WORKSHOP 3: Getting Published: The Next Steps

Description/Overview: This workshop follows on the Elsevier workshop on getting published. The pressure to publish or perish is growing on a daily basis. With nursing education in South Africa migrating in its totality to the higher education sector, this statement has become a stark reality. The workshop will focus on novice authors with a view to creating awareness of the processes and phases of scientific writing, mapping the journey of writing, expository and argumentative writing and identifying the link between style, discourse and the general characteristics of scholarly writing. Writers need to familiarise themselves with the subject area about which they are writing. This requires the author to read scientific publications to become familiars with the discourse of the field in which they want to work. Reading also sensitizes the author to the writing process in addition to extending their knowledge base. For publication of their own manuscripts, the author must be able to identify a suitable publication targeted at a specific audience that would be interested in the topic addressed and accurately follow the author guidelines provided for prospective authors. Scientific writing requires organising ideas and writing clearly but it has to be succinct as many publications have a limit on word count for manuscripts that are submitted. The author should master the ability to advance good arguments by organising smaller components of their research into a coherent whole. During this journey the author must ensure that coherence and a logical flow of the argument put forward for the reader is maintained. This includes linking the introduction and conclusions of the manuscript. The final responsibility includes reviewing the manuscript in a systematic way. A checklist can be used for this exercise. Once the journey to produce a manuscript has been completed, the final task to undertake is the editing of the article to ensure good language and technically polished manuscript.