English 5390: Writing for Publication Weekly Blog Post - Reviewers

Question: What types of reviews and reviewers will you seek out prior to submitting your scholarly article for publication? Briefly describe each review type and what specifically you might ask each reviewer to focus on in their review.

It is difficult for me to imagine seeking many reviews, even though I know it is necessary to seek reviews prior to submission for publication. I work in a pretty isolated fashion, especially being an online student instead of an on campus student.

I suppose that I could say that the initial review of my paper was done by Dr. Baake, when he graded it during my Rhetoric in Scientific Communication class. Dr. Baake suggested that it may be publishable with certain changes. These are the changes that I am attempting to incorporate now. This initial review served to evaluate my work in the conversation about scientific communication. It has a role but needed work.

At this time, I will seek a non-expert review in the form of my husband. He can't see where the work would fit into the conversation, but he can read it to make sure that all my connections and conclusions make sense within the framework that I provide in the work itself.

My sister would be able to read it and check the grammar. As I know from looking at others' work, we are not always the best at self-editing since our brains will often insert the words that we meant to write versus what is actually written. She would also be able to look at the logic of the framework.

I have a co-worker who volunteered to read the work. She is not in the field of technical communication but would be able to look at the paper from the viewpoint of a scientist and of one who works in the publication field.

I am well covered for non-expert reviewers and I have had one expert review. Hopefully, these will be sufficient. Though I am still not sure that I will actually attempt to publish the work. I have not yet looked into what kind of issues that may raise at work. We will see if it raises any, eventually.

English 5390: Writing for Publication Weekly Blog Post - Challenging Section and section draft

Question: Which section do you feel will be the most challenging to write? From your outline, select a section (not the introduction) and produce a written draft. This post will be due on 21 Mar.


For me deciding which section will be most challenging to write is challenging in and of itself. I will likely have some issues with the conclusion and maybe a couple of the body sections. We will see. I have a lovely schedule taped to my refrigerator to tell me what I am supposed to be doing each day up until the paper is due.

I have developed some concerns about "publishing" parts of my paper on my blog. So don't be surprised if figure out how to protect this work eventually. I would hate to see my work rejected because parts of it has already been published on my blog. However, I don't seem to have the tools to protect my work properly. I am trying to figure it out.

For now, here is the link to the new Methods section: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10wILc2DOVf0kUs4dD5QQBOuNg0JZ-7jGtNOjo0dw5Hs/edit?hl=en&authkey=CJWK5MoE.

~~~~Please trust me that the Table looks better not in Google Docs~~~~~

English 5390: Writing for Publication Weekly Blog Post - Literature Review

Question: What are the major theories or studies that may use in the review of literature in your scholarly article? List at least three and describe how they specifically relate to your topic.

For my literature review, I will need to discuss the scientific ethos because I am relating how the writing of current authors published within Journal of the American Chemical Society has changed since the early days of the journal in the 1880s up to modern works published in the journal. Works like Lawrence J. Prelli's "The Rhetorical Construction of Scientific Ethos" published in Rhetoric and the Human Sciences, edited by Herbert W. Simons, published by Sage Publications, London, in 1989 describe the parts of the scientific ethos: universalism, communality, distinterestedness, organized skepticism, originality, and humility. If I can obtain Merton's works on scientific ethos directly, it would be helpful, but they are rather old (1930s to 1940s) and have thus far eluded me.

I also, likely, need to ground my work in Karl Popper's theories and perhaps in Thomas's S. Kuhn's work. However, my knowledge of both works until recently was mostly secondhand from where the works were cited within the body of other articles that I had read. I recently obtained both books as Nook Books from Barnes and Noble and I am working my way through them to determine if they are truly useful.

Third, I need to look at more modern works about the presentation of the scientific ethos. Works like

Roland, M.-C. (2009). Quality and integrity in scientific writing: prerequisites for quality in science communication. Journal of Science Communication , 8 (2), A04.

Lopez Rodriguez, C. I. (2007). Understanding scientific communication through the extraction of the conceptual and rhetorical information codified by verbs. Terminology, 13(1), 61-84.

Harmon, J. E.; Gross, A. G. (2009). The structure of scientific titles. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 39(4) 455-465.

Hutto, D. (2008). Graphics and ethos in biomedical journals. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 38(2), 111-131.

The ones that look at the parts of a paper and link it to rhetorical theory. In addition, Ken Baake's book "Metaphor and Knowledge" may appear in my literature review, depending on length of the current lit review and relevancy.

I have lots of sources that could be reviewed in a lit review, yet I wonder if I am still looking in the write direction. The purpose of a lit review is to ground my work in theory and show where it came from so that I can project its contribution to the conversation. My current listing may be too much and likely needs pared to avoid driving my audience to tears.