Writing Academic Paper Series Africa 2021

Writing an Academic Paper Series

Originally setup up in 2020-2021 as part of the WISMA program, this series is expanding. The 2022 series will be aimed at supporting the needs of Asian scholars. The 2022 programme is now available.

The 2020-2021 writing series online sessions were run as part of the British Academy funded project, Writing International Student Migration in Africa (WISMA). The WISMA program aims to build capacity toward sustainable development of an enriching research environment in Africa. The online workshop program provides the participants with mentoring and training for: publishing in international top-ranking journals; building their capacity for research innovation through a grant writing session; and extending their connections to global research communities. You can explore the publicly available WISMA Writing Academic Paper series 2020-2021 below, or on YouTube.

Introduction

Watch Prof Parvati Raghuram, Dr Markus Breines and Dr Gunjan Sondhi give an overview of “Writing an Academic Paper”.You can download this video and the accompanying slides here.

Literature Search, Review and Management

Watch Prof Parvati Raghuram, Dr Markus Breines and Dr Gunjan Sondhi discuss ways to approach the “Literature Search, Review and Management” section of an academic paper. You can download this video and the accompanying slides here.

Analysis

Watch Professor Parvati Raghuram, Dr Markus Breines and Dr Gunjan Sondhi discuss ways to approach the “Analysis” section of an academic paper. They discuss: how to think about analysis; what work is done when ‘analysing’; how to analyse research material; and translating analysis into writing. You can download this video and the accompanying slides here.

Submit the Paper

Watch Dr Phil Emmerson (Managing Editor of the journals associated with the Royal Geographical Society) discuss the processes that occur once you submit your paper to a journal. The session was a rare opportunity to get the ‘behind the scenes’ look at the editorial steps of sending papers for review and the decision-making process, and a look at the system that journal editors use to manage the whole process.

In addition to the providing the behind the scenes look, Phil also reflected on what steps RGS journals are currently taking to diversify the knowledge they choose to produce and distribute. You can download the video and the accompanying slides here.

Open Access Journals

Dr Simon Batterbury and Dr Frankline Ndi led this session about Open Access Journal Publishing. The discussion offers insights into the processes of Open Access Journal publishing and how these differ from conventional journals.You can download the video and the accompanying slides here.