Watch the Webinar: Publishing Trends and Academic Writers

From scholarly article to practical guides, from textbooks to media, from weighty tomes to tweets, researchers and academic writers have many options today. While academic writers still write books and articles, forms and formats are changing.

Electronic journals can include links to media, and increasingly open access journals make it easier to reach academics, professionals, and practitioners outside a specific discipline. Short, monograph length books hone in on a single topic, graphic books illustrate ideas, book sections are accessible as stand-alone pdfs, textbooks are becoming interactive to be embedded in e-learning platforms. Researchers are finding other ways to share their work electronically, including podcasts and videos, blogs and social media. With more happening via the web versus academic conferences, longstanding silos are cracking as we move beyond geographic and disciplinary constraints. What do these changes mean for academics—when writers must do more than write?

The hour-long webinar below featured a lively conversation of strategies and examples hosted by MethodSpace methods guru Janet Salmons with Rebecca Bayeck, Eric Schmieder, and Sharon Zumbrunn. The webinar fits with a monthlong AcWriMo series of original posts, interviews, and resources. We’ll be following-up from the webinar with responses to attendees’ questions and links to related resources.

And look to the Textbook and Academic Authors Association’s Abstract blog for some practical tips: https://blog.taaonline.net/

And for more on the process of writing an academic book, check out last year’s AcWriMo webinar and series of posts HERE.

Panelists

Rebecca Y. Bayeck is a dual-PhD holder in learning design and technology and in comparative and international education from the Pennsylvania State University. Currently a CLIR postdoctoral fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture where she engages in digital research, data curation, and inclusive design.  Her interdisciplinary research is at the interface of several fields including , the learning sciences, literacy studies, and game studies.  At this intersection, she explores literacies and learning in games, particularly board games, the interaction of culture, space, and context on design, learning, research, literacies. See this MethodSpace interview about her research.

Eric Schmieder is the membership marketing manager for the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA). He has taught computer technology concepts to curriculum, continuing education, and corporate training students since 2001. A lifelong learner, teacher, and textbook author, Eric seeks to use technology in ways that improve results in his daily processes and in the lives of those he serves. His latest textbook, Web, Database, and Programming: A foundational approach to data-driven application development using HTML, CSS,JavaScript, jQuery, MySQL, and PHP, First Edition, is available now through Sentia Publishing. He edits the Abstract blog, which is open access on the TAA site. Eric has been an active AcWriMo partner with MethodSpace for the last three years.

Sharon Zumbrunn is an associate professor of educational psychology and the co-director of the Motivation in Context Research Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University. As a feelings-and-learning-ologist, she spends a whole lot of time thinking about and studying writing motivation and self-regulation. She has published several research articles on the writing context, writing self-efficacy, writing attitudes, perceptions of feedback, and writing strategies. Her new book, Why Aren’t You Writing? Research, Real-Talk, Strategies, and Shenanigans, is available to order now. Importantly, she self-identifies as a struggling writer . . . depending on the day. Learn more at www.sharonzumbrunn.com or follow her on Twitter (@SharonZumbrunn) and Instagram (@SZumbrunn).