Public Engagement: Writing an Opinion Piece

Dr Meagan Tyler is a lecturer in Sociology at Victoria University, Australia. She is currently on secondment to the Centre for Sustainable Organisations and Work (CSOW) at RMIT University, conducting research for the Bushfire CRC project: “Effective Communication: Communities and bushfire.”

Meagan has written pieces for The Drum and The Conversation, has been quoted in a variety of publications (including The Age, The Times [UK], and Cosmopolitan), and recently appeared on the TV current affairs program, The Project.

She tweets @DrMeaganTyler.

---

Academics want their work to be read, and public engagement can be a very useful way to make sure this happens.

There are three main reasons why getting your research out to wider audience can be a good idea:

1. you have expertise to share on a particular issue in the news,
2. you want to get the results of your work out to the public, and
3. you want to raise your profile.

As a researcher, it can be infuriating when you read a piece – in a newspaper or online – that deals with your research area, and it turns out to be misleading or inaccurate. It can be difficult, particularly as an early career researcher, to know how to add your voice and expertise to the debate.

There are several ways you can become more involved, including starting your own blog, getting active on Twitter, putting profile pages up on sites like Academia.edu, and writing opinion pieces. These take time and patience, but they will help raise your profile, thus improving your chances of being quoted in papers, interviewed on radio or TV, or invited to write.

A soap box (Photo by MonsieurLui – http://www.flickr.com/photos/monsieurlui)

All of this means that your research will be more widely read, and the possibility that you might actually influence public debate on a topical issue is much greater.

If there is a particular issue in the news that relates to your work, it’s always helpful to contact your institution’s media unit as a first port of call. In fact, if you have just started in a new position or have recently completed a major piece of work (funded project, PhD etc.), it can be valuable simply to let your media unit know you exist and are able to comment on certain areas. They may be able to direct media queries to you in the future, or help you get opinion pieces published.

Many university media units also offer writing and media engagement workshops to help you figure out what the mainstream media are looking for in an op-ed. These can be a great place to start, and are a helpful reminder that academic writing is often a world away from conveying your point to a broader audience in only 600-800 words.

Sharing your grant application

Prime rib (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

Back in December 2012, Liana Silva (@literarychica) asked after examples of postdoctoral fellowship applications that might be stored online.

I responded that many institutions, and sometimes researchers, guarded their applications warily. Many are loathe to make them publicly available, or for the use of others outside their own institution (or faculty, or school…).

There are a few reasons for this. Some are valid, and some not so much.

One of the main fears appears to be that other scholars will read your application (or your institution’s applications) and steal your ideas, or straight up plagiarise your text. 

Someone plagiarising your grant application is as bad as someone plagiarising your article. There’s no doubt it’s wrong.

The mitigating factor here, though, is that I’m assuming any fellowship or grant application worth reading is a successful one. You want to see what kind of document wins the prize.

Shut up and write – one year later

My app of choice – Pomodoro Lite

It has been about a year since the regular “shut up and write” sessions started on our campus. Jonathan O’Donnell wrote “Writes well with others” last August, and the number of on-campus groups blossomed to three open ones, then levelled back to one open and several ‘closed’ (e.g. School-specific) gatherings.

Elsewhere, across the East Coast and with at least one North American and one UK group that we know of, these sessions have grown and prospered. Many of the regulars swear by the meet-ups as prime productivity points in themselves, as well as  constructive triggers for more work afterwards.

I know this sounds a tad cultish, but it’s gratifying to see a new attendee’s glee at thwarting writer’s block or overcoming their spiral of procrastination after just one “shut up and write” session (that had, perhaps, two pomodoros spans – 50 minutes of focused writing, editing, or reading time in total).

Making co-writing work

From 'Writing like the wind' by snigl3t on Flickr

Writing with your colleagues can be as fantastic as it can be abysmal; it’s all about who you’re playing with, and what kind of experience those dynamics create.

Academia in general appears to be increasingly geared towards multiple authors and team-based research, even in the traditional bastions of sole authordom such as the humanities. Most of those in the sciences co-author and team-write as a matter of course, though many admit that the process can still be a fraught one. Susan Cain, in her recent New York Times article, “The Rise of the New Groupthink“, focuses her criticism on the context and implementation of that collaborative work.

While performing a critique of prescriptive collaborative work cultures, Cain notes: “recent studies suggest that influential academic work is increasingly conducted by teams rather than by individuals. (Although teams whose members collaborate remotely, from separate universities, appear to be the most influential of all.)”

This post is about the process of intensive co-authoring. I’m not talking about the formality of including a research team on a publication, where only a handful of the listed researchers may have actively worked on the paper. Nor will I cover the situation where one person does all the work and then feels obliged to add a senior colleague’s name on it.

ALL successful intensive co-authoring requires:

• A feasible, agreed-upon schedule for drafting and deadline for completion.
• A strong leader for the paper, someone who takes final responsibility for its proofing and submission (even though the actual tasks may be devolved to someone else…).
• Proper version control. That’s why I emphasise the serial process of sending it around the team. When X has done their bit, they send it to Y (cc’ing the others), who then sends it to Z (cc’ing the others). Don’t fiddle with the writing till you are the one the document is sent to.
• All members of the team to be committed to adding value to the publication, and doing their bit.

The three approaches that I’ve experienced (for which I’ve committed the sin of neologism) are: