The Dissertation House

Helping to move you from ABD to PhD!

July 2016 Writing Workshops w/lectures on impact factor and “false demon of perfection”


Impact Factor Perfection DevilBuilding upon the foundation of the Dissertation House, we continue to host workshops for students and postdocs who are working on other projects, e.g., grant proposals, publications, research portfolios, job applications. This week, by popular demand, we’re bringing “Writing for Publication” back via a series of “Writing Workshops” and we’re including two embedded afternoon seminars, by Dr. Kevin Omland. Here is the schedule.

    • WEDNESDAY, JULY 6 & THURSDAY, JULY 7. (For Grad Students & Postdocs) – Writing for Publication Workshop: From July 6 to July 7, 9 am – 5 pm, –  Commons 331. For those working on publications, papers, applications, grants: Please join this writing space. We will provide the work space, breakfast, and lunch. RSVP: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/40161 [This event will include a goal-setting session, tips for writing, mini-lectures, and time for writing.]
    • WEDNESDAY, JULY 6. (For Grad Students & Postdocs) – Understanding Impact Factor: A mini lecture seminar held on July 6, 9:30 am to 12 pm, Commons 331. The speaker, Dr. Kevin Omland, Professor of Biological Sciences, will be talking about how the publications are ranked. RSVP here:  http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/40162 [Students who register for the July 6 & 7 “Writing Workshop, listed above, are automatically participants in this session.]
    • THURSDAY, JULY 7. (For Grad Students & Postdocs) – Avoid the False Demon of Perfection: “Writing for Publication” seminar. It will be held on July 7, 1 pm to 3 pm, in the Commons 331. The speaker, Dr. Kevin Omland, has more than 50 publications, that have been cited more than 3000 times. RSVP here: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/40163 [Students who register for the July 6 & 7 “Writing Workshop, listed above, are automatically participants in this session.]

Posting Goals and Blogging

Participants are asked to post their goals on this page, below (Name, School, Department, Goal for the two days). Those are attend the workshop are asked to post comments to share what they’ve learned. Please use the hashtags #WritingWorkshop, #ImpactFactor #PerfectionDemon in your posts. Thank you for joining us. If you are not able to join in person, you may join us virtually. Let us know who you are, and what you plan to accomplish over the next two days. (Feel free to take a look a the Dissertation House’s “Summer Challenge 2016” to see how this process works. If you are working on your dissertation, please use that page for your posting.)

 

Posted by:

Renetta Garrison Tull

Dr. Renetta Garrison Tull is the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the University of California Davis. She previously served as Associate Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives at The Graduate School at UMBC, and was Professor of the Practice in the College of Engineering & IT. She was Special Assistant to the Sr. Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs & Director of Graduate and Professional Pipeline Development for the University System of Maryland (12 institutions). She is the Founding Director of PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) – http://www.umbc.edu/promise, and Co-PI for the USM LSAMP. Her research on global diversity in STEM continues, and she is an international speaker, covering nearly all continents, for groups and conferences such as the World Engineering Education Forum, the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies, and the Pacific Sciences Congress. Her personal website is: http://renettatull.wordpress.com. Connect with her on Twitter: @Renetta_Tull; https://twitter.com/Renetta_Tull

31 responses to “July 2016 Writing Workshops w/lectures on impact factor and “false demon of perfection””

  1. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
    Renetta Garrison Tull

    Thank you for joining us for this week’s “Writing Workshops!” Please post your goals for the session. Include your name, school, department, your focus item (journal article, grant application), and specific goals for the next two days. We also ask all who participate in the afternoon seminars to post what you’re learning so that it can be shared with others who are reading this page.

    Reply
  2. Terra Greene Avatar
    Terra Greene

    Terra Greene, School of Education, TESOL. My focus item is preparing to write a journal article. I completed my first year of teaching a World Language and had the opportunity to work with English Language Learners in Mathematics. I would like to compose an article that can be used to promote the successful use of AVID strategies in all subject areas, but especially language learning.

    Reply
  3. Utsav Shashvatt Avatar
    Utsav Shashvatt

    Hi I am Utsav Shashvatt (PhD student Environmental Engineering). Today I will be working on the manuscript for a journal paper. I will be focussing on building the results and discussion section.

    Reply
  4. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
    Renetta Garrison Tull

    One of the students found that his target journals had impact factors ranging from 0.8 to 5.3 (Environmental Engineering). We have graduate students and PhD grads in the room. Disciplines include health sciences, education, engineering, IT, and computer science.

    Reply
  5. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
    Renetta Garrison Tull

    Resource: List of Journals:

    Click to access %7Bc1eeae34-8fc0-44f1-bfba-e00f11d11d71%7D_JCR-2016-Full-Marketing-List.pdf

    Reply
  6. Terra Greene Avatar
    Terra Greene

    Here are some great resources…
    https://booklab.georgetown.edu/ (for postdocs desiring to turn dissertations into books)
    webofknowledge.com (to find your potential journal’s IF) … great stuff!!!
    http://www.academia.edu (Great for social sciences… with resources in many disciplines)
    https://www.researchgate.net (Research in many areas)

    Reply
  7. William Rivera Avatar
    William Rivera

    William Rivera, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Mechanical Engineering. I will be focusing on writing an abstract for The 58th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics. https://www.aps.org/units/dpp/meetings/annual/

    Reply
    1. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
      Renetta Garrison Tull

      Hi William, I noticed this:

      Contributed abstracts are limited to up to 1300 characters for the abstract text (about 250 words). Having numerous authors as well as overly long titles, affiliations, and footnotes can push the abstract over the limit despite being within the limit for the abstract text itself, so always check the abstract by using the Preview Abstract Layout link during the submission process.

      Are you the primary author? If so, what are your goals for today and tomorrow, writing the entire abstract?

      Reply
  8. Siobhan Quinn Avatar
    Siobhan Quinn

    Good morning. I am in the Language, Literacy and Culture Doctoral program. My goal this week is to develop a summer writing plan to be completed by August 20. Always good to participate here online or in person!

    Reply
  9. David H. Avatar
    David H.

    Hey, I am a CS masters student at UMBC and today I will be working on my thesis. I am working on building the background section.

    Reply
  10. Megatron Avatar
    Megatron

    My name is Kevin Chang (Mechanical engineering) and I will be working on finding potential journals and conferences to target in the near future. In addition, I will be working on creating an abstract for a potential paper about depth sensing perception and control of a robotic arm.

    Reply
    1. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
      Renetta Garrison Tull

      Dear Kevin, Which journals? Also, where might you publish the paper about the robotic arm? Is it an ASME journal?

      Reply
      1. Megatron Avatar
        Megatron

        I found quite a few journals in the IEEE space that would be relevant to my research.

        • IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine
        • IEEE Transactions on Robotics
        • IEEE Control Systems Magazine
        • IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology
        • IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

        I was thinking that I would try to publish in one of these journals or a conference related to one of these journal societies.

        Reply
  11. Utsav Shashvatt Avatar
    Utsav Shashvatt

    Todays goal-
    1. Build the result and discussion section
    1.1 Inorganic composition of poultry litter
    1.1.1 Phosphorus and Nitrogen types (% leachable)
    1.1.2 Inorganic composition and use to MINEQL
    1.2 Model P release with pH
    1.2.1 Write the equation and overlay with the experimental curve

    Reply
  12. Traci Dula Avatar
    Traci Dula

    Traci (post doc). My goals are to (1) select a topic from my work to use for a journal article and to begin working on it section by section; (2) post abstract to research gate/academia.edu; (3) set appointments with committee members; (3) choose/commit to date to visit archives; identify 2-3 journals-read through submission guidelines; (4) locate scholars on either research gate or academia.com

    Reply
    1. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
      Renetta Garrison Tull

      Routledge, Sage, and Teachers College Press, were all sponsors of AERA in 2016. Look into some of their publications.

      Reply
  13. DrRoliver Avatar
    DrRoliver

    Rollia Oliver, Ed. D, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (UMCP). I am excited to learn about the impact factors of journals and to be encouraged to take a leap into the world of publication. I want to write for publication and today’s session was a graet introduction. The session discussed to where to start and how I might choose to regulate my progress. However, I am still am unsure of what the process and product should look like and how to shop my work around to publishers. The challenge is to decide what the focus of my first publication should really be. While it was suggested that we work from our dissertation and thesis work, I would like to consider a topic related to professional practice as a topic for my first article.

    Reply
    1. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
      Renetta Garrison Tull

      Higher Education Journals list: http://www.echer.org/?page_id=66

      Policy and Practice: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tpsp20/current

      Reply
  14. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    Chris Mullen, Mechanical Engineering at UMBC. I’m working on the literature review for my master’s thesis.

    Reply
    1. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
      Renetta Garrison Tull

      Thanks Chris. Some of this can be taken from your BD project, so you are already working toward the goal! Be sure to include relevant citations from the work of your advisor and your current/potential committee.

      Reply
  15. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
    Renetta Garrison Tull

    Reblogged this on PROMISE: Maryland's AGEP and commented:

    PROMISE has opened virtual writing opportunities to all students, from all schools. What are you working on this week? A publication? An application? Let us know.

    Reply
    1. Mia Russell, Doctoral Student UMES Organizational Leadership Avatar
      Mia Russell, Doctoral Student UMES Organizational Leadership

      I’m working on the narrative for a DOE grant application and my IRB application while I await feedback from my committee. My goal for today is to finish the IRB application and draft a solid outline for the 25-page narrative.

      Reply
      1. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
        Renetta Garrison Tull

        Hi Mia! It’s good to see UMES in the house! Did you finish your IRB application? I just checked one of mine and was thrilled to see that it was still valid for a continuing study. Good luck to you!

        Reply
  16. Traci Dula Avatar
    Traci Dula

    Traci-I began a draft for conference paper submission. I will continue to work on this on Thursday.

    Reply
    1. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
      Renetta Garrison Tull

      Excellent! Kudos! That’s what you call “starting your writing!”

      Reply
  17. Renetta Garrison Tull Avatar
    Renetta Garrison Tull

    Here are some tips from this resource for all: http://indianquarterly.com/10-rules-of-writing/

    1. Write every day. This is a cliché, of course, but you will write more when you tell yourself that no day must pass without writing. At the back of a notebook I use in my writing class, I write down the date and then make a mark next to it after the day’s work is done. I show the page to my students often, partly to motivate them, and partly to remind myself that I can’t let my students down.

    2. Have a modest goal.     Aim to write 150 words each day. It is very difficult for me to find time on some days, and it is only this low demand that really makes it even possible to sit down and write. On better days, this goal is just a start; often, I end up writing more.

    3. Try to write at the same time each day. I recently read a Toni Morrison interview in which she said: “I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively.” It works best for me if I write at the same time each day—in my case, that hour or two that I get between the time I drop off my kids at school and go in to teach. I have my breakfast and walk up to my study with my coffee. In a wonderful little piece published on The New Yorker blog “Page-Turner”, writer Roxana Robinson writes how she drinks coffee quickly and sits down to write—no fooling around reading the paper, or checking the news, or making calls to friends, or trying to find out if the plumber is coming. “One call and I’m done for. Entering into the daily world, where everything is complicated and requires decisions and conversation, means the end of everything. It means not getting to write.” I read Robinson’s piece in January 2013, and alas, I have thought of it nearly every day since.

    4. Turn off the Internet. The Web is a great resource and entirely unavoidable, but it will help you focus when you buy the Freedom app. Using a device like this not only rescues me from easy distraction, it also works as a timer. When you click on the icon, it asks you to choose the duration for which you want the computer to not have access to the Net. I choose 60 minutes and this also helps me keep count of how long I have sat at my computer.

    Reply
  18. Susan Vaughn-Ward Avatar
    Susan Vaughn-Ward

    Hi, I’m working on my masters thesis in Health Information Technology. Today my goals are to work on my lit review and identify 3 more relevant articles and start drafting an introduction. Also, I am going to look into where I need to go for approval to conduct a study at Johns Hopkins Hospital. I am hoping to conduct a study on bar code scanning devices for medications, safety issues, and workarounds (I currently work as a nurse in the department I would be conducting the study).

    Reply
  19. Utsav Shashvatt Avatar
    Utsav Shashvatt

    On the first day I finished the rough draft of the some of the sections of the RESULTS and DISCUSSION of my journal paper.

    Today I will be working on building the following sections
    1.3 Introduction to PEARS
    1.4 Acidification of the poultry litter slurry through bubbling carbon dioxide
    1.4.1 Fundamentals of carbon dioxide in aqueous phase (Henry’ Law)
    1.4.1 Bubbling CO2 and resulting pH obtained at different solid loadings of the slurry
    1.4.2 Sequential extraction of phosphorus (results from 3 recycles)

    1.5 Role of aeration in reducing the alkalinity and increasing the pH
    1.6 Recovery and effect of different parameters ( pH and aeration rate) on the recovered product
    1.6.1 Effect of adding additional Mg to the poultry litter sample
    1.7 Results of P recovery from different poultry litter samples

    Reply
  20. Traci Dula Avatar
    Traci Dula

    Traci–Rough morning but ready to dive in! I will read through a report that will inform a section of my conference paper and continue writing. I will also begin skimming another rather lengthy report on education from the 70s that is relevant. I’ve seen the anniversary of this report mentioned on two professional organization’s websites for conferences so, although over 700 pages, I should become familiar with it. woohooooooooo

    Reply
  21. Utsav Shashvatt Avatar
    Utsav Shashvatt

    Today I was able to build a rough story for the sections I had mentioned earlier except for section 1.7. I am pretty satisfied with my progress in the two days.

    The workshop was very helpful and motivating. I will look forward to attending such workshops in the future.

    Reply
  22. Terra Greene Avatar
    Terra Greene

    There are three essential keys to your success in publishing. Dr. Omland put it plainly:
    “Establish Reasonable Goals; Be determined and focused; and Achieve your goals by finishing.”

    You can do it! Hang in there; use your resources, advisors, fellow classmates and accountability partners. Be aware that the research you are already doing for coursework can be a benefit and source of information and inspiration for your larger projects, i.e., thesis, dissertation, journal article or book publication. Make it count!

    Happy Writing my fellow students. Le’ts put in the work and get it done!!!

    Reply

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What is dissertation house?


The Dissertation House program is an intensive writing retreat designed to help graduate students overcome the barriers that often impede progress on their dissertations. Developed by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the program provides a supportive and structured environment where students can focus on their writing, receive feedback, and learn effective time management and goal-setting strategies. Over several days, students work in groups, participate in workshops, and receive coaching from experienced facilitators. The Dissertation House program has been highly successful in helping students make significant progress on their dissertations. It is widely regarded as a valuable resource for graduate students seeking to complete their degrees.

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