Skip to content

Connecting your specific research to broader questions in the literature, the field and the discipline

I am currently mentoring a few academics (my own PhD students and a few early-career TT scholars) and I am trying to teach them about how to frame their work in terms of the broader questions of a field, and a discipline. The kind of exercise I am executing, trying to teach how to connect specific case studies and approaches to the broader literature is not easy. The “hidden curriculum” is pervasive.

The Governance of Bottled Water in Mexico

Me giving a talk to students associated with the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California Berkeley

So, how do we frame our work in terms of discipline- or field-wide questions or contributions to broader debates in the literature?

Here are three strategies that might help you frame your work more broadly and link your specific work to the larger discipline- and field-wide questions (click on each link to take you to the specific blog post where I already wrote in more detail about each strategy):

Each of the strands of my scholarly work contributes to different debates across disciplines, and to broader questions in the literature of each discipline and field. Below you will find some examples:

Example 1: One of my research areas is transnational environmental activism. While the case studies I examine are based in North America (Canada, the US and Mexico), my works speaks to broader debates on activism, protest and social movements. My research challenges preconceived notions and conventional wisdom that environmental non-governmental organization across countries form coalitions based on their shared values. Instead, I empirically demonstrate that the basis for collaboration and cooperation is a shared strategy, and to achieve consensus on these strategies, ENGOs share knowledge across borders and across the board.

This research strand and the projects I’ve conducted within it speak to broader debates on coalition-building within sociology, but also larger questions in international relations on the role of non-state actors in domestic, transnational and global politics and policy.

Example 2. Also within the realm of transnational environmental activism, but more specifically within the shaming and blaming academic bodies of literature in human rights scholarship and international relations, my work demonstrates empirically that countries are substantially receptive to external, non-state actors’ pressures to engage in domestic policy change. Our (Amanda Murdie and mine) research shows that environmental NGOs pusing for improved conditions have more success in countries where there is receptiveness and where civil society are substantively galvanized and organized.

Example 3: Another research area of mine is the governance of bottled water, primarily as an example of a negative commons. While the phenomenon I analyze (packaging a common pool resource, a commons) is rather specific (bottled water), in my work I dialogue with broader questions of resource governance, enclosure, property rights, etc. This empirical and theoretical work contributes to global debates on the human right to water, marketization and privatization. I extend the notion of commons (common pool resources) beyond its traditional boundaries and offer the definition of a negative commons: a commons that is only valued after a revaluation process, not intrinsically. Solid waste, wastewater and bottled water are all negative commons, according to my definition.

My work on bottled water also contributes to political science and public policy literatures, particularly to those focused on the interplay between interests, ideas and institutions. I show how bottled water consumption has increased not only as a result of increased marketing, a taste for “pure” water, and poor urban infrastructure but also as the result of weak regulatory regimes.

Example 4: I also study public policy (specifically policy instruments). While much of my work is specific to environmental regulation, I contribute to broader discussions on policy mixes, policy implementation, etc. My research demonstrates that policy instruments, particularly of the regulatory nature, work best when implemented in the form of policy mixes. This research contributes to debates on policy instrument design and implementation within the policy sciences literatures.

The following published pieces from other scholars do a masterful job of connecting their specific scholarship to broader questions and debates in their fields and disciplines.

In their article, Kiley and Vasey explain how their empirical results have implications for cultural sociology and political sociology, as well as for methodological advances on measurement of, and stability of cultural change.

In this article, Humphreys and Weinstein explain how using field experiments can help us tackle broader questions in the political economy of development.

Demonstrating how specific research projects answer and are linked to broader questions and debates in the scholarly literature is challenging, but it is also an important task that we need to undertake in order to demonstrate that we have made a contribution to the literature.

Hopefully this blog post will help you in this process!

Posted in academia, research, research design, research methods.

Tagged with , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 15, 2024

The value and importance of the pre-writing stage of writing

A lot of people ask me about my actual writing process, so I figured I should share some of my practices, and make them into blog posts. I’m lucky that, as I write this blog post, I have a full day available to write (no meetings).

The first element of my writing practice is the pre-writing stage.

I am a person of rituals and routines.

First, I brew a pot of coffee. My first cup of coffee is very important as it’s what sets the tone for the day. I take a few minutes to just be with myself and have my coffee.

Coffee

I am a Virgo, Type A, Upholder. I need routines and organization. The next step in my daily writing practice is what many call the Pre-Writing Stage.

I am not the kind of person who does “stream of consciousness” writing. I need to read first to get my thinking juices flowing. A number of people who write about writing recommend doing “Morning Pages”. This is a method developed by writer Julia Cameron. Three pages, stream-of-consciousness. This method is very helpful if you are feeling VERY stuck. I will be very honest and say that I don’t use it often.

Personally, I write by memorandums and using outlines. What does this mean, in practice? Well, I don’t write entire papers. I don’t even write entire sections.

I write memos.

Memo v 4 second paragraph filled

The key, however, is to write EFFECTIVE memos. Memos that you’ll use. Memos that you can copy-and-paste into your papers.

In this particular blog post, however, I want to emphasize the Pre-Writing Stage, because I find that not having a routine that helps me focus completely hinders my ability to generate words. My Pre-Writing Stage includes drinking a cup of coffee, centering myself, but also READING.

I need to read in order to get my brain in order to write. I can’t just blurt words out.

What does my Pre-Writing Routine entail?

Pre-Writing in my case ALWAYS implies at least 4 things:

  1. Look over at my list of writing commitments (and prioritize what I need to write first. Deadlines are great for this!)
  2. Check which memos I’ve written and which ones need to be written.
  3. Read about the topic.
  4. Review which particular memo I need to write based on the paper outline I’ve generated.

For example, right now I’m writing about how research questions fit with other components of the research design process. So I re-read a few materials I’ve read about this specific topic, from articles to books.

Pre-writing stage

I find that sometimes, people think that reading is NOT part of their writing practice, and that the time they spend reading BEFORE starting to write is somehow a waste of time.

For me, reading and often times, re-reading is what gives me the brain fuel to start writing. READING IS WRITING. There’s no way around it. If you want to write, you need to read.

Though sometimes I can, in fact, sit down and start producing words, I find that doing a bit of re-reading and THEN sketching on paper what I’m going to write about and how I’m going to do it helps me. I usually sketch and draft on index cards, this helps me think through ideas.

Pre-writing stage

As you can see from the photo above, I developed 4 Guiding Questions that will help me start writing. I classify Guiding Questions as part of the “Prompts” category.

Writing Prompts, as their name suggest, are elements that help you get started, that set actions in motion.

Because I am writing about Research Questions, the 4 Guiding Questions that will act as prompts for me are:

  • what is a research question?
  • what elements or characteristics would make a research question “good”?
  • what are the different types and typologies of RQs?
  • how are research questions linked to other elements of research design?

I usually generate ONE memorandum per prompt. This breakdown of the work allows me to feel less overwhelmed.

I don’t think to hit 2,000 words. I just need to answer ONE Guiding Question.

To summarize my Pre-Writing Routine:

  1. Writing, most often than not, may require a Pre-Writing Routine. Mine includes reading, planning, organizing my thoughts and drinking coffee.
  2. A Pre-Writing Routine that includes reading and sketching your thoughts may be helpful to you as you develop your writing practice. Make the best of outlines.
  3. You don’t have to write 5,000 words per day. All you need to worry about is just a few words, a few minutes. ONE Memorandum.

I hope this blog post is useful to you as you develop your writing practice.

Carrie Bradshaw Pre Writing Routine

Posted in academia, writing.

Tagged with , , , .

3 comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 16, 2024

My experience teaching residential academic writing workshops

A few years ago, Dr. Andrew Fischer invited me to teach a workshop that would help doctoral candidates with structuring their dissertation and write it. Though the course is called “Post-Fieldwork Workshop“, I designed it to combine combine research design with research methods, project management, and academic writing.

I started teaching this workshop online, which was very complicated because obviously I had to teach at a reasonable hour for my students in The Netherlands, which is 7 hours ahead of Mexico City. Waking up at 1:00am to start teaching at 4:00am is really absolutely insane.

Over the past couple of years, I have been teaching this course in person, at the beautiful Buitengoed de Uylenburg in Delft, The Netherlands.

Cohort 2024

WHAT MAKES THESE RESIDENTIAL WORKSHOPS SO SUCCESSFUL?

As an academic, a substantial part of what I do is to analyze, and think. I have spent the past few weeks and months pondering what makes my residential workshops so successful.

Here are four factors that I believe make my residential workshop effective and an experience that all participants would want to repeat.

  1. The setting (The Buitengoed de Uylenburg)
  2. The workshop design (combination of academic writing, research desgin and qualitative methods)
  3. The in-residence component (including all meals)
  4. The composition of the cohorts

1. The setting (Buitengoed de Uylenburg)

The hotel that hosts my workshop every year (Buitengoed de Uylenburg) is absolutely beautiful, secluded, located just outside of Delft, in the Delfgauw region.

Buitengoed de Uylenburg

Buitengoed de Uylenburg

The hotel is obviously well fitted to host large(ish) groups, and we all had lodging that enabled us to write from within our own rooms too. Plus we could sit and have meaningful conversations and do nature walks around the site.

2. The workshop design.

I originally was asked to spend the entire week teaching how to develop a writing practice, and how to write a dissertation. Since the workshop’s goal was to help those who had just finished their fieldwork. But once I started teaching the course, even after having read a survey asking them what they needed support with, I realized much of my work had to focus on helping them craft a good research question, rethink their research design, manage their dissertation project, AND apply qualitative and mixed methods.

Cohort 2022

I have now designed the course to be a combination of research design, research methods, academic writing and project management. It’s only 4 full days (1 afternoon, 6 morning/afternoon sessions and 1 morning session on Friday for a total of 8 sessions) though we are together Monday through Friday. It IS a VERY intense course and both students and I end the week very tired, but really happy.

3. The in-residence component.

I will confess that I was initially a bit wary of doing a residential workshop. For better or worse, doing EVERYTHING together meant that they would see me in my pyjamas come down for breakfast, and that we would be sharing each and every single meal together.

Buitengoed De Uylenburg (Delft, The Netherlands)

But in hindsight, one of the best things about this residential workshop and specifically the in-residence component is that precisely, you are forced to eat each and every meal together and that creates and fosters a sense of camaraderie that perhaps wouldn’t be obtained without the on-site living arrangements component. Also, we were provided with all three meals, so nobody had to really think about cooking or shopping for groceries.

Buitengoed de Uylenburg

I cannot say enough good things about the Buitengoed de Uylenburg, both the facilities and the staff. And the food was FANTASTIC.

We ate breakfast and lunch within the facilities of the hotel, and for dinners, we ate at the Cafe Du Midi, right outside the gates of the hotel.

Buitengoed de Uylenburg

4. The composition of the cohort.

This is perhaps what seems most random of the four elements but in hindsight it really does make a difference. Whenever I have taught a residential workshop, many of the participants belong to the same PhD cohort or know each other one way or another, sometimes through the CERES School, or through their own universities.

Cohort 2024 CERES Connecting the Dots Workshop (Delft, The Netherlands)

Even when I’ve had participants from outside CERES, The Netherlands, they have completely develop a fantastic camaraderie. This closeness among course participants makes it easier to teach an entire group the same skills, because there’s continuous and collegial support among peers.

Cohort 2022

Overall, what makes me come back every year to teach this residential workshop is the very positive experience I have with every cohort I have worked with. Of course, I also loved teaching the same course online, but the in-person, in-residence component is definitely worth it.

Posted in research, research design, writing.

Tagged with , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – June 28, 2024

“State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Brazil” – Jessica Rich – my reading notes

Rich State Sponsored Activism - Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Democratic BrazilDr. Jessica A. J. Rich is an incredible researcher, scholar, and writer. Her book, “State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Brazil” is a textbook model for how to write a book in so many ways. I also study social movements in Latin America, so it was important for me to read her book and catch up with the most recent and cutting edge scholarship.

Furthermore, as someone who teaches both research design, research methods and academic writing, I wanted to read it to help my students learn how to write better, particularly those who have decided to write a book-manuscript-style doctoral dissertation. I can certify that her book’s introductory chapter is pure gold.

You can read the entire book yourselves, as it is a real delight, and extremely insightful. Most importantly, for those of us teaching Research Design, “State-Sponsored Activism” offers a great model that you can show your doctoral students for how to construct their PhD dissertation’s argument and structure.

Two core questions animate Dr. Rich’s book: “how does civil society develop the capacity to organize and advocate for collective political goals? And what explains the endurance of civic activism once the initial success of setting policy has passed?” (p. 4, Rich 2022)

Rich’s book argument can be summarized as follows: “Brazil AIDS movement was able to endure and even expand over time because the movement was cultivated by national government bureaucrats who depended on activists to help them pursue their policy goals” (p. 4). This finding resonates with results from my own research.

In my work I found that SEMARNAT officials actively aided and supported RETC activists as they wanted to harmonize environmental policy instrument design for PRTRs across all of North America, even though the Mexican was targeted for policy change (Pacheco-Vega 2005). Insights I gained from this research tracks with what Rich finds in her own work. Bureaucrats can, and often will, use their relationships with civil society organizations to advance their own policy goals, through them. In a way, they operate in a similar way to what I call a second-order pressure transmission mechanism (Pacheco-Vega 2015).

Table of Contents State-Sponsored ActivismThough I loved the entire book, two sections in the introductory chapter really stood out for me: Alternative Explanations (where Dr. Rich clearly lays out different potential AEs to her research questions) and the Contributions section (expanded in Chapter 8).

When I teach Research Design, I actively emphasize to my students the importance of making their research contributions VERY CLEAR. Rich makes her contributions stand out by contrasting her findings with traditional theories of civil society. This theory-empirics link is KEY.

Overall, a fantastic book that I enjoyed and plan to assign in my Research Design class and thesis completion workshop.

10/10 recommended reading.

PS – I’ve used one of Jessica A.J. Rich’s published journal articles to showcase reading strategies on my blog too.

Posted in academia, reading notes, research, research design, social movements.

Tagged with , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 27, 2024

Reading Like a Writer – Francine Prose – my reading notes

Francine Prose's Reading Like a WriterI brought Francine Prose’s book, Reading Like a Writer with me on a research trip to London in the fall of 2022 for 2 reasons: 1) I thought the plane I was taking would not have power plugs in each seat so I believed I wouldn’t be able to work, and 2) I wanted to read it while on The Tube while roaming London.

What Prose asks of her readers (also, would-be-writers) is that we pay attention to EACH WORD.

This statement, I know, is going to stir a debate in the scholarly realm, for multiple reasons. I advocate for having multiple reading strategies: skimming, close reading, etc. A couple of tweets by scholars I know and respect (and love) have gone viral on whether we should read each word or skim all the time.

Well, I very strongly believe that there is a place for each strategy: meso-level reading, super quick skim, in-depth.

What Francine Prose asks of us is to consider that, for all the value that skimming has, learning how to write WILL demand of the would-be-writer to READ EACH AND EVERY WORD from the stuff they read. She does NOT devalue skimming (nor do I, see my post)

I will very openly say here that while I learned to speed-read when I was in grade school, and I can read quite fast, I actually took the time to Read Every Single Word of Francine Prose’s “Reading Like A Writer” because she proposes that we do so, in order to learn how to write.

It took me about 1 hour and 25 minutes-ish to get from Terminal 3 at Heathrow to where I am staying, at Queen Mary University of London. I decided to ONLY take the Underground, and to NOT check my iPhone and solely read Prose’s book. I made it through page 67, reading EACH WORD.

I also took abundant notes (remember I now carry a small notebook everywhere I go? I learned my lesson the hard way).

Prose goes out of her way to show us two remarkable things:

1) How to sign-post properly, and

2) How to read authors to distill their insights to help us.

Part of what has made me successful as a writer has been that I always do what Prose suggests we ought to do: read authors whose writing I love and try and draw insights from the way in which they line words up, construct sentences, and build paragraphs and cohesive narratives.

I went through Prose’s book looking exactly for the markers of a good sentence, a well-crafted paragraph, how she put words together. Her sign-posting is unreal. Each paragraph she writes is self-contained and gives you an important insight on how to write. 1 IDEA PER PARAGRAPH.

I read Prose the way she suggest we ought to read other writers: looking for what I could draw from her writing to inform mine. Other authors who write books on writing often give you their pearls of wisdom, what THEY believe is THE RIGHT WAY.

Not Prose. She shows you multiple scenarios, possibilities, ways of knowing and understanding writers’ craft. While Prose DOES distills her own wisdom into gems, she does so in a conversational style that makes you feel like you’re sitting besides her while she teaches you the craft of Reading and of Writing.

Bottom line: 10/10, I will keep this book in my “To Continually Check Out” shelf.

Posted in academia, writing.

Tagged with , , , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 26, 2024

Using the Pacheco-Vega workflows and frameworks to write and/or revise a scholarly book

I’ve taught a few workshops this year on academic writing and there’s always at least one attendee who has already completed their PhD and is looking for strategies to craft their book. Sometimes they’re looking to convert the PhD dissertation into a book, or write a new one. I promised those attendees I would write a thread & blog post on how you can use the same strategies I have developed to support graduate students to help you craft your book.

Here are a few ways in which you can use my Overview Devices, frameworks and workflows to write a book manuscript or to revise your dissertation with a view towards publishing it as a book.

Note-taking

Let me get something out of the way: I wrote a book-style dissertation from which I published one piece and which I am revising for publication as a book with a couple of additional chapters derived from recent fieldwork, archival work and interview materials. I have published books. I also supervise article-based PhD theses, and book-manuscript-style dissertations. I am familiar with the process and the processes that people follow to produce both.

With that clarification out of the way, here are a few strategies you can use to craft your new book or revise your dissertation into a book:

1. If it’s a new book or a book on a topic that you are new to, you may want to use my strategy to delve into an entirely new topic.

2. If you’ve surveyed the literature and have a good grasp of the empirical strategy you plan to use, you could then use my Expansive Framework to map the structure and outline the contents of your book.

3. Once you have a solid map of what your book is going to look like, you may want to use my three Overview Devices to help you draft the book proposal.

a) The Dissertation Two Pager (DTP) can summarize the book in a handy two pager.

b) The Dissertation Analytical Table (DAT) can help you structure the book chapters’ content and structure. You can increase the number of rows from 3 to the total number of chapters you plan to include in your book.

3. You can also use my methods to craft and map the Red Thread (the Throughline, the argument) of your entire book.

d) To map the Red Thread, I suggest that you use my third Overview Device, the Global Dissertation Narrative (GDN) method. Bonus: the DTP and the GDN will help you form the basis for your book proposal.

Writing

2 additional resources you may want to use to help you convert the dissertation into a book (or develop a new one):

– From Dissertation to Book by William M. Germano.

– The Book Proposal Book by Laura Portwood-Stacer

The techniques I listed in this thread work in tandem with these two books, which are excellent.

As a side note: let’s say that (like me) you’ve let your PhD dissertation rest and are now updating it to publish it as a book. This means you need to get caught up on the latest scholarship. To do this, I’ve developed two spreadsheet-based techniques to review the literature.

The difference between a CSED and an ADM lies in that the ADM is for a quick skim of a large number of abstracts whereas the CSED holds the entirety of the literature reviewed. In a sense, one could do an ADM first and then select articles to read more in depth and dump them into a CSED.

Writing

Now, let’s say that you’ve submitted your book manuscript to the publisher, it’s been peer-reviewed and you need to craft revisions to each book chapter. My Drafts Review Matrix (DRM) can help you plan how you’ll tackle those revisions.

To organize your time and create a timeline for when you need to get each chapter revised, you may want to apply backcasting techniques, coupled with a trusty Gantt Chart.

Obviously, in the case of a book manuscript, you need to backcast the entire book AND each chapter. Here is my process for backcasting an entire project.

TL;DR: you can, in fact, use the strategies I’ve developed to support graduate and undergraduate students to help you revise your dissertation into a book and/or write a new book.

I hope this blog post is useful to all of you book writers/revisers out there.

Posted in academia, writing.

Tagged with , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 16, 2023

On framing, the value of narrative and storytelling in scholarly research, and the importance of asking the “what is this a story of” question

Much of what I do here on my blog, when I teach courses and workshops on academic research and writing, and with my own students and thesis writers is help them frame their research, “sell their ideas”, and create a narrative that showcases their innovative approach to their research.

Last year, in October I visited the University of Bath to present a paper in progress on global water summits. After my talk, I had a chance to go for a walk around Bath with my dear friends Yixian Sun, Michael J. Bloomfield, and Alex De Coss Corzo. Alex and I were walking down the hill right in front of the Sham Castle when I clearly remember him helping me reframe my recently presented paper by asking the simple question “what is this a story of?” Alex’s query literally made me stop in my tracks and think how powerful this simple yet profound interrogation was. What story can my research tell? What am I trying to communicate to the audience? Which insights am I finding that make my research worth listening to and reading?

Thus I wanted to write a Twitter thread (to then make it into this blog post) on framing, the value of narrative and storytelling in scholarly research, and the importance of asking the “what is this a story of” question that Anselm Strauss always asked from his students.

The “what is this a story of” question helps us more accurately frame our research.

Central Panel of the Storytelling Panel

Photo credit: Nancy White on Flickr, CC A-ND.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we teach research design, and research methods and methodology, particularly because I find that when everything is said and done in our research project, we may find ourselves scratching our heads and thinking “ok, I did this, what now?”

Making sense of a large project is always incredibly hard. I have experienced this with my three theses (undergraduate, Masters and PhD), and with several projects I’ve undertaken, as well as with two books I am trying desperately to finish this year.

“What is this a story of?”

Let me give you a few examples from a few fantastic books I have read.

In their 2020 book “Votes, Drugs and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico”, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley deploy a mixed methods approach to tell a story of why violence rose through organized drug trafficking organizations during the process of democratization in Mexico. The story that Trejo and Ley tell is that electoral politics has emerged as a major driver of criminal violence. Their work extends other theoretical and empirical work, and tells a different story to what we are told. Telling a story that extends other works IS a contribution.

Another example, from Eduardo Moncada’s 2021 “Resisting Extortion: Victims, Criminals, and States in Latin America”. In his book, Moncada offers an analytical account of how different groups resist extortion through acts of everyday resistance, rather than engaging in direct violence, what he calls “the coproduction of order”. The story that Moncada offers (backed up by extensive fieldwork and data analysis, like the Trejo and Ley book) is one where his work offers a counter-intuitive example of resistance, and explains how and why these strategies emerge. It’s a story of non-violent survival.

Both books tell stories about criminal violence, backed by rigorous analyses and in-depth field research. These stories offer answers to questions that puzzle us.

Storytelling is important when we write a research paper, when we write a book or a dissertation or a thesis: “what is the story we are trying to tell” and “what is this a story of”, are the two questions Strauss would ask.

I liked this paper by Clarke and Star on Strauss and his approach to mentoring students. Knowing the story we are trying to tell is why I always ask my students and my thesis advisees: “what is this a story of? what does your work tell me that I would not have figured out by myself?”

In my view, research is about telling a story. With data, with theory, but it’s a story in the end.

We reveal things.

We explain concepts.


We make the complex legible.

Storytelling is an underrated skill in academic writing and scholarly research and I do hope that these reflections can be helpful to others trying to frame and make sense of their research.

Posted in academia, research, research methods, writing.

Tagged with , , , .

3 comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – April 3, 2023

The Abstract Decomposition Matrix Technique to find a gap in the literature

I have been thinking about how I can help my students with their theses, particularly because our programs are rather compressed and they need to get a lot done in a very short period of time. I’ve been working on developing a strategy to discern “the gap in the literature” that I plan to test with Masters and undergraduate students. Possibly also with PhD students.

I have developed several strategies to teach how to craft a good research question, how to find the gap in the literature. But when I had a meeting with Masters students recently and I taught them how to use some of my methods, they seem a little bit confused as to how to choose what exactly they should study.

Let me begin by saying what I told them at the beginning:

YOU NEED TO READ. A LOT.

I understand that doing literature reviews is challenging (I have an entire section in my blog with multiple strategies to tackle the process of reviewing the literature). But if we are in the world of academia to contribute to our fields, we really need to read A LOT, because otherwise we may end up claiming that we have done something new that has already been published elsewhere (or in another language).

Literature review

But I always try to help them by asking them to focus their search and their research on 4 elements:

We conduct a review of the literature in order to develop one or more of these elements:

1) what has been done before, what has been studied and how it has been analyzed,
2) the foundations upon which our own work can be developed further,
3) any spaces where we can embed our own contributions, and/or
4) a map of themes showing connections between different topics, ideas, concepts, authors, etc.

When I teach strategies to systematize the literature, I usually tell them to use my Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED, or Excel Dump in short).

As they read each article/chapter/book chapter/book, they drop their notes into their Excel Dump.

Excel dump LaVanchy et al

An Excel Dump row describing an article on Nicaragua’s water governance.

But when my students asked me “how do I ensure that I am tackling a DIFFERENT research question to the one others have worked on?” I had to pause. This is a valid question, and I thought about how they could do this in an easy, and visually appealing way.

So this is what I did: I developed an Abstract Decomposition Matrix.

Both Dr. Jessica Calarco and I use a very similar method to craft abstracts (using 5 elements, or asking 5 different questions). So I used one of her own articles and decomposed her abstract with an Excel template I developed.

5 questions abstract decomposed

Even if I haven’t yet fully read the literature, or don’t work in the field (I don’t, I study entirely different things to Dr. Calarco), I can start imagining extensions of her work, different methods, other case studies/countries/populations/types of schools.

DOING THIS ABSTRACT DECOMPOSITION EXERCISE HELPS ME THINK OF NEW DIRECTIONS FOR MY OWN RESEARCH.

Now, does this abstract decomposing strategy work in other fields? I applied the strategy to this paper. While I had to “fill out” some of the details of the 5 elements framework, it does give me clarity on potential avenues for further work.

5 questions abstract decomposed 2

I did this for a third paper, and the strategy seems to hold relatively well.

5 questions abstract decomposed 3

Thus, what I am planning to do with my students is to ask them to survey the literature and decompose abstracts of articles they read so they can see what’s been done. Once their Abstract Decomposition Matrix is complete, they can see where they can focus their work.

Reading highlighted papers

This exercise does NOT substitute my Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED), but I believe it complements it. You can do an Abstract Decomposition Matrix exercise with, say, 10-15 articles, and from there, you can triage and decide which ones you will read in more detail. Although I have NOT yet tested this strategy with my students. I plan to do so this summer and fall, and will report back. I am confident it will be helpful.

Before anybody asks: yes, in this particular 5 elements abstract decomposition strategy I use the authors’ exact words. My Excel Dump technique asks of the reader to use their own words in the notes. What I noticed as I was filling out one of the ADM templates is that sometimes you will need to use your own words to fill in the gaps. I think this is good.

In the meantime if you are teaching how to review the literature for your students, this is how I conducted one in an entirely new-to-me method (hospital ethnography). These two posts (from reading a lot to writing paragraphs of your literature review and mapping a new field of research) may also be helpful, particularly if you’re delving into entirely new fields/areas/methods.

Posted in academia, research, writing.

Tagged with , , .

2 comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – March 30, 2023

16 tips on the process of academic writing and publishing from the #ISA2023 Environmental Studies Section Speed Mentoring Session

I sat on the “Writing and Publishing” table at the Environmental Studies Section Speed Mentoring Roundtable during the 2023 meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA) in Montreal (Canada).

ESS Speed Mentoring

Photo credit:Lily Hsueh.

My co-panelist was my coauthor and dear friend Dr. Kate O’Neill, so we agreed to talk about the process of academic writing and publishing from our perspectives as authors and editors of books, articles, chapters and journals.

Here are a few pieces of advice we both shared that will be useful for all.

1) don’t take desk rejects personally

2) review as you’d like to be reviewed

3) as much as possible, if you get a revise-and-resubmit (R&R), drop everything and work on it and return it to the editors (my full process for working on a Revise-And-Resubmit can be found here).

4) peer reviewed journal articles are still the currency of academia – focus on those (book chapters rock but it will be hard to sell those for tenure)

5) remember to create a pipeline of work — don’t try to publish everything all at once.

6) if you are working on converting your dissertation into a book I very strongly recommend Dr. William M. Germano’s “From Dissertation To Book”.

7) remember that what you publish depends on your needs and evaluation

8) make sure that your work is LEGIBLE to the communities you want to dialogue with: your readership, your PhD committee, your tenure committee, your discipline/field.

9) while a lot of people pay lip service to interdisciplinarity, we often get evaluated on disciplinary terms.

10) when asked to review remember that usually 3 reviewers are needed per each journal article – so you may need to review just as many per paper you have under review.

11) remember that you don’t necessarily need to address every reviewer’s comment – you can pick and choose.

12) don’t take bad reviews personally (I often ask dear friends to summarize feedback for me because it’s painful).

13) read the literature broadly, deeply, ENGAGE with it, don’t just do the token citation. Make sure you engage in citational justice & your citations are diverse.

14) creating a pipeline of work is important during graduate school and afterwards

15) remember that writing (and publishing) is a social activity – find writing buddies, read each other’s drafts, support and encourage each other, provide kind feedback, join writing groups.

16) book time with yourself to write and prioritize it.

My blog has plenty of resources on publishing and writing strategies that may be useful to you all at #ISA2023

Posted in academia.

Tagged with , , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – March 19, 2023

Producing journal article manuscripts from a doctoral dissertation

A good friend of mine who recently completed her doctoral dissertation asked me recently in a quick one-on-one consultation how she could go about converting her doctoral dissertation into articles.

I suggested a process that I will share now. Though a number of doctoral candidates are required by their programs to publish articles out of their dissertation or to build it as a series of articles, others ask for more of a book-manuscript-style thesis.

My own doctoral students write their dissertations as a series of three stand-alone-but-interconnected papers that can be converted into journal articles, either during their graduate program, or afterwards. They follow my DAT model to craft their written outputs.

Now, let’s be real: it’s December 4th, we all need a break, and it would be a good idea to use these three journal articles as the backbone to plan a year worth’s of work. Wendy Belcher’s #12WeeksArticle book offers a step-by-step process for writing a paper/revising in 12 weeks. What I suggested was to follow Belcher’s approach (assign 12 weeks to revising or rewriting a paper). Belcher’s #12WeeksArticle book’s 2nd edition focuses on writing a paper from scratch in 12 weeks. The first edition focuses on revising in 12 weeks. You can choose either model.

So that means that if we consider 12 weeks for revising each journal article with a good holiday in December, you can start with the first article by say, January 15th 2023 and use 12 weeks for each (and a week’s rest in between). This means that by the end of October of 2023 you may have submitted 3 papers to be peer reviewed and published as journal articles (including 3 weeks where you take a break). This, to me, seems like a fantastic level of productivity.

Now, let’s be realistic: this is a one year plan for getting three journal articles out. What happened to me a few years back was that I got THREE revise-and-resubmits within the same year, and it was next to impossible to convert them all. So you need to account for this.

Hopefully this process (which I devised in December 2022!) can help some or many of you extract publishable journal articles off your doctoral dissertation.

Posted in academia, research.

Tagged with , , .

1 comment

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – March 13, 2023