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The challenges of being a public policy professor and a public intellectual

Ever since I began my PhD, I realized that my work was supposed to have policy implications. I am lucky to have had a PhD supervisor whose philosophy was to train students who wouldn’t dare to make claims without empirical support. Who would be interested in solving analytical puzzles with an interdisciplinary tool-kit. Who would be focused on asking policy-relevant research questions. Who would create theoretically-informed, empirically-sound, analytically-robust research designs. In my view, my dissertation was always meant to have a public impact.

At the same time, I have always thought that part of my duty is to be a source of wisdom for public policy-makers. I believe that my research is supposed to be publicly available, widely-disseminated and policy-relevant. I’ve always believed that I should engage in what some people call public intellectualism. As Craig Calhoun aptly said, a few years ago: “Public engagement was a strong feature of the social sciences from their birth”. In fact, the discipline that I’ve called home (Political Science) for the past decade or so, has been seen as having a duty to contribute to the public sphere (read these interesting essays from a collection organized by the Social Science Research Council of the United States).

The mere concept of public intellectual and the heated discussions around it fascinate me. What exactly is a public intellectual? An academic who advises policy-makers on a regular basis? A professor who publishes opinion editorials every week? A scholar who appears on TV? Or someone like me, a professor who has a social media presence (read this interview by Melonie Fullick about my use of social media in academia)? I do not claim to be a public intellectual (I loathe self-aggrandizing, so much so that I’ve criticized the mere notion of calling oneself an expert), but I do believe that my duty is to communicate my research to the broadest audience possible and to ensure that it is used to design robust policy options to improve societal welfare.

Public intellectuals face a number of challenges, however. This is perhaps one of the reasons why I probably wouldn’t want to be a public intellectual. As Melonie Fullick aptly indicates in her piece for University Affairs,

It’s because once you’ve been labelled, there’s no winning: you can’t self-identify as a “public intellectual”, or you’re automatically either shot down, accused of “failure” to achieve unwieldy political goals, or simply assumed unworthy of the title.

Something like this happened to Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry, tenured and full professor at Tulane University, and someone whose work as a public intellectual I really like. Harris-Perry also leads a TV show, and she has been touted as America’s foremost public intellectual by Ta-Nehisi Coates, praise that was quickly debated and in some cases, blatantly shut-down). I think the biggest challenge to someone with such a large public profile is that, with visibility comes an unavoidable cost, which may include losing your credibility as a scholar.

Interestingly enough, a recent proposal by the International Studies Association (ISA) to ban journal editors from blogging (full disclosure: I sit on the Executive Committee of ISA’s Environmental Studies Section), coupled with the debate around Harris-Perry’s public intellectual status also led me to ponder on the hindrances of being public, having an online presence, and sharing my thoughts and research to a larger audience. I would like to think that many political scientists and public policy scholars would like their work to be publicly discussed, widely available and to have policy impact. But as Richard French reminds us on his article in The Political Quarterly “The Professors in Public Life” (French 2012, p. 538),

Limitations of time, information, and analytical capacity require fast and frugal forms of rationality which sacrifice any pretence to optimisation. The ability to use these forms of rationality in a given domain distinguishes neophytes, and journeymen from experts. Experts perceive and select information from the environment more efficiently and faster than others; they recognize patterns or similarities from situation to situation; they resort to conscious analysis only rarely; they perceive problems and courses of action as parts of a single intuition. It takes unique gifts to adapt this form of expertise successfully over time to the inexhaustible variety of ‘wicked’ ‘messy’ problems which public life unfailingly presents to politicians, under the constant pressure of publicity and competition.

How I read French in the paragraph above is that we (academics) can have the gift of analysis, but it is hard to make sure that politicians absorb this knowledge and make good use of it to inform their policy decisions. French makes an excellent analytical summary of the challenges that professors face in wanting their research to inform public life. As French indicates, competition, publicity and uncertainty are three cardinal facts of public life, and how these factors influence politicians’ decision-making is relevant to any scholar wanting to have their views heard. To the extent that academics are able to successfully understand these challenges and frame their work in such a way that it can support robust decision-making, they will also be (in my view) making headway towards becoming successful public intellectuals.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 2, 2014

Writing policy content: Tips for students and educators

Last term was my first time in more than 6 years that I taught in Spanish. During Fall 2013 I taught State and Local Government (Gestion Estatal y Municipal) at CIDE. Originally, my plan was that I was going to teach the course in English, but ended up having to teach it in Spanish, a fact that greatly hindered my ability to offer many more recent readings in English. The topic of local governments is heavily studied in Mexican Spanish-speaking academia, but given how many years I have been out of the country, I was rather unfamiliar with the authors, and with what was being researched. It was way easier to just go into the English-language scholarship, and the typical journals that cover this specific topic (State-and Local Government Review, Local Government Studies, etc.)

While I had to rewrite the entire syllabus, I still remained intent on teaching my students skills that would get them hired. My courses at UBC were always applied and I made sure that my students completed their coursework feeling that they had learned something practical, something that would be useful for them once they had already completed their degree. At UBC I taught in the department of Political Science, although I always had students from many other disciplines (who were mostly attracted to my courses because they saw the practical applications). Here I teach in an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree, a Bachelors of Government and Public Finance. Of course, I am also required to teach in the Masters and PhD programmes at CIDE (in the Santa Fe campus), but for now, I am on a very low teaching load (1-0).

Given that I have a low teaching load, I have had time to ponder and think what I want my students to gain from my courses. In the past few years, I have received numerous emails from students who were happy I taught them how to write briefing notes, case studies and policy memorandums. They always keep emphasizing what I already had in my mind when I started teaching Public Policy: in our current job market, it is IMPERATIVE that our students learn to write stuff that will be valuable to them, that may help them get hired or that may help them in their current job, if they are already working. Recently, I tweeted about these three different types of policy documents I teach my students: policy memorandums (or memoranda), case studies in public policy and briefing notes (or briefing cards – in Spanish the name is “tarjetas informativas“).

Case Studies in Public Policy

Case studies, in the form I use them, present a particular situation, provide background and a description of a situation that can be solved through public policy analysis. For me, case studies are 10-15 pages summaries that outline a case that can be used as a teaching example.

The case method has been favored as a teaching strategy in business schools for decades. I have an MBA, I should know! Harvard School of Business has made its case study teaching method almost a trademark. They have even published on the Core Principles of Teaching with Cases. When I did my MBA, I worked on HBS Cases for homework, and thus I became determined to transfer what I learned to my own teaching in public policy.

When I first started teaching Public Policy, I thought that nobody had thought about my brilliant idea of teaching public policy analysis with cases. Well, obviously I was wrong, as the following resources can indicate:

One of my goals in 2014 is to edit last year’s student case studies to actually build a handbook of case studies in public policy specifically for the Mexican academic market.

Policy Memorandums

Policy memorandums (or memoranda, if you want to be picky about grammar/spelling) are short documents that provide policy makers with advice on a particular situation. While briefing notes and policy memorandums may sound similar (and in some cases, they are used interchangeably). For me, policy memos are action-oriented analytic summaries. The best description I can give can be found on this document (from MIT Planning).

A policy memo is a document that provides analysis and/or recommendations for a particular audience regarding a particular situation or problem. A well-written policy memo reflects attention to purpose; it is well organized; and it has a clear, concise style.

For me, policy memoranda can be longer than briefing cards.

Briefing cards (Tarjetas Informativas)

Briefing cards, or briefing notes, which in Spanish are translated as “tarjetas informativas” – the difference between briefing cards and policy memorandums, the way I conceptualize it, is that the latter can be longer, whereas briefing cards are short, to the point, and provide talking points for bureaucrats, politicians, etc.

  • A model of briefing card that also approaches or is intermediate between policy memorandum and briefing card can be found here.
  • A good resource on writing briefing notes can be found here

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 24, 2014

Academic writing tip: Hit “Submit”

Last week I participated in a 3-day long workshop on transboundary water governance and transboundary river basins (I will be writing about it later this week or today). I really enjoyed having an intimate conversation with my colleagues. However, one of the things that I reflected on the most as I was participating in the workshop, as well as writing my goals for 2014 was my desire to increase my conference-paper-to-journal-article conversion rate.

Of course, I feel thrilled to have 4 publications in press this year (2 journal articles, one in Spanish and one in English, and 2 book chapters, also one in Spanish and one in English). That will also be complimented with two additional book chapters in Spanish, and hopefully four other journal articles (they’re already under review).

I am obsessed right now with my conference-paper-to-journal-article conversion rate. And there’s a simple reason for that. I have way too many conference papers that, at the time, were fantastic, and were a theoretical and empirical contribution, and I just didn’t have the mental or physical energy to push them to become journal articles. Luckily (and strangely) enough, the fields haven’t moved forward so much that I still have got a chance to publish those as journal articles.

But as my good friend Jeremy J. Schmidt tweeted a few days ago, the secret in academic writing (as in ANY writing) is to hit “SUBMIT”. I know it is scary to send your paper (which you crafted so thoroughly) to be judged by two, three or sometimes four reviewers. But you will never get anywhere if you don’t send the paper out.

Mariana Medina summarized one of the biggest challenges (and pet peeves) of academic peer review quite well: there’s almost always one reviewer who makes our lives difficult. Or rejects our paper!

But the truth is, if we don’t get our work through peer-review, we probably won’t get it published. So one of My Goals 2014 is to Hit Submit often.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 19, 2014

My 2014 manifesto: Peace and balance

2012 and 2013 were great for my research in that I got to create new datasets, explore new field sites, undertake new fieldwork, and write, write, and do even more writing. The second part of the semester, though, was simply insane. I travelled to 9 countries, presented papers in Ireland, Uruguay, Portugal, Canada, the United States and of course Mexico (i.e. attended conferences or workshops in 6 countries), and taught one undergraduate course. This contributed to a deteriorated health state and an unhealthy situation where I ended the year (and started 2014) sick.

There were a number of great gains. I have not actually summarized what I accomplished in 2013 (even though I actually submitted an annual research report, but I can recall that I wrote my accomplishments on Twitter (my best note-taking device). From what I read there, I realize that I wrote (from scratch) five journal articles, 5 conference papers, got one journal article published, 2 journal article and 2 book chapters accepted and in press for 2014. I am supervising two PhD students, 1 undergraduate and will start with a postdoctoral researcher in 2014.

I have been struggling with finding the right balance. I have not been alone in the process of finding the right amount of work, and self-care, however, and I am getting a lot of feedback and advice. Senior professors at CIDE, colleagues from universities all over the world, and my family and friend all have been extremely helpful and they’ve all suggested that I need to take better care of myself and stop travelling so much and working so hard. Thus I decided to start saying “NO”.

Saying NO to opportunities for additional writing, projects and collaborations means that I will be able to focus on what I think needs to be done, and having some time to research stuff that while not my main focus, I still find interesting. It’s always a challenge to balance between focus and diversification in academic life. I am hoping to work only Monday through Friday and not work on weekends or holidays, as it is often the norm in academia. I still plan to write on a daily basis, and from January through August, I will be focusing on spending the vast majority of my time on fieldwork and research and writing, as I will only have to teach one undergraduate course in the fall.

I am very disciplined with my weekly schedule, and I have built in self-care on a daily basis. My 2014 will mean staying within the boundaries of what I am physically capable of. My 2014, both academically and personally, will be seeking peace and balance.

Here’s to a great 2014!

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 12, 2014

New year, new projects, new datasets, new life

The end of the year was even more hectic than I thought it would be, so I really didn’t have much time to actually sit down and write what I had learned in the past semester, let alone the entire year. I started the year hitting the pavement running, so I haven’t had much time for self-reflection, something I promised myself I would seek to engage in on a regular basis (as I also promised myself I’d seek balance in my academic and personal lives). But I’m glad that I always write notes while I travel (usually for research, fieldwork or conferences). I scribbled the following few paragraphs on my trip from Lisbon to London, and they are a solid reflection of my state of mind towards the end of the year.

Even though I did not report my datasets on my CV nor on my annual report, constructing them was actually the part that I absolutely loved about this 2013. Actually from July 2012 onwards. I spent the vast majority of this and half of last year doing new fieldwork, collecting new data, examining potential field sites for future research. And building datasets. For the past little while I had felt that I needed a renewal. There is only so much you can do with data from your PhD dissertation.

The only way I have gotten away with publishing anything out of my PhD thesis has been updating the data and reexamining the methods. I do not regret having spent these few years post-PhD writing on other subjects, collecting new data and opening new project arcs. I do regret that I didn’t do this as systematically as I would have liked. There are people I admire and are way more prolific than I am. Since I am not teaching until August 2014, I will be using the first 7 months of the year cranking out research and publishing. I’ll also be doing a lot of fieldwork and so I will spend a few weeks in Vancouver (with side trips to Seattle). I do intend to travel less, and more targeted.

What I found incredibly useful in 2013 was participating in small, targeted workshops. These more intimate venues provide a context where more in-depth intellectual discussions can be had. I wrote three papers from scratch and I am ready to work on them and submit them with views for publication next year. I am incorporating all the feedback I have received from other colleagues at the workshops I participated and I am sure the final product will be a much better version of the previous paper.

The final published article will definitely be much stronger.

Collecting new data doesn’t mean that I throw out the old ones, it does mean I need to systematize it all. This 2014 will be all about systematizing, analyzing and publishing new data. I will also extend project arcs beyond what I originally thought. For example, when I started working on intractable water conflict, I thought I’d have this project done and completed by the end of 2013. Once I participated in a workshop on water politics, I realized this will probably be a 5 year project. And that’s fine, since I have interest in moving towards understanding conflict (seeing as I’ve studied cooperation for so long).

This will be a great year, with new data, moving forward projects and focusing on publishing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 12, 2014

The politics of wastewater governance

My recent conversation with Dave Karpf, Mariana Medina, Mervyn Horgan and Andrew Biro on “the political” made me think about “the political” in sanitation and wastewater governance. I’ve written before here on why I study sanitation. The size of the problem is huge, and it is such a basic necessity. Yet almost a billion people still defecate in the open, because they lack the dignity of a toilet to do their most basic necessities.


Photo credit: Sustainable Sanitation Alliance Secretariat

The work of Susan Chaplin, Sarah Jewitt, Lyla Mehta, Kathleen O’Reilly, Matthew Gandy and mine, of course, are all relevant to the questions that I grapple with on an everyday basis: why, when we have the technology and the means to provide almost-unparalleled, universal access to sanitation, we lack political will and institutional factors that ensure that this basic need is met?

I’ve written before about how I think that this kind of research (sanitation, wastewater, human waste all viewed through a social science lens) is not “sexy”. Scholars in the water world seem way more interested in understanding patterns of (and lack of) water access, whereas wastewater treatment is seen more as a public health problem, if that. Understanding the politics of sanitation requires us to have a multidisciplinary perspective. We cannot write about sanitation if we fail to understand that water is not only a natural resource but it is also inherently political.


Photo credit: Ton Haex on Flickr

It is a little bit more than overwhelming to think that in some countries, more people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet. Bewildering, no? This phenomenon is not limited to India or China, Africa or any developing economy. Lack of basic sanitation is a fact of life even in developed countries. Hence why I stay on course and I keep studying this topic. Because there is something inherently political in the governance of sanitation and wastewater. And these questions on how can we solve the global sanitation crisis can’t solely be answered through a technical (engineering) or managerial (economics) lens. We need to look at it from a global, truly interdisciplinary perspective.

Posted in academia, environmental policy, wastewater.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – December 22, 2013

An online conversation on “the political”

A lot of colleagues in the academic space look at Twitter as just the site where they would come and waste their time. I see it as an online space where I can learn from other smart colleagues. One of the reasons I started #ScholarSunday was to share my views of which scholars I followed and why I learned so much from them. Recently we had a conversation around a tweet sent by Dave Karpf from George Washington University. I quote the tweet below, and then you can read the Storify of the conversation that ensued.

As you can see, this conversation is one where we bridge disciplinary boundaries, conceptual frameworks and definitions. And it all happened on Twitter. Is it really a waste of time? Of course it’s not. It’s a space of learning, research and teaching.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – December 22, 2013

The elusive quest for balance in academic life

I often write and tweet about my quest for that elusive notion of balance. Not only in academic life (e.g. the tricky process of juggling research, teaching and service, or the need to work in many multiple research and writing projects so that I can get stuff published in time for, you know, tenure reviews or yearly evaluations), but also in personal life. While I have built rest, naps, exercise and social life into my weekly template, this year I have travelled so much that my schedule has been thrown into disarray. That, and of course, the fact that I, like many other academics, also work on weekends.

Parque El Cedazo (Aguascalientes)

I had something really interesting happen to me this year: not only senior professors OUTSIDE of my institution, but also senior professors WITHIN my institution called me up and said “you need to slow down or you’re going to burn out“. When your own bosses are telling you to stop working so hard and pushing yourself so much, you know you really need to listen. I’m lucky that I work at an institution where my well-being is important to The Powers That Be. Where I’m encouraged to take a break every so often, and where I am told that yes, the standards for tenure are high, but work hard, at a steady pace, and you will get there eventually.

I know for a fact that I push myself so hard because of my childhood and PhD training. I was competitive as I was growing up (in everything I did, in fact – volleyball, dancing, school). My PhD also made me work really hard and strive for excellence, and I know that it made me competitive as well, even though I have a Canadian PhD (normally, this level of competitiveness would probably be reserved for US-based PhDs).

So when I got sick after my last trip to Portugal, I made a promise to myself: I would build balance not only within my daily routine but also within my long-term planning process. Yes, I love working hard and yes, I absolutely adore what I study and the research I undertake. I wouldn’t study what I do if I weren’t passionate about it. But I have decided that this year (2013), I am, in fact, going to take real holidays. I am NOT going to be working over the holidays. I am going to spend a week taking care of my 6 and 3 year old nephews, and 4 days chaperoning my 19 and 21 year old nieces. I’m going to enjoy my holidays and recharge my batteries. I’m spending my cousin’s birthday with her and hew husband, and I am going to come back fully recharged and with the energy to start 2014 with my full power.

Parque El Cedazo (Aguascalientes)

I also promised myself that in 2014 I would get to know more of Aguascalientes. To this day, I feel that the only times when I actually get to see the city and know new restaurants are when my best friend and his wife take me out for dinner. Or when I have foreign visitors come to Aguascalientes. In 2014, I am actually going to get to know this city that is now my home.

Self-care is incredibly important in academic life and I don’t think we actually pay enough attention to it. I experienced an incredible loss this 2013: I broke up with my partner of 8 years, the one I actually thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. I couldn’t solve the two-body problem. I owe it to myself to take better care of myself, not only because I am human, but also because I really, really am looking forward to the next stage in my academic career, and in my life.

Here’s to 2014 being the year of achieving balance.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – December 14, 2013

Teaching students to write stuff that will get them hired, not just essays

Two recent pieces by Rebecca Schuman and Mark Sample have made me ponder again something I wrote about last year: what exactly are professors supposed to be teaching their students? I should begin by disclosing two facts: One, I am terrified at the job prospects of my students, both former and current, given the current unemployment rates worldwide. I have taught in really solid programs (at the University of British Columbia’s Political Science Department in Vancouver, Canada, and at the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (CIDE) Government and Public Finance program in Aguascalientes, Mexico). I have (and have had) really bright, talented students whose skills I want to shape. I want them to succeed and have jobs at the end of their degree. And two, I’m obsessed with applied work. While I’ve done a lot of theory development in my research, I am keen to transfer my students those skills that have actually gotten me consulting contracts and other applied jobs, besides academia.

Debate Class CIDE Region CentroWhile I’m not 100% in love with the idea of purely oral exams, as Schuman proposes, and my field doesn’t really “build things” as Sample suggests, I definitely side with them in saying that the old-school college essay is ridiculously out. What our students need right now is those skills that will get them hired. They won’t get hired for “oh I write really lovely essays and can totally format my citations in APA style“.

Curso Derecho y Literatura (CIDE Region Centro)I think they will get hired for the kind of applied policy analysis I like them to undertake. They will get hired for having public speaking and debate skills (CIDE has a debating class this term and it’s incredibly popular with students). Year after year, former students of mine who have taken my Public Policy course have told me “Professor Pacheco-Vega, THANK YOU for having the 72 hour policy-analysis assignment in class. I have used it in my current job as Legislative Intern/Policy Analyst“. These types of emails make my day. Because part of what I want is for my students to learn in a rigorous way, to write well, to learn to analyze data and present it in a coherent manner.

I was flying to Mexico City a couple of months ago and got to sit (in different flights) with the Mayor of the City of Aguascalientes and the President of the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, and I chatted with both of them about the importance of writing good policy briefings. Mayor Martinez is a busy woman, and she needs to be briefed on a variety of topics. The same happens with President Andrade. And both of them said “I hire people to do EXACTLY THAT. I really need someone who can synthesize information for me and present a solid menu of policy suggestions/options“.

So, my call for political science/policy schools in particular, and for university departments in general is: let’s teach students to write stuff that will be useful to them. Let’s teach them skills that they will then use in their day-to-day job. If that means teaching them to code HTML, write briefing cards, undertake quantitative analysis using R and STATA, so be it. Let’s just teach what needs to be taught and what will get them jobs, not what the traditional models of teaching require you to do.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – December 14, 2013

Why didn’t I do #AcWriMo this year: On binge-writing and daily discipline

Stationery and research and readingGiven how often my Top 10 Tips for Academic Writing get retweeted, promoted and Googled, you would have thought I would have jumped at the possibility of doing #AcWriMo (Academic Writing Month, which happens in November) again. After all, I have done it in previous years, and learned a lot from doing it last year. But this year I decided I wasn’t doing #AcWriMo. The reasons why might surprise you.

First of all, as a matter of disclaimer, I hereby declare my undying love for #AcWriMo. The mere idea, having one single month where we dedicate ourselves to attempt (crazy as the idea may be) to achieve lofty scholarly writing goals, is a brilliant one, and I salute Charlotte Frost for coming up with the idea. Even some accomplished academic writing changed their mind about #AcWriMo (Inger Mewburn of The Thesis Whisperer), recently enthusiastically supporting it. So no, I didn’t skip on #AcWriMo because I didn’t like the idea. I LOVE IT. I just had a number of reasons to skip it this year. I outline them below.

1. I already write every day. I didn’t feel the need to add increased pressure to my already super busy schedule. I built into my calendar a daily writing routine. I write for 2 hours every day, normally, and when I can’t, I at least schedule 30 minutes per day, in 4 sessions of 30 minutes whenever I can. Given how much I have travelled recently, I have had long spurts where I have had a chance to write (transcontinental flights are wonderful for this).

2. I have been travelling way too much. This year is probably one of the busiest I’ve had. I was in Europe twice in the past couple of months for brief appearances and talks at international workshops, and in Asia in the summer, plus South America last month. Wonderful trips, but overwhelming for my regularly planned life. Time zone changes, food regime shifts, everything changed in the past 6 months, and therefore I wasn’t about to add pressure on myself to try and binge-write. I got sick in between trips (as I was coming back to Mexico from Uruguay and Argentina, and heading to Portugal).

3. I can’t cope with additional pressures. My health is first. If you read my weekly template you will see that I schedule naps, down time, eating at regular intervals and exercise. I know that if I am to be a productive academic, I need to be healthy. I got sick in between international trips (as I was coming back to Mexico from Uruguay and Argentina, and heading to Portugal). I have subjected my body and brain to extreme pressure this year and doing #AcWriMo would have added pressures my physique would not be able to take anymore.

4. This end-of-the-year is insane already. I’m closing the year with a bang, with two co-authored manuscripts that need to get out because my coauthor and I are already behind for the peer review process. Plus, I’m organizing a workshop on Mexican environmental law. Remotely. In Mexico City (I’m based out of Aguascalientes, 7.5 hours by bus or 1 hour plane away from Mexico). Doing #AcWriMo would have simply put me brought me to the brink of insanity. We don’t need that, do we?

5. I’m not crazy about binge-writing and prefer daily writing routines. This is, again, not an indictment of #AcWriMo, but a reflection on what works best for me. Ever since I wrote the daily writing routine into my schedule (thank you Tanya Golash-Boza for those tips), I am less and less of a fan of binge-writing. Attempting to do all the writing you didn’t do during the year in one month is a bit insane. #AcWriMo is a fantastic idea, but it doesn’t always fit me. It did, however, help me to kickstart my daily writing routine.

6. I’m decently pleased about my writing quotas this year. I wrote 8 manuscripts this year, published one, edited 3 chapters of my book, and sent just about everything I presented at a conference except two papers out for peer review. Given my history with conference-paper-to-journal-article conversion, I am pretty pleased that I stopped holding on to manuscripts and just sent them out for review. I still owe my coauthor and two book editors 4 manuscripts, but I feel confident I will be able to complete them as I already have drafted them.

Because I always follow the advice of Jo Van Every, on her recommendation I read Boice’s 1990 book on professors as writers. Boice does scholarly research on academic writing motivations, procrastination and efficiency. Even before reading the book I learned that I needed more discipline for my writing. I incorporated what I have learned in the past few years, and I have disciplined myself to write every day. Every. Single. Day.

My method of doing scholarly research

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 30, 2013