390007 KU PhD-M: Academic Writing & Publishing (2023S)

This course aims at improving students’ academic writing skills, and help them to publish papers in leading journals. The course is an intensive one-week course, where participants are expected to focus exclusively on this course. Participants are expected to bring a piece of writing to the first class. This can be a draft of a conference paper or a draft of a regular paper. The goal of the course is to revise the paper after each day of the PhD course. At the end of the course, the initial paper should be handed in together with a substantially revised version of that paper. Students should also hand in a report in which they explain how they revised the paper along the lines discussed in this course. In addition, participants are expected to take part in the discussions.

Target Group:
Students doing a PhD at the Faculty of Business, Statistics, and Economics.

Content:
Macro principles of good writing and publishing – Day 1
• What makes a paper a good paper; why do some paper get published and others not
• Topic selection: Finding your conversation, finding a story to tell
• Structuring a paper
• Creating tension
• How best craft key elements of paper: how do you structure the abstract, the introduction, the theory section, or the general discussion section.

Micro principles of good writing – Day 2
• Good sections, good paragraphing (pyramid principle, topic sentences etc.)
• Rules for building strong sentences, cohesion among sentences (e.g., relating to action characters, strong verbs, 2-3-1, paragraphing, creating overlap, from known to unknown, concision)
• Choice of tense and mode to fit section of the paper and the content, choice of words that send the right “signals”, etc.
• Conducting your writing project: Strategies for productive writing and editing

Writing to be read – Day 3
• Writing to get published in leading academic journals
• Writing strategies
• Surviving the review process – insights from a reviewer and AE perspective
• Measuring and managing your impact as a scholar
• Ethics of writing and publishing

Intended learning outcomes:
(1) At the end of this course, participants know how to craft high quality papers.
(2) Participants know the principles of good academic writing, and recognize these principles.
(3) Participants improve their own writing and editing.
(4) Participants understand the publishing process, including research ethics issues that can arise in its course.
(5) Participants understand how scholarly impact is created and measured, and can apply this knowledge to increase their own impact.
(6) Participants get an understanding why many papers get rejected.

Please find more information on the homepage: https://marketing.univie.ac.at/studium/phd-management/lvs-von-marketing/