Writing for Earth Scientists: 52 Lessons in Academic Publishing

The time has come. You are an Earth scientist. You’ve spent weeks, months, years working on this project – now is the time to pull it together for publication. You might be writing an undergraduate or graduate thesis, a research paper for a leading journal, a note for the newsletter of the local amateur scientific society, a book review or an abstract for a specialist geological conference. How do you make the transition from promising unpublished researcher to established academic author? Of course, the phrase ‘academic publishing’ covers a multitude of sins; monographs, research papers, book reviews, conference abstracts or whatever each requires a different approach. You have to decide what it is you are going to write and where to publish it. There are co-authors, supervisors of your degree, peer reviewers and editors to deal with on the way. But the only way to write like an academic is to write like an academic. . . where do you start? You could do much worse than start here. There are many books on how to write and be published aimed at research students and other aspiring academics. Many of these are readable, comprehensive and provide good advice. This book is composed of numerous short chapters on this subject, all directly relevant to one or more aspects of academic publishing and aimed particularly at the Earth scientists in the broadest sense. Geologists will be encouraged to use the book as much as a reference as a reader, ‘dipping in’ to the chapters that contain relevant tips, hints and comments to enable them to improve the paper that they are currently writing. The book is intended to be informative, readable and, above all, of practical application for all readers.  In summary, the volume will be a readable compilation investigating many facets of academic publishing relevant to the Earth sciences. It will be of particular interest to postgraduate students, postdocs and new academics 

Table of Contents:
Foreword xi Acknowledgements xiii 1 Introduction to Writing 1 2 Publication Diversity 7 3 Theses 11 4 Books and Monographs 15 5 Invited Chapters for Books 19 6 Peer?–Reviewed Research Papers 23 7 Short Notes 27 8 Discussions of and Replies to Published Papers 31 9 Book Reviews and Book Reviewing 35 10 Conference Abstracts 39 11 Papers for Non?–Peer?–Reviewed Publications 43 12 Field Guides 47 13 Title 51 14 Abstract 55 15 Key Words 59 16 Introduction 63 17 Materials and Methods/Localities and Horizons 67 18 Results 69 19 Discussion and Conclusions 71 20 Acknowledgements 75 21 References 77 22 Why Write? (1) 81 23 Line Drawings 85 24 Maps 89 25 Photographic Plates 93 26 Tables 101 27 Co?–authors and Others 105 28 Cover Letters 109 29 Submission 113 30 Editors 115 31 Reviewers 119 32 Why Write? (2) 123 33 Reviews 127 34 Revision: Corrections and Resubmission 131 35 Acceptance 135 36 Rejection 139 37 Copyright 143 38 Open Access 147 39 Offprints and Pdfs 151 40 Reading 157 41 Reviewing 161 42 Why Write? (3) 167 43 Productivity 171 44 Space and Time 175 45 Writer’s Block 179 46 Plain English 183 47 The Native English Speaker 187 48 Why Write? (4) 191 49 Editing Journals 197 50 A Space of Your Own 201 51 Contracts, Agents, Publishers and Your First Book 205 52 How Did I Write This Book? 209 Appendix: Book Proposal 213 Index 221

About the Author :
Professor Stephen K. Donovan has been publishing on such diverse subjects as Caribbean geology, palaeontology, the history of science, ichnology and academic publishing for over 30 years. He loves research, writing and publishing. This book can be read from cover-to-cover, dipped into when an answer to a specific question is needed or both. The aim is to help all geologists to write improved papers – both better organised and more readable – and to get them published.