Writing for Publication: Assessment of a Course for Social Work Doctoral Students

Abstract

The authors describe a for-credit course for Social Work PhD students called Writing for Publication and report on a study evaluating its success in supporting students to develop and submit a paper for publication in a refereed journal. The literature-informed course design, taught in collaboration with the university’s Writing Centre, includes didactic elements and a peer editing component. Seventeen of the 22 students who had taken the course completed an anonymous online survey asking whether they had submitted the paper and the outcome, whether the course had been helpful, in what ways, and in which other areas of the PhD program they were most helpful. The quantitative and qualitative data indicate that the course has been successful. A majority of students submitted an article to a peer-reviewed journal, and a majority found the course helpful in this regard as well as in other areas of the PhD program. Based on findings regarding the contributions of the course and student suggestions for improvement, we discuss considerations for strengthening the program in future.

KEYWORDS:

• academic writing
• doctoral education
• teaching research

Notes

¹ We had unfortunately neglected to include submission of a chapter as an option for response to “What did you do next? [i.e. after hearing back from the journal].” The participant who submitted a chapter is not represented among the 10 who submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

² At the time of writing this article, we have learned that an additional paper has been accepted, bringing the total to four of 10 articles accepted for publication to date. (The student who told one of the authors about this development had completed the survey.)

³ The Course Helpfulness scale shows normal distribution as the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic shows nonsignificant result, with Sig. value equal to .200. This is also supported by a reasonably straight line in Normal Q-Q Plots.

⁴ Many students admitted to our PhD program have completed master’s degree programs (in Social Work or related disciplines) in which there was no thesis requirement.

⁵ Although grant-writing workshops are offered across the university, they do not address the kind of writing skills covered in the Writing for Publication course.