How to be accepted for the Writing Retreats
Writing retreats are aimed at refining papers for external publication. These could be developments of articles published in the Journal of Pedagogic Development (JPD) or completely new pieces. As with publishing in the JPD, the focus should be on teaching and/or learning and/or assessment, but the expected standard of academic writing is higher. The expectation is that your article will be submitted for external publication at the end of the Writing Retreat. These three-day events are held once during an academic year, just before or after the Easter holiday.
The next Writing Retreat will be 11-13 April at The Priory in Hitchin. Please put the dates in your diary, and send your applications or queries to Andrea Raiker and David Mathew.
The process
- Look out for calls for abstracts in at the beginning of the academic year! These will be found in Life, the home page of the staff web page, and on global e-mails. As the standard of articles is expected to be of publishable quality, writers should have had experience of publishing elsewhere, either internally e.g. in the JPD, or externally. Abstracts will be submitted by the end of November of the academic year. They must include a list of publications to which the finished piece could be submitted. You will be given feedback and either asked to proceed with the full submission or advised that the abstract requires further work.
- Submit a full 4-7000 word draft of your article (wordage dependant on the requirements of the target journals) at the end of February of the academic year. Your piece will be reviewed by two members of the editorial team who will advise you on its suitability for publication. If your article is deemed to be of the required standard, you will be accepted for that academic year’s Writing Retreat. You will receive feedback on your article with the aim of improving its academic style and clarity of argument. You will be expected to amend your article in light of this feedback in time for the Writing Retreat.
The Writing Retreat will offer further opportunities for you to ‘fine-tune’ your article prior to submission for publication on the last day. These will include:
- Presentations to the authors and consultants attending on the suitability of your article to a specified academic or professional journal.
- Peer review.
- Presentations by journal editors on writing for publication.
- Individual tutorials with consultants on preparing your article for publication.
- Opportunities for informal networking with authors from other disciplines and external consultants.
The next Writing Retreat will be 11-13 April at The Priory in Hitchin.
If you would like to discuss your ideas for an abstract or any aspect of this process, please get in touch with Andrea Raiker and David Mathew.
More information about writing
For information about the Journal of Pedagogic Development go to www.beds.ac.uk/learning/support/jpd.
