Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals: Strategies for Getting Published (Kamler/Thomson) – my reading notes

While I’ve followed and interacted with Dr. Pat Thomson (University of Nottingham) for a very, very long time (and I really like her), I haven’t read all the books she’s published. She’s someone who not only studies scholarly writing, but also does A LOT of it. But I am looking forward to reading more of her work. Nevertheless, I have read a few works of her that are really important for academia as a whole. Her volume with Barbara Kamler, “Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals: Strategies for Getting Published” is one of those.

There is A LOT to like about the Kamler and Thomson book, but I am particularly fond of the Tiny Texts’ approach.

Grateful for the work that @ThomsonPat and Barbara Kamler have put into helping students and researchers. I will connect this micro-thread to my abstracts one soonest. I want to call attention to K&T’s Tiny Texts, with 3/4/5 rhetorical moves: pic.twitter.com/SPCRRIUfdd

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 13, 2018

There are four moves in Tiny Texts’ construction, as shown below.

This is Kamler and @thomsonpat 's Figure 3.2, the four moves of a Tiny Text – as Kamler and Thomson argue, abstracts are the essence of where all academic writing emanate, and this model is really powerful. You could even use it to (a) construct the full paper or (b) paragraphs. pic.twitter.com/gPwKndjjzq

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 1, 2018

• LOCATE: Situating the paper/book/contribution within the larger context.
• FOCUS: Narrowing the discussion to an examination of specific questions we want to address.
• REPORT: Describing how the research was conducted so as to provide answers to the questions addressed.
• ARGUE: Theorising and analysing and outlining the contributions. As Kamler and Thomson indicate, it links back to the LOCATE component by discussing “so what” and “now what” questions.

I linked to Pat and Barbara’s approach in my How to Write an Abstract of a Paper blog post. But I wanted to make sure to publish a post on their actual book because I believe it offers way more than just an approach to write abstract. As Pat and Barbara indicate in their book, there are 3 and 5 moves’ Tiny Texts.

In the 5 moves’ Tiny Text, the additional category (ANCHOR) goes right after focus, as it provides more grounding (methodologies’ description and contextualization).

In the 3 moves’ Tiny text, right after LOCATE, and instead of FOCUS and REPORT, the author is expected to PROBLEMATISE and create a more theoretical discussion. Then ARGUE provides the overall argument for the paper and the expected contribution and future research.

Overall, I strongly recommend Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals. It’s a really good book, and not only for the Tiny Texts’ concept, and the Four Moves, but for delving more deeply into what we do as scholars.

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