes the latest edition of Belcher's workbook titled Writing and Publishing the Academic Article: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Sending Your Essay to a Journal in Twelve Weeks. The distance revising fee-which includes weekly email contact, monthly phone contact, and detailed instructor feedback on assignments for twelve weeks-is per student, with a maximum enrollment of fifteen and no minimum. Since publications are essential to getting a job or tenure at many universities today, this workshop is a strong investment in the future of your graduate students and junior faculty.

Options

Many universities cannot afford the distance revising fee; they are welcome to opt for just the four-day workshop. Since academics often need assistance in following through on writing goals, however, it is recommended that the university consult with Belcher in setting up an on-site revising group. This includes recommendations on encouraging participants, reviewing and commenting on their writing, and advice throughout the revising period.