- Deciding on authorship
- Planning the article
- Selecting a journal
- Writing the articles
- Reviewing the article before submission
Guide for Writing the Journal in PhD
Introduction:
The purpose of this section is threefold. First, you want to trace previous work on the subject and set up the problem. Second, you need to identify how your paper addresses that problem. That is key: explaining what you do to address the gaps of literature or problem of the journal paper. Finally, you should note the broader contributions and implications of the piece. I like to think that the contributions of a journal paper can be theoretical, empirical and/or policy relevant, although often the journal papers published in top journals have all three.Theoretical Framework:
This is commonly referred to as a literature review, but I don’t like the term because it implies simply} that you just doing a passive review of what others have aforesaid about your topic. Reviewing previous work is necessary but not sufficient. The purpose of this section goes beyond an accounting of what others have done. One way to understand the aim of the theoretical framework is to see it as leading your reader through gaps in the literature that your paper addresses. See the theme? It’s specific to what you're doing in the paper. It also includes info that your reader must know in order to understand your argument.For example, you must incorporate any relevant foundational texts. One of the things you see in general journals is that the theoretical framework is often divided into two sections, exactly because general journals want papers that speak to multiple audiences. So one section of your theoretical framework will deal with one set of literature, while the next section deals with another. Part of your contribution can be uniting and filling in the gaps in both sets.
The theoretical framework often gets a bad reputation in the peer-review process, because reviewer comments usually build suggestions regarding the theoretical framing of a manuscript. But I see the framework of a paper to be one of its most central parts. If we view research as a conversation, then the framework signals who you're in conversation with -- that is, the relevant audience and broader contributions of your work.
Data And Methods:
This section answers the question “how does one know what you know?” That can be further broken down into three parts:- On what kind of data or material are you basing your findings (e.G., Interviews, statistics, documents)?
- How did you find that data, or where did it come from (e.G., U.S. Census, national archives, fieldwork)?
- How did you analyze that information? That is, what software or analytic strategies did you use to come up with your findings?
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