The academic blindspot: the ego gets in the way

There’s a particular kind of discomfort that lives inside many academics — one we rarely talk about, let alone admit. It sounds like this:

“I should know how to do this by now.”

“Other people seem to manage.”

“What if they find out I’m struggling?”

These quiet questions don’t come up in research seminars or writing groups. But they often swirl beneath the surface, especially when it comes to writing. At the heart of this discomfort is something we al know has a profound place in academia: ego.

Not necessarily always ‘ego’ in the arrogant, bombastic sense, but ego in its more subtle, more dangerous form: as a defence mechanism against perceived professional weakness. And this kind of ego creates a blindspot, and one that can seriously hinder your career.

The Rumsfeld Problem: What We Don’t Know We Don’t Know

It’s the unknown unknowns that causes the trouble. Especially for academics who assume that, by the time they’ve earned a PhD, they should know how to write. The more senior they become, the more dangerous this is.

They should be productive. That asking for help or admitting struggle is a kind of failure we cannot admit to in a highly competitive environment. Professional athletes are loathe to admit they have any kind of injury niggle before races, because they don’t want to give the psychological edge to their competition. Academics can fall into this similar mindset. But here’s the rub: writing is a craft. A technical, genre-bound, and structurally complex craft. And it’s one most of us were never actually taught, and are certainly not comfortable performing inside a time pressed environment where we have substituted technique with time.

The gap in our skillset is an unknown unknown: as such we don’t recognise it as a fixable problem. We internalise it as a personal flaw.

And then the ego kicks in.

The Academic Ego: What It Protects (and Prevents)

The academic ego protects us from the embarrassment of not knowing. It tells us things like:

• “Everyone else is fine. You just need to focus more.”

• “This isn’t a skills issue — you’re just lazy or disorganised.”

• “If you ask for help, you’ll lose credibility.”

This mindset is understandable. Academia is structured around performance — and performance demands polish. We are rewarded for what looks effortless, not what required rebuilding our entire process behind the scenes.

But the cost of this ego-protection is high. It keeps us stuck. It erodes our confidence. And it prevents us from getting the targeted help that would allow us to flourish.

Writing Is Not Supposed to Be Easy — But It Is Learnable

Here’s the truth I wish more scholars could hear early in their careers:

Struggling to write consistently is not a reflection of your intelligence, talent, or commitment. It’s a sign that something in your process needs to change . But to get there, you have to move past the ego. You have to be willing to say:

“There’s something here I don’t yet know how to do or I could do it better.”

That small admission opens the door to exponential growth. Because when you approach writing as a craft — one that can be broken down, studied, and rebuilt — you shift from seeing yourself as the problem to seeing your system as the problem. And systems can be fixed.

The Real Professionalism: Admitting and Addressing the Gaps

Ironically, the most professionally mature thing an academic can do is admit what they don’t know and take deliberate steps to close that gap.

That’s not weakness. That’s mastery in the making.

What makes a journal article transformative?

Last week I talked about how to create a 4* REF journal article and what the component parts were. This week I want to unpack in a little more detail the idea of originality, which is usually the thing thats scuppers many ECR and mid-career academics from claiming the 4* status.

First it sounds undoable the way it is framed in the REF: to remind you, the REF fashions 4* works as:

"4* = Quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance, and rigour."

We read “world-leading in originality” and immediately think:

Well that’s not me. I’m not Einstein. I’m not rewriting the field.

And you know what? You're right, you’re probably not. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to be. The REF language sounds like it's calling for revolutionary, once-in-a-generation research. But if we’re being practical - and we must be - we know that kind of paradigm-shifting work doesn't emerge on tidy 4-year cycles. Not unless someone’s hiding their time machine.

So what does REF actually mean by originality? Let’s break it down.

1. Originality Isn’t Invention — It’s Contribution

You don’t have to invent a new method or theory out of thin air. You do have to do something useful and new with what’s already there.

That could mean:

• Applying a theory in a novel context

• Synthesising existing debates in a way that unlocks fresh insight

• Proposing a new conceptual model that helps others see the issue more clearly

The key word here is contribution. You’re helping the field evolve. That’s original.

2. Originality Is About Position

You don’t need to be on a pedestal looking down at your field. You need to be in it, showing that you understand the current conversation — and that your work shifts it meaningfully.

Ask yourself:

• What debates is my article entering?

• What does it move forward?

• What can no one say again once they’ve read it?

If you can answer that last one confidently — you’re likely in 4* territory.

3. Originality Has to Be identifiable

Here’s where many scholars unintentionally undercut themselves: they do original work, but they bury the lede. REF panels are not detectives. They won’t hunt for your originality buried on page 17. Neither will the article reviewer. So:

• Don’t be coy about your contribution.

• Don’t save the “so what?” for the final paragraph (DISASTER).

• Say early, clearly, and confidently: Here’s the original move this paper makes.

It doesn’t have to be arrogant. But it does have to be visible.

4. Originality Looks Different in Different Disciplines

In some fields, originality means a new dataset or analytical technique, but not just the presentation of it. The ‘so what’ still counts. In others, it’s a fresh conceptual lens, or a reframing of long-standing problems so we can solve them differently. The point is: REF does not expect one uniform definition of originality. But it does expect that your work pushes the conversation forward.

So instead of asking “Is this ground-breaking?” Ask: “Who is this useful to, and how does it move their thinking?”

You Are Already Doing Original Work, You’re Just Not Framing It That Way

I see this all the time in my programme, Master Journal Article Writing. Brilliant researchers doing powerful work — but not naming their contribution, not positioning it, not claiming the originality already embedded in their thinking. Being afraid to claim their contribution, own the intellectual space they have created. They will go so far: build a new model, build a new theoretical insight and then - forgive the analogy - present it like my Cat brings a dead mouse to me - as an unsolicited gift, a bit mangled, and not something I can use.

Don’t just present the new thing but tell me what this enables us to do, solve, think differently about and why.

You don’t need better ideas — you need to learn how to write your ideas better.

That means clarity. Structure. Knowing how to frame your work for REF-recognised journals. And yes, that can be learned. I help individuals and universities push staff contributions to the top level, by helping scholars know what it looks like inside their own particular publication. If you’re ready to go from quiet, hidden originality to REF-ready contribution, that’s exactly what we do inside Master Journal Article Writing.

You bring the research. I’ll teach you how to shape it, write it, and publish it at the level your career deserves.

→ Applications are open now.
Let’s make your next article a 4*.

What makes a 4* journal paper?

What Makes a 4* Journal Article in the UK REF?

And How You Can Start Writing Them Now

Yes. I am going here because I am getting all the questions! If you're working in UK academia, you've likely heard the phrase “We need 4* outputs for REF” more times than you can count. Whether you're an early career researcher or a seasoned professor, the pressure to produce REF-worthy journal articles is constant and often, confusing. So what exactly is a 4* article?
What distinguishes it from a solid 2* or 3* paper? And more importantly, how can you learn to write one?

Let’s demystify the expectations — and unpack what excellence really looks like.

First, What Does REF Say a 4* Output Is?

According to the official REF guidance:

"4* = Quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance, and rigour."

But what does that mean in practice? Let's break it down into components that you can actually work with as a writer.

1. Originality: Not Just New, But Transformative

A 4* article doesn’t just present new data, indeed no new data is necessary. Instead a paper reshapes how a question is asked, introduces a new conceptual framework, or pushes a field forward in unexpected ways. So, some good ways to test which of your papers meet this criteria is to ask the following questions:

• Am I contributing more than a small increment?

• Does this paper offer new ways of thinking or doing?

• Would this shift how someone else approaches this topic?

Common mistake: Many academics confuse ‘original’ with new data, or just a tiny add-on to the received wisdom on a topic. They confuse it with ‘unusual’ or ‘different’. In REF terms, originality is about intellectual leadership — not novelty for novelty’s sake. So always ask yourself the so what question - here’s a new framework or typology, but so what? What can someone else do with this? What is its purpose?

2. Significance: Will It Matter in 5–10 Years?

Significance refers to the impact your article has on the field (not just citations, although those may follow). REF panels are looking for scholarship that becomes foundational, reframes debates, or sets the terms for future research.

Ask yourself:

• Who will build on this work?

• Does it change how a problem is understood?

• Would peers in adjacent fields care?

3. Rigour: Not Just Strong Methods, But Convincing Logic

Rigour means your claims are well-supported, your structure is clear, and your evidence is marshalled with precision.

Ask yourself:

• Are my methods appropriate, and well explained?

• Do I make a compelling case for my conclusions?

• Is the writing disciplined, or full of hedging? Remember this is a problem that will not only scupper your 4*ness, but also, the probability of being published in the top venues.

Too many potentially 4* ideas are let down by muddy expression, unfocused argument, or sloppy structure. Rigour must be visible not just in what you did — but in how you wrote it.

The Hidden Fourth Ingredient: Positioning

Here’s what REF won’t explicitly say but what you must understand:

A 4* article is positioned as a 4* article.

That means:

• It appears in a journal recognised for field-leading work.

• It situates itself in the centre of live disciplinary debates.

• It writes with authority, not hesitation or apology.

You cannot leave quality to be "discovered" by the reader. It has to be staged. This is a skill and one that most researchers were never taught.

So, Can You Learn to Write 4* Articles?

Absolutely.
But you need to be deliberate. Producing 4* work isn’t about "trying harder": it’s about understanding the craft of scholarly writing at the highest level.

Coaching isn’t remedial, it’s a strategic investment

In recent years, universities have invested heavily in metrics: publication targets, grant income goals, and research impact strategies. These are the institutional currencies of success — legible, reportable, and aligned with global rankings. But beneath the spreadsheets, something quieter is happening.

Many of your most talented researchers are struggling. Not because they lack skill or ambition, but because they are exhausted by a system that demands constant output while offering little support for how to sustain that output meaningfully. How to deliver quality. No-one is investing in their craft.

This is where coaching and training comes in. And why more universities are realising that coaching isn’t remedial — it’s strategic.

As an academic coach, I work with early-career, mid-career and senior researchers across disciplines. What I see time and again is that the core problems slowing research down are not about the individual’s capacity. They are a systemic lack of workload management compounded by writing habits shaped by overwork and perfectionism exacerbated by pseudo-productivity work environments.

Universities are full of brilliant people. But brilliance alone isn’t enough. To thrive, researchers need:

• Structures to support deep thinking and training in writing craft that can thrive in the real - not imagined - environment of HE

• Permission to work smarter, not just harder and abandon pseudo-productivity

• Tools to move through stuckness and self-doubt

These are not “soft skills.” They are the engines of high-quality research.

Without them, researchers burn out. Or opt out. Or quietly disappear from your REF portfolio while teaching more, producing less, and doubting whether academia still has room for them. When institutions bring me in, the goal is not just productivity. It’s retention. It’s repair. It’s building the kind of academic culture where people can flourish — and where flourishing leads to outcomes that metrics alone can’t deliver.

If you want your metrics delivered, this is exactly the kind of intervention you need.

Here’s what changes when researchers are coached:

• They build resilient, repeatable writing habits

• They reconnect with the joy and meaning of their research, delivering high quality outputs

• They produce more — but with less distress, and burnout, less HR issues, less teaching gaps

• They model healthier practices to peers and mentees

And most importantly, they stay.

Hiring a coach isn’t a luxury. It’s one of the few interventions that addresses the actual conditions under which research is produced. Because while targets measure outputs, coaching strengthens the infrastructure of how those outputs are made — and by whom.

If you’re a Dean, Head of Department, Director of Research, or Staff Development lead, consider this: what would be possible if your researchers felt not just pressure to deliver, but real support to grow?

Let’s not just count the work. Let’s support the people doing it.

Why Academic Writers Get Stuck - and how to move again

In academic life, writing is both the engine and the expression of our scholarly identity. It is how we clarify our thinking, share our findings, and contribute to our fields. And yet, many accomplished academics — at all stages of career — find themselves stuck.

Not blocked entirely, perhaps. But slowed, stalled, or spiralling in avoidance.

Stuckness rarely announces itself all at once. It accumulates. At first, it’s a few overdue revisions. Then an outline that never becomes a draft. Eventually, it becomes a quiet sense of shame. We stop mentioning the book proposal we meant to submit. We defer conference abstracts because we “need more time.” We spend our writing hours editing administrative emails instead.

The causes of writing stuckness are complex, but the most common explanations academics reach for— lack of motivation, competing demands, time pressure — are incomplete, and yes, mostly inaccurate. Time, in particular, is the false culprit we most often reach for. Motivation is completely misunderstood.

We tell ourselves that a sabbatical will fix it. Or that we’ll get back on track over the summer. Or after marking season. Or once this new role settles down.

The problem, of course, is that the “perfect time” never arrives. And even when it does, the writing doesn’t flow. Because the real issue isn’t time or motivation— it’s lies in 4 particular domains of writing.

Many of us developed our writing habits under the intense conditions of a PhD, where binge-and-bust cycles were normalised, perfectionism was expected, and we often wrote in isolation, without models or support. Those patterns don’t vanish with graduation. Instead, they come with us into full academic posts, where expectations only increase and time only contracts.

Getting unstuck, then, requires more than setting a word count goal or blocking out Friday mornings. It requires stepping back to examine the architecture of your writing practice — the habits, beliefs, and strategies, the practices, and craft that underpin (or undermine) it.

In my work with academic writers, I’ve seen again and again that progress begins not with productivity tools, but first with diagnosis. What kind of stuck are you? Do you reach for motivation or time as your standard explanation? Structural? Emotional? Cognitive? Each has different roots — and different remedies.

That’s why I’ve developed a short, live training focused specifically on this question: How do we get unstuck?

The session provides you with a personal writing action plan where I give you my 4 part diagnostic tool and how to tackle stuckness. It’s practical, evidence-informed, and intentionally low-cost — because I believe this kind of clarity should be accessible to all academics, not just those with institutional coaching budgets.

Stuckness thrives in silence. But once named, it can be shifted.

If you’re ready to shift it, too — the training might be a good place to begin.

What every Dean needs to know about academic burnout

A Publication Target Won’t Fix Burnout — But Coaching Can Prevent It from Derailing Your Top Talent

Academia has a retention problem — and it’s not just about funding or job security.

It's about burnout.

Every week, I speak to high-performing academics who are rethinking their place in the profession. These are talented researchers with promising trajectories — the ones who win grants, publish well, mentor students, and carry the weight of departmental leadership. They're exactly the kind of people institutions should be investing in. And yet, they’re sliding quietly toward the exit.

Why?

Because they’re exhausted. Overstretched. Disillusioned. And in too many cases, completely unsupported in the work that matters most to their career — their research.

Institutions often respond to this problem with well-intended but misaligned measures.

More workshops.
More writing retreats.
More ambitious publication targets.

But here’s the truth: you cannot spreadsheet your way out of burnout.

You don’t fix disengagement with tighter metrics.
You don’t retain people by increasing pressure without changing support.

✅ What Really Works

I work with universities that are serious about developing and retaining research talent — not just monitoring it. The institutions that succeed in this space don’t just ask for more outputs. They ask better questions:

• What’s getting in the way of this researcher’s writing?

• What support structures are missing [these are not difficult to put in place]?

• How do we create time, safety, and clarity for deep thinking and creativity?

• How do we invest in their growth — not just their productivity?

In my work with early-, mid-, and senior-career academics across the UK and Europe, I’ve seen a few key interventions that actually move the dial. They’re not flashy. But they’re powerful.

Let’s break them down.

1. Strategic Workload RETHINKING

A 40-40-20 model in theory does not translate to 40-40-20 in practice.

Research time is often the most vulnerable part of the academic workload. It’s the part that gets eaten by teaching prep, student crises, admin, committee work, and increasingly complex internal systems. When institutions fail to protect research time, they create a slow bleed — and researchers pay the price.

The solution is not simply for individuals to ring-fence hours in a diary. It’s to work differently - and think differently - about how work is executed with a clear, values-aligned vision of what kind of academic the institution wants to support.

That includes:

• Conducting honest workload audits

• Reducing low-value service expectations and the pseudo productivity garbage that drowns out actual value work

• Empowering researchers to create a writing focused environment (and be backed when they do)

A researcher with time to think is a researcher who can write. It’s that simple — and that hard.

2. High-Trust Coaching Relationships

Many academics are reluctant to disclose how lost or blocked they feel around their writing. They’ve spent years building expertise and fear that admitting struggle will make them appear incompetent or weak.

This is why coaching is so effective.

In a confidential, non-judgmental space, researchers can reflect, reframe, and rebuild their practice. They can be honest about what’s not working — and receive expert support to change it.

Writing coaching, in particular, provides:

• Structured accountability

• Tailored strategies for writing under pressure

• Techniques to overcome perfectionism, fear, and procrastination

When done well, coaching doesn’t just help researchers write more. It helps them write better — and feel more grounded, confident, and in control.

3. Safe, Structured Research Development Spaces

Too many research environments operate on passive silence or punitive critique. That’s a recipe for creative paralysis.

Researchers thrive when they can test ideas, receive constructive feedback, and be encouraged to think ambitiously. Structured spaces — such as facilitated research groups, accountability circles, or writing sprints — offer exactly that.

The key word here is safe.

A space where someone can say “I don’t know where to start” or “I’m stuck” without fear of judgment is a space where real progress can happen. Creating that environment isn’t about tone-policing. It’s about leadership — modelling trust, curiosity, and collective support.

4. Tailored Writing Support for Real Outputs

Generic writing advice doesn’t work for complex research outputs.

Academics don’t need another webinar telling them to write daily (though I stand by this basic advice). They need help diagnosing what’s going wrong in their process, addressing longstanding writing baggage, and developing methods that work under pressure. Better technique, better processes, better workload management: just better.

This is exactly why I develop my Coaching Programmes and work closely with institutions to embed them as a live, high-impact intervention. They enable researchers to:

• Build a sustainable writing habit

• Identify and overcome internal writing blocks

• Learn powerful techniques that improve quality and quantity

• Leave with tangible progress — not just good intentions

It’s fast. It’s strategic. And it meets researchers where they are — overwhelmed, overworked, but still ambitious.

👥 Institutional Change Starts with Human Insight

If you’re a Dean, Head of Research, or Director of Staff Development — and you’re watching talented researchers burn out or disengage — the time to intervene is now.

Not when the REF looms.
Not after a resignation letter.
Now.

Your researchers don’t need more pressure.
They need more support. You need their outputs, and they desperately want to be world class researchers delivering them. Your needs align beautifully, but you are not putting in place the catalysts for productive writing.

You need more insight into their barriers.
More strategies that work in the real world.
And they need more belief that the institution values their intellectual labour — not just its outputs.

When you provide that?
You don’t just protect your publication pipeline.
You protect your people.

And ultimately, that’s what sustains excellence.

📩 I work with universities across the UK, Ireland, and Europe to design custom academic writing interventions and coaching support for staff. If you’re looking to retain top talent and improve research culture, I’d love to talk.

Let’s build institutions where researchers can — and want to — stay.

The squeezed middle of academia: where careers die if you don't take control

You’re not new anymore. You’re not coasting toward retirement either. You’re in the middle — and it feels like everything is pressing in. Welcome to mid-career in academia: the squeezed middle. It’s a stage marked by rising expectations, layers of responsibility, and the uneasy realisation that early career strategies no longer work — but no one ever taught you what to replace them with.

As an academic coach who has worked with hundreds of scholars, I’ve seen this pattern play out over and over again. Talented, committed academics reach the midpoint of their careers and find themselves stuck: overwhelmed, under-supported, and secretly wondering, Is this it? Do I really want this for the next x years of my life? If this is resonating with you, know this: you're not alone, and you're not the problem. The system is built to squeeze the middle — and it’s time we talked about it.

The Hidden Pressures of Mid-Career

Mid-career is often romanticised from the outside — you’ve got a title, tenure, a research portfolio, maybe some funding wins under your belt. But inside, it often feels very different.

Here’s what I hear from mid-career academics almost every day:

• “I have no time to think.”
  Your calendar is an endless string of meetings, committees, student issues, admin, and ‘urgent’ tasks. Deep work? Strategic thinking? That feels like a luxury.

• “I’m doing so much — but I’m not moving forward.”
  You’re busy, but not always productive. And certainly not fulfilled. The papers, grant proposals, and research ideas that matter most to you keep getting pushed aside.

• “I’m exhausted — and I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed writing.”
  What was once intellectually exciting now feels transactional. The spark is gone, and burnout is creeping in.

• “Everyone needs something from me — but who’s looking out for me?”
  You’re mentoring others, leading teams, and holding things together. But your own growth? That’s fallen off the radar.

Why This Happens

The mid-career squeeze is not a personal failing. It’s structural. Here’s what’s often at play:

1. You’re still operating with early-career habits.
   What got you through the PhD and early postdoc — saying yes to everything, working long hours, over-preparing, people pleasing, afraid to say no — is now unsustainable. But no one trained you to work differently. And you keep on thinking, well its worked so far, surely there is something wrong with me, rather than the systems and tools and my way of being at work

2. You’ve taken on leadership roles without dropping anything else.
   Rather than stepping back to step up, you’re just piling on. The result? Role overload, diluted focus, and chronic exhaustion.

3. There’s no roadmap for what comes next.
   The next promotion may feel ambiguous. You’ve achieved a lot, but you’re unsure how to design a career that feels meaningful — and achievable — from here.

4. Your writing is stuck in survival mode.
   It’s reactive, last-minute, and increasingly demoralising. You’ve lost the rhythm, and possibly the reason.

What Mid-Career Academics Actually Need

What I’ve found in my work is that mid-career scholars need three things above all:

1. A strategic reset

Mid-career is the perfect time to pause, reassess, and design the next chapter of your academic life. What do you actually want to be known for? What kind of work energises you now? What do you need be let go of? This requires space — and the courage to say no — so you can realign your work with your expertise and values.

2. A new system for working

You can’t work harder — you’ve already maxed that out. The answer is working differently. That means optimising your writing systems, protecting time for deep work, and rethinking what productivity looks like for a senior scholar. You also need permission (and tools) to stop being everyone else’s safety net and start putting your own projects first.

3. Support from people who get it

Mid-career can be deeply isolating. Everyone assumes you’ve got it figured out. But what you really need is a space where you can be real, be supported, and be challenged — by peers and mentors who understand.

The Path Forward

The good news? Mid-career doesn’t have to be a holding pattern. It can be a launchpad.

When I work with mid-career academics inside the Academic Writer’s Collective, we don’t just focus on writing more — we work on writing smarter, leading strategically, and building sustainable academic careers. It’s about reclaiming your voice, your time, and your vision.

It’s about reimagining what success looks like — and creating the systems, support, and habits to make it real.

And it’s about remembering why you started this work in the first place — and actually enjoying it again.

If You’re Feeling Squeezed…

You don’t have to stay stuck. You don’t have to keep doing more with less. And you certainly don’t have to go it alone. Mid-career can be one of the most powerful chapters in your academic journey — if you give yourself the space to reset, refocus, and recommit to work that truly matters.

If you’re ready for that kind of shift, I’m here to help. Book a consultation, or simply start by asking: What would it look like if this next chapter felt lighter, clearer, and more fulfilling than the last?

Because that’s not just possible — it’s what mid-career should be.

If you are ready to get out of the squeezed middle, decide today that its not going to be this way for the rest of your academic career. Book a call with me here to see where I can help.

How to thrive in your academic career

What Kind of Academic Are You — and What’s Standing Between You and the Career You Want?

After over 17 years in academia and 6 years coaching scholars across the career spectrum, I've seen patterns. The same barriers show up again and again — not just in early career researchers but also in seasoned professors, department chairs, and ambitious academics with big visions.

Here’s what I know for sure:
Success in academia doesn’t just come from hard work or passion. It comes from having the right systems, mindset, and support to execute your ideas consistently — without burning out or getting buried in pseudo-productivity.

Here’s how I categorise the scholars I work with, and what they need to thrive:

👩‍🎓 Early Career Scholars

You’re in your first post or just starting the tenure track. It’s sink or swim, and you’re expected to juggle teaching, research, admin, mentoring, publishing, and carving out your academic identity — fast.
What you need: a proven writing habit, smart project execution, work management strategies, and a mentor to help you focus on what actually moves the needle (aka: tenure-critical outputs).

🧑‍🏫 Mid-Career Academics

The "squeezed middle." You're no longer new, but you're not senior either. You've collected admin duties and grown into roles without shedding anything. The PhD-era systems you relied on have broken down.
What you need: to stop defaulting to busywork, restructure your writing practice, and redefine success on your terms — without burnout or guilt.

🧓 Senior Scholars

You’ve been managing departments, research centres, maybe even faculties. You’ve worn every hat. But your own research? That’s taken a back seat. The writing habits you once had are rusty or lost altogether.
What you need: a full reset. A new way to integrate research, writing, and leadership in a way that reflects your impact — and reclaims your joy.

🌟 The Ambitious Academic

At any career stage, some scholars want to play bigger. Whether it’s publishing your 4th book or creating a research legacy beyond academia, you’re ready to optimise everything with expert guidance and support.
What you need: strategic mentorship, advanced writing development, and a system to create, elevate and leverage your research for real-world impact.

The 6 Non-Negotiables for a Thriving Academic Writing Career

No matter your level, you need:

✅ A rock-solid, drama-free writing habit
✅ Clear project selection, execution, and sustainable focus
✅ A system to do deep work and avoid pseudo-productivity
✅ High-level project ideation before execution
✅ Advanced pre-writing, drafting, and revising techniques
✅ Writing excellence as a non-negotiable skillset

This is the foundation of my SCRIBE Framework — and it’s all inside The Academic Writer’s Collective.

I didn’t design the Collective to be “motivational.” I designed it to transform how you work — with accountability, strategy, and expert-led training that takes you from busy to brilliant.

🧭 Want to know where to start?

Here’s how I recommend working with me based on your career stage:

🔹 Early Career:
Start with The Writing Accelerator or join The Collective. Need journal articles or a monograph for tenure? Try my writing-genre-specific programmes.

🔹 Mid Career:
The Collective will help you restructure your writing system. Add 1:1 coaching or genre programmes if you’re targeting major outputs.

🔹 Senior Scholars:
1:1 coaching or a VIP Day is the deepest, most targeted support. Let’s reboot your writing practice together.

🔹 Ambitious Academics:
Apply for Elevate — access all my programmes, my eyes on your work, and a high-touch coaching programme designed to fast-track your biggest goals.

If you want to stop spinning your wheels and start creating the writing life — and academic career — you actually want… let’s talk.

📩 Book a consult call here

Let’s find out where the real work needs to begin.

Journal article mastery requires a formula

Do you ever wonder why the same people are prolific publishers and other struggle with repeated rejection and take an age to produce a single piece of work?

There are of course many structural reasons, but I am not talking about inequality here or difference in workload, rather the difference of opportunity to be trained into the FORMULA. Being mentored into the craft of writing successfully for journals has all but died out under the increasing pressure felt by everyone in HE. Those in the know have no time to mentor unless you are really exceptionally fortunate.

The real reason some people publish with relative ease and some struggle is that they have learned THE FORMULA on way or another. There is a formula for all journal articles, regardless of discipline. The content may be different, and even within disciplines there are slight variations between journals, but the formula - the underlying rules and expectations - remains exactly the same. Learning this formula is crucial for academic success whether we agree with the metrics of measurement or not, this is our reality.

To help you crack this code I want to share part of this formula with you here. You can find the formula for writing introductions to journal papers here - it is FREE

But there is a formula for everything else too. The link passages, the conclusions, the abstract, how you edit you paper for impactful, non waffle filled text, how you pull your argument to the front, how you maintain your authorial voice, how you substantiate your claims and make a contribution, how you understand reviewer feedback and respond to it successfully, and many other elements are completely formulaic. Together with lots of basic writing advice - like the proper use of grammar, and what constitutes a good paragraph structure - the formula can be learned and reproduced over and over again.

Without the formula, you can of course publish. But it is like throwing darts at a dartboard with a blindfold on - you occasionally hit the mark after alot of misses, but you have no idea how THIS paper was so much different from the other papers you have written that did not get published.

Knowing the formula enables you to hit the target every time.

If you would like to work with me to perfect this craft once and for all, let’s talk! You can book a free consultation call with me here:

Don’t keep struggling alone. Learn it once, keep producing work with ease and mastery for the rest of your career.

Writing in a time scarce environment

It is that time of year. You feel like you are dying with overwhelm. So many administrative imperatives. You feel like you are up against it all the time.

I talk to academics every single day about their writing problems, and by far and away the greatest complaint is not enough time (or reviewer 2, which I will deal with next week!).

Time. It is my FAVOURITE writing topic and my FAVOURITE writing tool. Of all the tools I teach my clients, this one is THE game changer, but naturally, there is a lot of resistance to thinking about time differently.

To get a great writing habit, clients often think they need motivation - to rediscover it somehow, like Columbus.

As I tell everyone that comes in shouting distance, motivation is GARBAGE. Motivation is not it. What you need is momentum because motivation comes when we are already doing really great things. It comes after, not before the action of writing. Getting momentum requires a couple of things:

1. A writing habit where you have diagnosed your barriers CORRECTLY - not the ones on top of your mind, but the one's underneath.

2. A solid drafting process that frees you from the idea that BIG BLOCKS OF TME is a writing process - it is not, it is what you use in the absence of a process

3. Control of your diary: knowing HOW to effectively weaponise time.

Want to know more? Get my free training here:

How To Get a Productive Writing Habit

Crack the Writing Habit with the Live Accelerator! 🚀

Writing is the cornerstone of your academic career, yet it can often feel frustrating, disappointing, and downright depressing. Writing guilt is REAL – it's like a weight that drags you down.

You get stuck in a vicious cycle: not writing, feeling guilty about it, and then hating the pressure of last-minute writing. This dysfunctional relationship with writing affects your productivity and spills over into other parts of your job, leaving you feeling guilty about teaching and other responsibilities.

Some of you feel okay about writing but need to get more done without the drama and last-minute panic. You want to write with ease, meet deadlines effortlessly, and accelerate your writing pace. You need the right tools to make it happen.

If you have thought about taking the Writing Accelerator to build a solid writing habit, but you’ve hesitated or doubted your ability to finish it on your own, I have the solution.

For ONE TIME ONLY, I am offering the Writing Accelerator LIVE! Over 14 days of intensive coaching, you will gain everything you need to create and maintain a brand-new writing habit, supporting you in achieving the career you deserve.

No more procrastination, no more emotional baggage. Say yes to writing with ease and confidence, knowing you have the time and space for your research and writing.

Interested? I’m planning this before the new academic year kicks off. If you’re committed to transforming your writing habit this year, this is your chance to get live daily support from me to ensure you complete the program.

If you want 14 days of LIVE coaching with me on building your writing habit, hit the button below and sign up for the waitlist. The waitlist doesn’t commit you to purchasing the live training but helps me gauge interest and group size. Numbers will be limited to ensure everyone gets ample attention, so register now. First come, first served!

Let’s make this academic year the one where you conquer writing! ✍️

#AcademicWriting #WritingCoach #Productivity #LiveTraining #AcademicSuccess #writingproductivity

Why your articles get rejected and how to solve it

Ever wondered how some people get published over and over without too much trouble and drama? It’s simple, but it is not easy. They have had the mentoring - explicitly or otherwise - that has shown them over and over not just how to write a journal article, but how to MASTER the craft of this particular genre.

Few people are lucky enough to enjoy this mentorship these days.

The result is that journal article writing can feel like an uphill struggle. It can feel too slow, like you are going around in circles, and that it takes too long to get a paper finished to submission. You feel frustrated and avoidant. Moreover, the rejection rates are high and even R&Rs feel like you and the reviewer are reading totally different papers - of course you are. The reviewer is reading the paper your wrote, and you are reading the paper you wrote in your head - not the same. Addressing revisions can feel like you need to do a serious re-think of your paper and its aims, even when the reviewers label it a minor R&R.

When you have mastered the journal technique, you can write papers (I’m talking sole authored papers here) in 8 weeks. You can execute them with confidence and ease, and let go of the circling doubt and inefficiency in producing publishable papers. No more frustration and anxiety about saying what you really want to say - get your argument on top of the detail, not buried into obscurity, and your contribution nailed down. Learn the skills needed to move from creator > writer > editor > reviewer of your own paper.

But it is more than that - mastering this technique is the difference between publishing in top quality journals and being recognised as a leader in your field. It is not just a case of accelerating your production, but the quality of what you produce at the end. Quality and quantity matter in your academic career.

Mastering this technique requires you to know the repeatable formula for success that leads to your papers getting published without rejection and crazy R&Rs. I’ve developed the 7 Step MASTERS Framework for Publishing Success and if you want to move from frustrated and slow, to writing journal articles with ease and confidence you can access a training for free: just hit the button below or my link in bio.

The least talked about, most beneficial aspect of an effective writing habit?

Becoming an effective, efficient academic writer is key to academic success. An academic career is built on your research outputs, largely - but not exclusively - communicated through the medium of writing. Being a good writer matters. But how do we become better, happier writers?

Achieving both a productive writing habit, and being able to execute quality writing, depends on many different ingredients that ultimately coalesce around a symbiotic relationship between prioritising your projects, planning what outputs to do when, and activating that planning to support a bullet proof writing habit. It is these aspects of writing that clients come to me to improve. These things they understand and are happy to engage with. Academics like to improve, they understand the benefits of processes and systems, and the writing craft requires these types of interventions.

What is always missing?

No matter how dedicated the academic writer is to improving their craft, the one practice that academics resist - the one crucial thing to build both an effective habit and an ever improving quality of outputs - is the discipline of review. I don’t mean reviewing articles for other people, or grants and so on. I mean reviewing your own behaviour and emotions around writing, and the execution of writing so that you can improve it, rather than just get faster at doing it. Yes to new processes and systems, yes to more efficiency…but no to thinking about – and measuring - how I spent my time and why things might not have gone as I wanted. It seems obvious and yet…not obvious. It’s not sexy. It is not an easy sell. Yet, without it, all nascent progress on processes and systems will eventually fade away to nothing and old habits and old ‘methods’ will reassert themselves.

Think of athletes executing a race, or throw, or a jump. At the end of every event, they get out the recording of their performance and they review it. They cast a critical eye and ask questions about what could have been done better. Often in throwing or jumping disciplines, the review is instantaneous - immediately after they jump, and before the score comes up. The outcome is not even important at this stage, it is the technique that is being reviewed. Why? Because improving your performance requires REAL TIME review, and this is an integral part of any refining any practice or craft or skill.

Don’t stay in the now

Academics only want to think about the next race, the next jump or the next throw. At best, they might review on submission or publication of something. But it is so long since the performance, they can’t remember the details of what went right or wrong. Academics don’t actually want to remember what went right and wrong, or where they might improve; rather it is a sigh of relief that the job is over. They have no rear-view mirror at all. It is the nature of the academic environment that conditions to be ever more, bigger, faster, publish or perish that contribute to this aversion no doubt, but this is not the whole, or even most of the story. It is also the academic culture. Review is seen as a punitive exercise (grading, judging, reviewer2, appraisal) not something that leads to constructive adjustment.

Don’t think of review as something that happens at the end of a project or article: continuous review is crucial. Athletes face an even bigger pressure to be faster, stronger, better, much more than academics. But the culture is different. And they know the answer is to review - critically and carefully - by asking the right questions of the right people so that they can improve their craft.

If you are looking for a way to better review your work, and your writing practice, then having a solid review mechanism that assesses both your input, your behaviour and your output is a critical ingredient to academic success.

Journal article success requires a compelling introduction: how to write one

Introductions matter. Sloppily written article introductions will sink your paper every time, no matter how good the rest of the piece is. You have one shot to get the reviewer on board. Do it well, and publishing success abounds. Do it badly - not only are there rejections/ major corrections, but the nature of those corrections are so far off what you had intended, you seriously wonder which article they are reading. It is of course de rigueur to blame the nasty reviewer 2, but trust me, you played your part here; it was the badly written introduction that killed your prospects. Writing a crystal clear, concise and targeted opening sequence in your article is not magic: it is a formula. I can show you here how to craft one to ensure you get maximum traction with your reviewers.

…

See what I did there? Immediately I identified a problem, and why it was a problem, and how I was going to give you the solution. I acknowledge blogs and journal article are different genres, but the point stands. Your article should be doing exactly the same thing, and when it doesn’t….chaos takes the wheel.

what do problematic introductions look like?

Long winded meanderings through the literature or a précis of your entire paper is not an introduction. It is not what the journal reviewers are expecting and when you do this you immediately mark yourself out as not belonging to the club. You don’t know the formula - it is a fail. Similarly not stating some things up front - and being crystal clear in your language and intent - will not pass muster.

Academic articles deal with complex ideas and knowledge and need to follow a script, so that someone who has not done the research can pick up your piece and follow it. You have to build bridges from your brain to theirs, and signposts that keep them on track. A badly written introduction leaves the reviewer feeling confused, or worse, stupid, and well… you know academics. They don’t like that. If you can’t strap them in, like an unruly toddler on the motorway, the car will end up in the ditch. The reviewer needs to be told exactly the direction you are going in and to keep looking down that particular path and nowhere else. Without clear direction, they start to gaze around at the scenery and starting thinking ‘I like the look of that road better’. And then they tell you to write it.

When article introductions are badly written, the reviewer, consciously or otherwise, makes up their mind about how this article should be, and it might not be what you intended. Problems spiral from that point outwards. But if you don’t give them a chance to make the wrong assumption, then…reviews tend to be kinder, more targeted. They can actually be helpful in improving your idea and your communication of it.

Solution

I have a step by step free guide to writing an excellent, compelling, accurate and reviewer proof introduction in my free resources. Good introductions can overcome 4 out of 5 reasons journal articles get rejected. So go ahead and download that guide. You’re welcome!

You can access it here:

Time: the writer's enemy?

Writing in a time scarce environment

How do you view time when it comes to your writing? Take a moment and really think about this. Is your knee jerk reaction: I would write more if I had more time? I just don’t have any time to write? I need big blocks of time?

Is time a major theme of your writing narrative and the major block to your writing?

There is not enough time to do all that you are asked to do as an academic. That is a fact. You can’t fit your institution’s wish list into your working week. Yep, that is correct. I’ve discussed this so many times before on this blog. You are not failing in time management. The load does not fit the carrier. Now we have agreed on that, wholeheartedly, what do we do about the thing that gets left behind because of this? I’m talking about your writing.

Time to tool up

It is important to reframe the narrative about time and writing. In the Writing Accelerator I challenge clients to look at time not as barrier (as conventionally coached) but as a TOOL of writing. It is not something you lack, rather something you have to wield, with authority, and put to work. Time is not the enemy of writing, rather, your conceptualisation of how you execute writing and that the execution as designed by you requires oceans of time. These things are not immutable, rather, they are choices that we make and processes of production that have evolved unconsciously over a career.

What if you had a different design that did not break in a time scarce environment? What would that feel like and how would it look?

Getting a writing habit and process of production that does not cast time as the enemy is essential in academia today.

Want to get a quick start guide for mastering your time?

How to get unstuck

What do you do when you get ‘stuck’ in your writing? This is a common writing malaise that I deal with often as a writing coach. The first thing we do is figure out the source of the ‘stuckness’. I generally categorise this into 4 different areas: Habits, Processes, Ideas, Pace. Once we have located where you are stuck, and why, then the solution is pretty quickly found.

Whilst I have spent a lot of my coaching time focusing on processes and habits - because without these we are all stuck - I talk less about the other two areas where writing can suddenly feel like an uphill struggle and the joy has gone. Being stuck in ideas does not mean being stuck for ideas - quite the opposite with academic clients. They have too many ideas, too complex and convoluted with multiple connections and nuances….too few ideas: never.

The idea can be bound up with emotional baggage of course (back to habits and processes here), but sometimes there has not been enough time spent on ideation…or should I say ideation with a side serving of scalpel.

We need to shape our ideas to the right scale and scope for them to be executable, and when they have become unwieldy and sprawled beyond what we can handle we end up stuck. Not able to move forward or backwards because we cannot see the problem is the idea, we start to question our abilities, our craft, our commitment, our motivation. We come up with a lot of reasons why this thing is not getting done and the actual scope and scale is not amongst our go-to explanations. This is obviously a problem that you will then keep returning to again and again and again…because it is fundamental.

One solution here is to go back to ideation and ask these four clear questions: What is my question/problem? What is my answer? What is my contribution? To what knowledge base/conversation am I contributing to? If you can answer these four things, and the scope and scale fit the publication outlet, you will become unstuck pretty quickly. There are lots of techniques for working out these things, but this is a basic starting point when you start to dread or avoid your project, or you turn up and just can’t move forward.

If you would like to access a training I did on how to get unstuck, click below.

Writing a Monograph

How to write a monograph? With Joy!

How do you write a monograph?

Many of my 1-1 coaching clients are Academic Coach are in fact writing monographs, so this topic is ever present in my mind. The first answer to how to write a monograph is: joyfully. Embrace the freedom it brings. You will never be as free in your chosen subject matter, you style of prose and your ability to really say what you stand for as you are in the monograph format.

Writing a monograph is free from the obligations, restrictions, and conventions imposed on you by journal editors and reviewer 2 who act as constricting forces on your expression - and let’s face it - sometimes massacre your original idea in service to their ego about how they would have written it, or questions about why is their work not cited and so on. Of course book proposals are reviewed, and must conform to rigorous research and writing standards: books are reviewed, but there is an accepted freedom in the monograph that you will be exploring what you want to talk about in depth and the way you want o treat that subject matter is entirely up to you. You are as free as you will ever be within academia to write what you think.

Monographs are joyous, freeing things and should be embraced.

Why isn’t everyone doing one?

There are all sorts of reasons why you might not want to do a monograph. You don’t get credit for it in the REF where one book equals one paper; 100,000 words is given the same gravity as 6000. Not in the formal rules perhaps but cretainly in the informal departmental rules, so why should you write a book? I hope many of you are not subjected to this rather arbitrary measuring stick.

Maybe your discipline is not really a book discipline (science) and there is no promotional reason to do it: papers rule the world, multi authored, and you only ever write 1 section (at best) of the 23 papers you ‘author’ each year.

Maybe your discipline is a book discipline but you are afraid to write one. Maybe you cannot even begin to imagine how you could possibly write that amount when you struggle to push out one paper per year. If you are in the latter category, I want to talk about book writing and why this should be in your publication pipeline.

Books make a contribution

Books require the most writing you have done since your PhD. If you can write a book, it is official, you are a real writer. Books can convey things a paper or even a series of papers cannot, and at a certain point in your career, you should have enough to say to fill a book, probably several. Books are still the go to place if some in-depth knowledge on something complicated, detailed, wide ranging and academically challenging. Rigorous, difficult research needs a book sized contribution to let the ideas breathe and connect, to connect disciplines and knowledge bases, and to really give a deep analytical, thoughtful account of something. Books not only teach others about the subject matter, it teaches you a lot about writing and communicating your ideas over a long word count. A book is a place to grow as an academic, and as a writer.

But really though how?

Obviously I am going to tell you to plan it. Get a publication pipeline where you can plan out where and when you will tackle the book project - on sabbatical perhaps besides multiple other things - and in term time also beside other sequential writing projects (ie not more than two on the go at any one time, including the book).

You need to break down the whole into paper sized parts (the chapters), plan your arc, and then set about writing one bit at a time. Give yourself milestones and put deadlines and rewards against them to keep you motivated and on track. Spend time on the thinking about your take home message, your contribution and the best way to tell this story over multiple chapters; this is the quickest way to execute your book. Many people just start writing and work this out as they go, but this takes longer. Much longer.

I think everyone should write a book or two. Having just returned to book writing myself, I feel a special kind of joy that is just not there writing papers. I want you to experience that too.

If you want a planning outline that will get you started, you can find one here.

If you want help with writing your monograph, check out my Monograph Membership here:

Professor or bust? No, go your own way

One of the programmes I run here at Academic Coach is a 6 month intensive programme called Elevate: it is a writing and career mentoring programme.  The first question I ask people on this programme is to define early on what success means to them in very concrete terms. It might mean promotion to Professor or beyond, it might mean impact in the real world with their research, it might mean having more time for their family, their hobbies, their dog: it could mean many different things. We each have our own ideas of success, and they are limited only by our imagination. This got me thinking about all the different things that clients come to me to achieve, and also about a question I got asked in response to my post about why I quit my academic position.

I was asked: 'did you quit because you didn't make Professor?' at which point, I laughed merrily, because of course, how could this person know my career history, my circumstances and what my idea of success was? I don't say it anywhere, and I suppose it never crossed my mind this was a question that might need answering.

So in this post I wanted to both tell a bit more of my story, and get you to think about what success means to you.

I was promoted from brand new baby Lecturer A to Reader* in 6 years: Lecturer A, Lecturer B, Senior Lecturer, Reader, Professor was the ladder at that time. That's right people - you read it correctly. I blasted my way up the promotional ladder at a time when it took most people ( and I mean single, white men obviously) 8-10 years to reach the level below this - Senior Lecturer - and most women, much, much longer.  This in a department that notoriously didn't promote anyone, ever. I got beyond that in a blink of an eye. Within 2 years of this I was approached by another University to become a Professor, and within a further year, I was first asked, then told, to apply for Professorship in my own University. It was getting a little embarrassing that people with less exciting CVs were applying for Professorship, and besides the department had a woman problem (there were none, and then hardly any, women professors) and I was passing up an opportunity to right that wrong. Thanks HR! Lovely. Then I was almost forced into becoming Head of Department, wherein Professorship was part and parcel of the deal (this is a whole other story which deserves a small novella, so I won't get into it here).

So why did I refuse, deflect, dodge and deny these wonderful 'opportunities' to advance? Isn't this what everyone wants? To be called Professor? When someone offers you advancement/promotion, don't you have to want it/take it? Well no, actually. It is cool if you do, and I can help you make that happen. Have I helped other academics become Professors? Yes! But if you don't want that, that is also absolutely fine. You do you. 

Why didn't I want it?

I didn't need it, in any sense of that phrase. I didn't need the title, I had never dreamed of becoming a professor: as they say in Westworld, 'it doesn't look like anything to me'. I had gotten to a level of salary where I was comfortable and I was satisfied.  Also, many, many other reasons, but here are some basic math ones: Professor would pay me £5000 gross more than I earned already. I would lose 50% of that in tax (2500) and then another hefty amount for my pension deduction. It would in the end mean less than £100 per month in my bank about. But the downside was I would be made (a) head of department or (b) given some truly awful huge admin role (because no women anywhere) that would require me to be on campus each week sitting in endless meetings, talking about things I didn't care about including, crucially, spending time on campus out of teaching term. That didn’t suit me.

You see my life was great, and I liked it the way it was. Here is the important part. I was already incredibly successful. The things that mattered to me, both personal and professional had been achieved. I had travelled, I had written lots, I had a research career that had impact in the real world - it mattered, it changed things, and that gave me great satisfaction. I was recognised as THE expert in my area, nationally and internationally. I had all the esteem markers a person could want. I liked teaching and I did a lot of it. I was 'attractive on the market' and if I wanted to change jobs, I could. I did all that without that title. I was already as successful as I wanted to be. Climbing higher in the administration was not my ambition. I wanted my life to be exactly as it was, personal and professional.

It is your career

All this to say, don't let anyone TELL YOU what success means. It is different for all of us, and it changes over the course of our lives.  Early on I had no money, and I needed it, and I needed to get promoted to pay rent and put food on the table - so promotion was my goal. Not for the title, or the recognition (whatever that is), or some idea of advancement up the hierarchy, but cold hard cash. Then, afterwards, it seemed entirely redundant to me. And that's another thing no-one might tell you: once the carrot of promotion is removed from your vista (by yourself) you become impervious to bullshit claims about how taking this next thing on will improve your chances for promotion. None of that exists anymore, and you can do your job in the way you want to do it, not constantly dancing to someone else's tune. You worry less about playing the game, and spend more time doing what you really want to do.

So when you set your goals for this year, and think about what you want to take on and why you are doing it; really think about whether this is what you WANT to do, or what you are expected to want to do, in some stranger's idea of what success should look like for you? Don't fall into that trap: there is no greater misery than to be in pursuit of something other people dream of. Your definition of success is specific to you, and the most useful thing you can do, is have a very clear idea of what that is before you fill up your list of things to get done.

*For my US readers, Tenure (permanence) was granted after 3 years probation in the UK if you have a permanent (TT for you) contract, so I had tenure at Lecturer B in UK terms.

If you want help Strategizing Your Academic Writing Success, do head over to the Masterclass on just this topic!

Getting Published in Academia: Pitfalls and Perseverance Part II

One of my most popular blogs in the series is my own story of trying to publish a particular article that, for many and various reasons outlined here, was problematic and took quite a long time. Since then I have coached over 800 clients on writing, and a good portion of my clients have come to me to work up journal articles into a publishable format, or want to become more efficient and faster at publishing article after article and are looking for better systems and processes of production. As a result of the demand for this service, I distilled all I know in a course called Master Journal Article Writing which also includes fortnightly coaching with me for 12 months. You can find some free training on this here on YouTube if you are interested in seeing a tiny portion of what that course contains.

Looking back at my original post, I notice now that something was missing - or not missing exactly, but not really dealt with in perhaps the kind of detail a reader might want to know, and that is picking the right journal. The first thing I talk about in that blog is the problem of inter-disciplinary research and getting the right journal fit, but once I had returned to my ‘law only’ version of the paper, I totally abandon this point altogether. This might give the impression that getting journal fit is an interdisciplinary problem, and that is not true. It’s an every-single-article- you-write problem that should always be considered.

Accidental advantage

The reason this vital, critical, first step was not talked about in my original post was that I took it for granted (always a mistake) that everyone knew this was a thing. Once I had stripped the interdisciplinary out of the article, journal fit was not an issue for me. That is, I had an accidental advantage I took for granted, that my research area - my law only research area - is what you might call foundational to my subject matter. It is a thing undergraduates are lectured on as a matter of course, it is fundamental to my subject. So, of course, a lot of the older, prestigious journals are interested and have a history of publishing on this topic because it is so foundational. One thing I did not need to worry about was audience once I returned to my legal fold. This was not in any way niche. It was fundamental, foundational, core, central to anyone who was broadly in the area of EU law and in this particular case, anyone who was into the much broader topic of the rule of law (i.e. all public lawyers everywhere).

After coaching hundreds of clients across disciplines, I now know just how lucky I am in terms of being a constitutional and public law scholar and how many journals would be interested in publishing any of my pieces.

So I thought it might be worth a revisit here, dwelling here on the importance of fit for your chances of publishing success, and publishing quickly.

Targeting the audience

You have probably heard that before you write a word you should know the destination of that piece, and have a selection of journals that would be a good fit. This is not a matter of casting a wide net or vaguely gesturing [any of these]: it is the opposite. Detailed, targeted research on your prospective publication outlets is a step many academics do not do for a variety of reasons:

• fear (that no-one is interested);

• fear (that someone has already written it);

• fear of distraction (they start to read journals and never stop);

• time scarcity mindset (fear that they should be writing and this is a waste of time);

• delusion (it will all be alright on the night, i.e. it will just magically work out)

• delusion (what they have to say is such a game changer everyone will want it)

• delusion (new data is intrinsically publishable, someone will take it)

I understand the origins of these reasons and why many of us feel one or all of the above or just can’t face it. But it is false economy. Perhaps ECRs starting out may actually have an advantage here as they might see this as natural and inevitable step. They know that they don’t know much about the journal architecture of their research area, so will research it, but more established scholars who widen or change tack or become more niche also need to be aware this is something you need to return to again and again.

Ideally you need to have 5-6 or more possible options across the different tiers / rankings. When your inevitable first reject comes, you can send it to another good journal with your feedback on board and incorporated. Of course, you may occasionally hit the holy grail of getting accepted first time, and that in itself speaks to what a great job you did at targeting the right journal. But you should not expect it and certainly not bank on it. The journal world is fickle and even with the right fit, you might get rejected for one of the four other reasons.

Rejecting for lack of fit

Of the top 5 reasons for rejection, rejection for lack of journal fit is perhaps the most frustrating because it was all in your hands. The others are about your writing skills (which I would argue are also all in your hands, obviously, if you know what you are doing, but it does involve random opinions too) but this is purely down to you and your journal fit research. I see this reasonably often, and it is especially galling when the author can’t quite see why it doesn’t fit. Let me give an example. Journal A is interested in the question ‘why are carpentry nails pointy and long?’. Your article is about pointy long nails, and so you think, perfect fit. NO. That journal is only interested in carpentry nails and their pointy-ness and length, not nails in general. Similarly, if your article is about carpentry, they won’t be interested either, because they are only interested in carpentry and pointy nails and length of nails, and probably from a post colonial perspective to boot. You might think your piece on why short nails are the best brings an interesting counterpoint, but again, it is unlikely to survive the desk rejection red button.

Let’s think about this from the journal perspective. Their mission is to shed light on why the best nails are pointy and long. That is their stated mission in the journal descriptor but when you read recent iterations of the journal, you find the only discussion on the table is carpentry and postcolonialism employing a quant methodology. You find the editorial board is largely quant based scholars. Whatever the original founding mission, the journal has now entered its own rabbit hole of obscurity. There is zero point bringing a paper on nails that are long and pointy, in carpentry using postcolonial theory with qual methodology. Zero. That is not what the audience is interested in, not what they understand, not what they want to hear about. They don’t want their horizons broadened in general, so save yourself the hassle.

Where it goes wrong is you and your genius can see the connection between question A and question B, but those pesky editors just can’t. Or maybe the editors have 1000 submissions directly on point, using the right language and theoretical perspectives for their audience, and yours is slightly off and it is a way of culling the masses. This is a way to make it easy for them to reject you. This is frustrating I know, but nonetheless, reality. There is a box out there for you, you just have to find it.

If you can’t fit in the box EXACTLY it is not your box and you run the risk of desk rejection.

The generalist journals

Of course there are generalist journals that cover a multitude of things in every discipline. Take a journal named something like law and society. Such a journal could in theory cover a wide horizon of material, but again, there will still be lines within which you need to colour, or a new obsession in a field that has captured the interests of the editors or: REJECT. In some ways, generalist journals tend to be the most prestigious and you are really up against a wide range of scholars tackling lots of different subject material, and so it is harder on the sheer numbers and subject variety to get published in such a journal.

The more niche you are the harder this is and the easier this is

There are tens of thousands of peer review journals out there, but finding the one that fits your niche requires work. It is research. It should go without saying - but I will say it - the people you are referencing in your paper and the journals they are publishing in are your people, and that is where you should aim to publish. You should not submit a paper to a journal where you have no, or only one or two references, from that journal in it. Immediately, this tells editors, this is not really our guy. But what if your niche is in a low ranking area and you are under pressure for metrics to submit to high ranking journals? Change your niche, or broaden the scope so you can reach beyond this small subset of people. Reframe, reframe, reframe. Learn the languages of other disciplines and journals so you can make it fit: this is the hardest publishing work of all and you will suffer multiple rejections based on fit alone. There is no easy way to say this - it is essentially making your work interdisciplinary and that is very tough in terms of publishing (see my original blog).

If though your niche research area happens to be one catered to by the top/ many journals then hooray - you are at a competitive advantage because your fit is easy to find, and there are plenty of journals to choose from. Your people recognise you straight away. You are writing about pointy long nails in carpentry from a postcolonial perspective and they know you and see you are their person. Your very niche-ness makes you instantly recognisable as who they want in their journal, because their journal is that niche. Jackpot.

All this is to say there is no one narrative of how something gets published or not, but there are some absolute rules that apply, and one of them is that you can make the publishing journey easier or harder depending on the type of piece you write and the ease with which this fits in with what your audience will expect.

If you want some free training, check out my YouTube video:

Breaks in the writing process

One of the things that writers struggle with is momentum. Keeping your writing flowing, day after day, can be a real challenge especially if your processes and systems of writing depend on big blocks of uninterrupted time. The thing about your life - and your job - is it is full of interruptions. Work interruptions, family interruptions and ALL THE THINGS can get in the way of a writing practice that feels like one where you make consistent gains every time you sit down to write. The answer?

Besides changing your systems and processes of writing so they do not depend on big uninterrupted blocks of time, a short, quick fix is to have a reliable 'power down' system in place so that when you are out of time, you take 1 minute to write down the following instruction to yourself:

• Where am I right now in the text?

• What was I thinking?

• What do I need to do next when I return?

Putting this in the document, highlighted so you can see it, will save you having to re-read the thing all over again when you do return to writing, thus dispensing with the 'warm up' routine of many inefficient writers. It is a simple, quick and effective intervention, and whether the interruption is one of hours, days or weeks, it is much easier to return quickly to the core of your task with this in place.

This one practical intervention will stop those ripples of interruption endlessly spooling outwards.