RESOURCES
Take advantage of the wide variety of University of Michigan services for graduate students who need help with their writing, research, and teaching.
- Clark Library
Assistance with statistics, data visualization, government information, and maps.
- Digital Media Commons
Labs, studios, and training for video, sound, and visual media. Includes media conversion facilities.
- Health Sciences Publishing Services
Provides specialized assistance with publishing articles, books, and other items in the health sciences field.
- ScholarSpace
Workshops and one-on-one assistance with desktop publishing software, image editing, scanning, and much more.
- Sweetland Center for Writing - Grad Student Writing Groups
"The aim of this program is to provide structured writing support in a facilitated peer-based setting to help graduate students from various disciplines revise their writing and meet their writing goals for long-term projects."
- Teaching & Technology Collaborative
Workshops on technology for teaching and research
Understanding Your Rights as an Author -
When you write an article, book, chapter, or other scholarly work, your publisher will ask you to sign an author's agreement. This document is sometimes also called a "publication agreement," or "copyright transfer agreement." This document will typically include a statement about who owns the copyright to the written work in question, any other (exclusive or non-exclusive) rights granted to you as the author and those reserved by your publisher, as well as terms for royalties (if applicable), and preferred methods of citation for the work.
Many author's agreements ask you to sign over your copyright to the publisher, making them the copyright holder for the written work in question. If you are agreeing to sign over your copyright, it is important to make sure you retain certain rights to your work. Things to look for include:
- the ability to put a copy of the work on your personal website
- the ability to deposit a copy of the work in your institutional repository
- the ability to republish the work in another form in the future
- the ability to use, reproduce, and distribute the work in your teaching and professional activities (such as conference presentations and lectures)
- the moral right to be recognized as the author of a work
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If you have questions about what your author's agreement means, contact the Copyright Office. If your author's agreement does not allow you to retain the rights listed above, you can use the U-M Author's Addendum to modify your author's agreement.
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Academic Writing for Graduate Students, Second Edition
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ISBN: 0472088564Publication Date: 2004-03-25The second edition of this successful guide to writing for graduate-and undergraduate-students has been modified to include updates and replacements of older data sets; an increased range of disciplines with tasks such as nursing, marketing, and art history; discussions of discourse analysis; a broader discussion of e-mail use that includes current e-mail practices. Like its predecessor, this edition of Academic Writing for Graduate Students " explains understanding the intended audience, the purpose of the paper, and academic genres. " includes the use of task-based methodology, analytic group discussion, and genre consciousness-raising. " shows how to write summaries and critiques. " features "language focus" sections that address linguistic elements as they affect the wider rhetorical objectives. " helps students position themselves as junior scholars in their academic communities. The Commentary has also been revised and is available. -
Finish Your Dissertation Once and for All!
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Call Number: LB 2369 .M454 2009ISBN: 9781433804151Publication Date: 2008-12-15Are you having difficulty finishing your dissertation? Are you feeling stuck after trying various approaches, or panicky about the entire enterprise? If so, it is unlikely that your cognitive abilities are to blame. More likely, the culprits are anxiety, self-doubt, procrastination, perfectionism, and the thoughts, feelings, and behavior that accompany these difficulties. This book was written to help you overcome these problems and finish your dissertation once and for all.Combining psychological support with a project management approach that breaks tasks into small, manageable chunks, experienced dissertation coach Alison Miller shows you how to overcome negativity and succeed beyond your own expectations. You will learn how to plan and structure the dissertation process, work effectively with dissertation chairpersons and committees, and take care of yourself on the dissertation journey. Tips for mastering all of these skills are presented along with exercises to reinforce key lessons, ideas, and strategies. By the end of the process, you will not only have finished your dissertation - you will also have learned the self-confidence that comes from knowing how to stay engaged when difficulties arise and the joy that comes from accomplishment in pursuit of your personal values. -
Handbook for Academic Authors
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Call Number: PN 146 .L84 2010ISBN: 9780521194983Publication Date: 2009-09-28Whether you are a graduate student seeking to publish your first article, a new Ph.D. revising your dissertation for publication, or an experienced author working on a new monograph, textbook, or digital publication, Handbook for Academic Authors provides reliable, concise advice about selecting the best publisher for your work, maintaining an optimal relationship with your publisher, submitting manuscripts to book and journal publishers, working with editors, navigating the production process, and helping to market your book. It also offers information about illustrations, indexes, permissions, and contracts and includes a chapter on revising dissertations and one on the financial aspects of publishing. The book covers not only scholarly monographs but also textbooks, anthologies, multiauthor books, and trade books. This fifth edition has been revised and updated to align with new technological and financial realities, taking into account the impact of digital technology and the changes it has made in authorship and publishing. -
How to Write a Lot
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ISBN: 1591477433Publication Date: 2007-01-15In this practical, light-hearted, and encouraging book, Paul J. Silvia explains that writing productively does not require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing on examples from his own field of psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational roadblocks and become prolific without sacrificing evenings, weekends, and vacations. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives detailed advice from the trenches on how to write, submit, revise, and resubmit articles, how to improve writing quality, and how to write and publish academic work. -
Stylish Academic Writing
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ISBN: 9780674064485Publication Date: 2012-04-02Elegant data and ideas deserve elegant expression, argues Helen Sword in this lively guide to academic writing. For scholars frustrated with disciplinary conventions, and for specialists who want to write for a larger audience but are unsure where to begin, here are imaginative, practical, witty pointers that show how to make articles and books a pleasure to read--and to write. Dispelling the myth that you cannot get published without writing wordy, impersonal prose, Sword shows how much journal editors and readers welcome work that avoids excessive jargon and abstraction. Sword's analysis of more than a thousand peer-reviewed articles across a wide range of fields documents a startling gap between how academics typically describe good writing and the turgid prose they regularly produce. Stylish Academic Writing showcases a range of scholars from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences who write with vividness and panache. Individual chapters take up specific elements of style, such as titles and headings, chapter openings, and structure, and close with examples of transferable techniques that any writer can master. -
Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks
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Call Number: Z 471 .B45 2019ISBN: 9781412957014Publication Date: 2009-01-20`A comprehensive, well-written and beautifully organized book on publishing articles in the humanities and social sciences that will help its readers write forward with a first-rate guide as good company.′ - Joan Bolker, author of Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day `Humorous, direct, authentic ... a seamless weave of experience, anecdote, and research.′ - Kathleen McHugh, professor and director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women Wendy Laura Belcher′s Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success is a revolutionary approach to enabling academic authors to overcome their anxieties and produce the publications that are essential to succeeding in their fields. Each week, readers learn a particular feature of strong articles and work on revising theirs accordingly. At the end of twelve weeks, they send their article to a journal. This invaluable resource is the only guide that focuses specifically on publishing humanities and social science journal articles.
