Sharing Work, Inviting Input

November is Academic Writing Month #AcWriMo at Methodspace! This post was part of the 2017 #AcWriMo series. The theme of week four was: Share Your Work.The academic writing and publishing process used to look like this: .First, we completed the research and finalized the manuscript. Next, our work went through peer review (or if we were students, review by our faculty members or doctoral committee.) Finally, the work was published, and at that point we would present it at conferences and talk about it publicly.Now, the connected Internet means we have new opportunities to share our work in process and make needed improvements.We can take a more systems-thinking approach to the interrelated processes of conducting research, writing, sharing and exchanging ideas, getting informal feedback from other scholars and practitioners in the field, receiving formal feedback through peer review, publishing, and presenting our work. We can use these processes to improve the relevance of our work and the clarity of our writing. We can learn more about the real needs of people who might use our research, and along the way we might identify new questions that merit empirical inquiry.This week, we will explore the concept of a digital-age publishing ecosystem, including diverse ways to share our work and receive feedback. You will see examples from the work of diverse contemporary scholars, and I hope you will share your own approaches in the comment area or the discussion. We will also discuss sharing strategies in the tweet chat on December 1.