UNIVERSITY FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, TAMALE

1. UNIVERSITY FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, TAMALE UDS

2. SCHOLARLY WRITING BY I. K. ANTWI, FGLA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN UNIVERSITY FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, TAMALE E-mail: ikantwi1993@yahoo.com Paper Presented at GRASSAG Forum ICT Conference Centre University for Development Studies, Tamale September 2, 2011 UDS

3. SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION • Scholarly communication is a process of knowledge delivery practiced by members of the academic community. A vital part of this process is the broadest possible sharing of academic publications among scholars and students. • According to the American Library Association (ALA), scholarly communication is the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to • the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. • According to Wikipedia (2010) Scholarly communication is the creation, transformation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge related to teaching, research and scholarly endeavours. 3 UDS

4. METHODS OF DISSEMINATING SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION • The most common method of Scholarly Communication is by writing up the findings of research into an article to be published in a scholarly journal • Other methods • Seminar E.g. Departmental, Faculty, Inter Faculty seminars • Conferences E.g. Professional associations, Universities • Reports • Serials • Books (by a single author or by several authors) • Web Publishing • Multi Media formats such as sound and video recordings (Particularly in the Arts and Humanities) UDS

5. Cont’d • Bibliographies, indexes and other reference works • Synoptic Journals (containing summaries longer than abstracts • Reviews and review articles (reviewing new publications or trends in the literature) • Institutional publications (annual reports, books, research papers) • Government publications • Technical bulletins UDS

6. SELECTING A JOURNAL • Write for a Journal • Don’t look for a Journal • Regular Journal • Timeliness UDS

7. SELECTING … CONT’D • One of the most important determinants of a manuscript being published is sending it to the appropriate journal • Some journals may publish long (20-25 pages) articles • Others publish shorter papers • There are journals that will permit many illustrations (such as maps, tables). Others will not UDS

8. CHOOSING A JOURNAL • The first question to ask yourself is what type of audience you want to reach. • It is important to make an initial decision about whether you want to publish in a general, inter-disciplinary or specialty journal. • You also need to decide whether you want to publish in a relatively new journal or in a well-established journal and a journal that comes out weekly, monthly or quarterly. • Finally, you need to have a good idea about whether your results will be more relevant to an international or local audience. UDS

9. CHOOSING …CONT’D • The journal that you choose will have important implications for the time that it takes for your paper : • To be published; • The impact that it will have; and • The prestige that it will bring back to you [The visibility factor] UDS

10. CHOOSING..CONT’D • New Journals • May be more likely to accept papers • Often have low impact factors • May have limited circulation • May not reach a wide audience UDS

11. CHOOSING..CONT’D • One thing is certain – you will never get published in a prestigious journal if you never submit your work there. [Peat, Baur and Keena, 2002] UDS

12. PEER REVIEWPEER REVIEW • A key element of the process is ensuring the research meets a level of quality and is of scholarly merit. • This is normally done through a process called peer review, where other researchers in the same discipline review the research write up and decide if it is of sufficient quality. • Peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. • Peer review requires a community of experts in a given (and often narrowly defined) field, who are qualified and able to perform impartial review.

13. MENTORING • Definition Mentoring is defined as a developmental relationship that involves organisational members of unequal status or, less frequently, peers (Bosionelos, 2004 in Bozeman & Feeney, 2007). Mentoring is an intense long-term relationship between a senior, more experienced individual (the mentor) and a more junior, less experienced individual (the protégé)(Scandura, & Pellegrini, (2007).

14. The mentor is usually a senior, experienced employee who serves as a role model, provides support, direction, and feedback to the younger employee regarding career plans and interpersonal development, and increases the visibility of the protégé to decision-makers in the organisation who may influence career opportunities(Noe, 1988). • Internal • External • Networking

15. WHAT IS ETHICS? The term ethics is often synonymous with morals. Therefore, ethics refers to the study of morals. According to Burns & Bush (1998: 38), ethics determines which behaviors are deemed appropriate under certain circumstances as prescribed by codes of behaviour that are set by society. Ethics is simply defined as norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. UDS

16. RESEARCH MISCONDUCT • Research misconduct is taken to mean all practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research. • Generally misconduct of research includes: 1. The fabrication or falsification of data 2. Plagiarism or the presentation of documented words of another as one’s own, without attribution, appropriate for the presentation and without duly acknowledging the source. UDS

17. Research..CONT’D 3. Intentionally omitting references to the relevant published work of others for the purpose of inferring personal discovery of new information. 4. Misleading ascription of authorship to a publication including the listing of authors without their permission. 5. Attributing works of others who have not contributed to the research. 6. The lack of appropriate acknowledgement of the work primarily produced by a research student, trainee or associate UDS

18. Research..CONT’D 7. Interfering with any research property of another person, including without limitation, the apparatus, reagents, biological material, writing, data, hardware, software, or any other substance or device used or produced in the conduct of research. 8. Misrepresentation as in stating or presenting a material of significant falsehood. 9. Misrepresentation as in omitting a fact so that what is stated or presented as whole, states or presents a material of significant falsehood. UDS

19. Research..CONT’D 10. Deliberate inclusion of inaccurate or misleading information relating to research activity in curriculum vitae, grants applications, job applications or public statements, or failure to provide relevant information. 11. Presenting and seeking to publish the same manuscript in two or more different journals. UDS

20. PLAGIARISM • “Taking over the ideas, methods, or written words of another, without acknowledgment and with the intention that they be taken as the work of the deceiver." American Association of University Professors, (Sept./Oct., 1989). • “Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit, including those obtained through confidential review of others’ research proposals and manuscripts.” (Office of Science and Technology Policy, 1999).

21. Plagiarism of Text • “ Copying a portion of text from another source without giving credit to its author and without enclosing the borrowed text in quotation marks”(Roig, 2011) • Unethical to lift the work of another person verbatim without permission and claiming a right to the work; this is Plagiarism. • Conform to the fair use principle • Experts and colleagues will use your work

22. LIST OF GUIDELINES ON ETHICS AND PLAGIARISM 1. An ethical writer ALWAYS acknowledges the contributions of others and the source of his/her ideas. 2. Any verbatim text taken from another author must be enclosed in quotation marks. 3. We must always acknowledge every source that we use in our writing; whether we paraphrase it, summarize it, or enclose it quotations. 4. When paraphrasing and/or summarizing others’ work we must reproduce the exact meaning of the other author’s ideas or facts using our words and sentence structure.

23. 5. When in doubt as to whether a concept or fact is common knowledge, provide a citation. • Authors who submit a manuscript for publication containing data, reviews,conclusions, etc., that have already been disseminated in some significant manner (e.g.,published as an article in another journal, presented at a conference, posted on the internet) must clearly indicate to the editors and readers the nature of the previous dissemination • Self Plagiarism

24. 8. Authors are strongly urged to double-check their citations. Specifically, authors should always ensure that each reference notation appearing in the body of the manuscript corresponds to the correct citation listed in the reference section and that each source listed in the reference section has been cited at some point in the manuscript. 9. Only those individuals who have made substantive contributions to a project merit authorship in a paper. 10. Academic or professional ghost authorship in the sciences is ethically unacceptable.

25. MAJOR REASONS FOR REJECTION • Does not contribute anything new to knowledge • Containing unreliable data • Not providing the profile and background of the respondents used for the study • Methodology was scanty • Data collected from biased samples • Containing data that were not appropriate to the study • Study not having focus • Covering many topics without providing a focus • Not making use of data e.g. not making references to the variables. • Not being specific. E.g. Using expressions such: Most, Majority, Few. UDS

26. Rejection..CONT’D • Manuscripts not well edited. • Correct paragraphing • Correct sentencing • Correct headings and sub headings • Correct grammar • REMEDIES • Patience • Assistance • Mentors • Colleagues • Language experts • Proof Reading UDS

27. WHICH ARTICLE SHOULD YOU WRITE? • There are two possible articles you can write: (a) the article you planned to write when you designed your study or • (b) the article that makes the most sense now that you have seen the results. • They are rarely the same, and the correct answer is (b). UDS

28. HOW SHOULD YOU WRITE? • The primary criteria for good scientific writing are accuracy and clarity. If your article is interesting and written with style, fine. But these are subsidiary virtues. First strive for accuracy and clarity. • The first step toward clarity is good organization, and the standardized format of a journal article does much of the work for you. • It not only permits readers to read the report from beginning to end, as they would any coherent narrative, but also to scan it for a quick overview of the study or to locate specific information easily by turning directly to the relevant section. UDS

29. AUTHOR RESPONSIBILITIES • To submit only proof read, original, non fraudulent work • To submit one journal at one time • To list all references used (No plagiarism) • To have followed ethical research practices • To respond to comments/criticism positively • Timeliness • To acknowledge all sources of funding • To comply with submission regulations UDS

30. COMMON KNOWLEDGE • Familiar sayings • Well-known quotations • These do not require documentation • Common knowledge is decided by experts in a given discipline • Facts that can easily be verified in a readily available reference work should not be documented • Any time you use any source extensively, you should cite it in a way that shows clearly just how you used it UDS

31. FUNCTIONS OF DOCUMENTATION • Giving Fair Credit • Acknowledging Borrowing • Indebtedness to Sources Used • A book or an article is the intellectual property of persons who wrote and published it • To fail to give credit where is due is PLAGIARISM • Enables Readers to retrace your steps • Helps your Reader Know the Territory • Sometimes welcomes a newcomer to a field of research • Helps Your Reader See How You Have Used Your Sources • Relying on single sources • Relying on multiple sources UDS

32. State the problem and rationale clearly. Cite current and appropriate literature. Use the best methodology and use it correctly. Tie the paper into some conceptual schema. Analyze the problem correctly and accurately. Write clearly and jargon-free. Organize the paper well. Never submit duplicate manuscripts simultaneously to any journals. Avoid plagiarism at all costs. Learn from mistakes [Brunn, 1988] POSTSCRIPT • ADVICE TO PROSPECTIVE AUTHORS 32 UDS

33. CONCLUSION There are eight main features of academic writing that are often discussed. Academic writing is to some extent: complex, formal, objective, explicit, hedged, and responsible. It uses language precisely and accurately. Complexity Written language is relatively more complex than spoken language. It has a more varied vocabulary. Formality Academic writing is relatively formal. In general this means that in an essay you should avoid colloquial words and expressions.

34. CONCLUSION CONT’D Precision In academic writing, facts and figures are given precisely. Objectivity Written language is in general objective rather than personal. It therefore has fewer words that refer to the writer or the reader. This means that the main emphasis should be on the information that you want to give and the arguments you want to make, rather than you.

35. Conclusion. CONT’D Explicitness Academic writing is explicit about the relationships in the text. It is the responsibility of the writer in English to make it clear to the reader how the various parts of the text are related. Accuracy Academic writing uses vocabulary accurately.

36. CONCLUSION…CONT’D Hedging In any kind of academic writing you do, it is necessary to make decisions about your stance on a particular subject, or the strength of the claims you are making. Different subjects prefer to do this in different ways. Responsibility In academic writing you must be responsible for, and must be able to provide evidence and justification for, any claims you make. You are also responsible for demonstrating an understanding of any source texts you use. (http:www.uefap.com/writing/feature/featfram.htm) Accessed on September 1,2011)