Improving the Academic Writing Experience in Higher Education 153615671X, 9781536156713

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Part One: Embedding Academic Writing Theory into Practice
Chapter 1
Plural Word and Inventive Writing: The Legacy of Postmodern Social Theory
Abstract
Introduction
Postmodern Social Theory
Prepare to Meet the Unknown
References
Chapter 2
Academic Writing Centers Improving Students Skills
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Methodological Issues
3. Academic Writing Center Organization in the Academic World – A Quick Look
4. Survey of Moldovan Academic Libraries
5. Discussion
Conclusion and Plans for the Way Forward
References
Chapter 3
Facing the Thesis with Positive Thinking and Dispositions to Act: Contributions of Information Literacy Training for Higher Education Students’ Skills Development
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Framework
2.1. Areas of Skills for Higher Education Students
2.2. The Challenge of Producing a Thesis or Dissertation
2.3. Positive Psychology and the Concept of Flow
2.4. Information Literacy and Dispositions to Act
2.5. Building Skills
3. Methods
3.1. Participants
4. Analysis and Results
4.1. Content Description
4.2. Workshops Assessment
5. Discussion
Conclusion
References
Part Two: Practicing Academic Writing Pathways
Chapter 4
Starting from Scratch: Searching for the Purpose of Writing
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Before the Search …
3. How to Choose the Subject?
3.1. Common Errors
4. What Are You Searching For?
5. Where Are You Going to Search?
6. How Are You Going to Do It?
6.1. Databases Search Strategies
6.1.1. Common Errors
6.2. Engines Search Strategies
6.2.1. Common Errors
6.3. Refining Search Strategies
7. Where Do You Find the Full-Text?
8. Where and What for Are You Going to Look?
8.1. In Conclusion, What Should Contemplate the Results of the Assessment of the Recovered Information?
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5
Writing with Ethics: Strategies to Quoting and Referring
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Why Cite the Sources
3. When and How to Reference
4. How to Evaluate Information Sources?
5. Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism
6. Referencing Systems: The Case of APA Style
6.1. Relationship between Citations and Bibliographic References
7. How to Make Quotations in the Text?
7.1. Short Transcripts
7.2. Long Transcripts
7.3. Text Body Abbreviations
7.4. Authors’ Citations in the Text
7.4.1. A Paper by 1 or 2 Authors
7.4.2. A Study of 3, 4 and 5 Authors
7.4.3. A Study of 6 or More Authors
7.4.4. Citation of Several Authors to the Same Idea (Two or More Studies)
7.4.4.1. From the Same Authors with Different Publication Dates
7.4.4.2. From Different Authors
7.4.4.3. From Authors with the Same Last Name
7.4.4.4. Authors with the Same Publication Dates
7.4.4.5. Author is a Collective Entity: Group or Institution
7.4.5. Citations from Secondary Sources
7.5. Main Ideas to Keep about Quotations
8. How to Make References?
8.1. Books
8.1.1. One Author
8.1.2. Book in Which More than One Author Participates
8.1.3. Institutional Authoring
8.1.4. Republished book
8.1.5. Revised Edition of a Book
8.1.6. Editing the Same Book
8.1.7. Unpublished Study
8.1.8. Book of Corporate/Organization Author
8.1.9. Encyclopedic Dictionary
8.1.9.1. Entry(s) to an Encyclopedic Dictionary
8.1.9.2. Volumes That Make Up the Work
8.1.10. Book with Organizers (Editors, Coordinators) or Anthology
8.1.10.1. Chapter of an Anthology
8.2. Book Chapters
8.3. Articles of Scientific Journals
8.3.1. Article Published by Two or More Authors
8.3.2. Article Published by Three to Five Authors
8.3.3. Article Published by Six Authors
8.3.4. Article Published by Seven Authors
8.3.5. Article Published by More than Seven Authors
8.3.6. Unknown or Anonymous Authorship Article
8.3.7. Special Issue of a Journal
8.4. Articles of Newspapers and Magazines
8.4.1. Newspapers’ Articles
8.4.2. Newspapers’ Articles (Without Author)
8.5. Theses, Dissertations and Reports
8.5.1. Doctoral Thesis
8.5.2. Doctoral Thesis Deposited in a Repository
8.5.3. Master Thesis
8.6. Conferences, Symposiums and Colloquiums
8.6.1. For a Paper Presented at a Conference
8.6.2. Paper Presented at a Conference and Later Published in a Book
8.6.3. Communication at a Symposium and/or Conference
8.6.4. Poster Session
8.6.5. Electronic Resources
8.6.5.1. What is the Digital Object Identifier (DOI)?
8.6.5.2. Article with DOI, Obtained from the EBSCO Database
8.6.5.3. Article without DOI
8.6.6. Web Page
8.6.7. Newspaper and Magazine Article (Online)
8.6.8. Electronic Book
8.6.9. Online Dictionary
8.6.10. Thesis Obtained from Institutional Site
8.6.11. Web Article
8.6.12. Thesis Obtained from Web
8.6.13. Images Obtained from Websites
8.7. Audiovisual and Multimedia Materials
8.7.1. Video (e.g., DVD vs. YouTube)
8.7.2. Podcast
8.7.3. Movie
8.7.4. TV Program
9. Alphabetical Order of References
9.1. References are Sorted Alphabetically by Author’s Surname
9.2. Documents of the Same Author Published on Different Dates
9.3. Documents by the Same Author with the Same Date
9.4. Documents in Collaboration with Various Authors
10. List of References
10.1. Main Ideas to Keep on References
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6
Architecture and Morphology of a Scientific Article
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Why Publish?
3. Publish? Yes, But Where?
4. How to Improve the Chances of Acceptance?
5. What Writing Style Do You Use?
5.1. The Grammar
5.2. The Style
5.3. Authorship
5.4. Ethics Committee
5.5. Copyright
6. How to Organize Writing?
6.1. Article Title
6.2. Abstract
6.3. Keywords
6.4. Introduction
6.5. Study Purposes
6.6. Methods
6.7. Results
6.7.1. Illustrations
6.7.2. Tables
6.7.3. Figures
6.8. Discussion
6.9. Conclusions
6.10. Acknowledgments
6.11. References
6.12. Conflict of Interest
6.13. Financing
7. Before Submitting
8. And If the Article Is Rejected?
9. … And to Publish?
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7
Publishing within Open Science Challenges
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Scholarship as Conversation
3. Embedding Academic Writing into Open Science
3.1. Open Science Principles
3.2. Open Scientific Data
3.3. Open Access to Scientific Journals
3.4. Predatory Journals
3.5. Collaborative Platforms and Digital Identity
3.6. Open Peer Review
3.7. Research Impact: Metrics and Assessment
4. Sharing Research Results and Open Science Challenges
Conclusion
References
About the Editors
Index
Blank Page

Citation preview

UNIVERSITY TEACHING AND FACULTY DEVELOPMENT

IMPROVING THE ACADEMIC WRITING EXPERIENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, medical or any other professional services.

UNIVERSITY TEACHING AND FACULTY DEVELOPMENT Additional books and e-books in this series can be found on Nova’s website under the Series tab.

UNIVERSITY TEACHING AND FACULTY DEVELOPMENT

IMPROVING THE ACADEMIC WRITING EXPERIENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION TATIANA SANCHES MARIA DA LUZ ANTUNES AND

CARLOS LOPES EDITORS

Copyright © 2019 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. We have partnered with Copyright Clearance Center to make it easy for you to obtain permissions to reuse content from this publication. Simply navigate to this publication’s page on Nova’s website and locate the “Get Permission” button below the title description. This button is linked directly to the title’s permission page on copyright.com. Alternatively, you can visit copyright.com and search by title, ISBN, or ISSN. For further questions about using the service on copyright.com, please contact: Copyright Clearance Center Phone: +1-(978) 750-8400 Fax: +1-(978) 750-4470 E-mail: [email protected].

NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN: HERRN Library of Congress Control Number:2019943054

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

CONTENTS Introduction Part One Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

vii Embedding Academic Writing Theory into Practice Plural Word and Inventive Writing: The Legacy of Postmodern Social Theory Jorge Ramos do Ó Academic Writing Centers Improving Students Skills Angela Repanovici, Ane Landøy and Natalia Cheradi Facing the Thesis with Positive Thinking and Dispositions to Act: Contributions of Information Literacy Training for Higher Education Students’ Skills Development Tatiana Sanches and Maria Manuel Borges

1 3

31

55

vi

Contents

Part Two

Practicing Academic Writing Pathways

Chapter 4

Starting from Scratch: Searching for the Purpose of Writing Maria da Luz Antunes, Carlos Lopes and Tatiana Sanches

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Writing with Ethics: Strategies to Quoting and Referring Carlos Lopes, Maria da Luz Antunes and Tatiana Sanches Architecture and Morphology of a Scientific Article Carlos Lopes, Maria da Luz Antunes and Tatiana Sanches Publishing within Open Science Challenges Maria da Luz Antunes, Tatiana Sanches, Carlos Lopes and Julio Alonso-Arévalo

83 85

109

155

191

About the Editor

217

Index

221

Related Nova Publications

227

INTRODUCTION Academic writing is usually the content of the disciplines of scientific research methodology in higher education, transversal to various undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, developed and parallel to a learning university context. This writing fomented and instructed by university professors, recognizes specific techniques that intend to respond to the construction of certain code in academic scope. It is commonly accepted that academic writing is itself an instrument, a source, and an outcome towards learning, but it is also a powerful tool for building personal and community identity. The contributions that make up the book Improving the Academic Writing Experience in Higher Education aim to bring ideas and share experiences, broaden horizons and shed some light on the landscape of academic writing. The different formulations, perspectives, and approaches are divided into two parts. The first one with a conceptual point of view, explains the importance of the development of academic writing within the university and theorizes about the transformative impact of this practice on the higher education’ student. The second one seeks to bring a more practical, diversified and comprehensive contribution to the subject and to respond to the challenge of professionals related to the area - particularly those involved in higher education libraries, but not only - and those who work with the transformation of information into knowledge. Through

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concrete tips for writing appropriately in a university context, the focus is on how and why to write well. Part One of this book – Embedding academic writing theory into practice, invites to reflection. Theories and integrated macro concepts are presented for a comprehensive understanding of academic writing. The first chapter - Plural word and inventive writing: The legacy of postmodern social theory-, by Jorge Ramos do Ó, deals with questions already raised by the philosophy of language, such as the production of discourse and the processes of an encounter with the power of the unknown through writing. In his words, the problem of writing is how to produce utterances that abandon the principles at all times expressed by the law - and by the institutions that introduce it into the social body through the most varied routines of disciplinary representation and unitary form of cultural inheritance, making use of knowledge as a body of prescriptions and a circle in which truths unfold - by drawing language out of its habitual furrows and making it communicates with what will be its own exterior. The chapter addresses the great problem of university research, which we try to transfer into the reality of the text, which is and will always be to force the present to leave the existing signification processes and their interdicted correlates, to become available to all the kind of encounter with the unknown. As if writing could take on not only a skeptical dimension but more rigorously an agonistic force - in which what is assumed to be universal, necessary and obligatory is perceived as singular, contingent, and arbitrary - and whose ultimate effect is that of ourselves to disregard the predictability and disciplinary homogeneity with which contemporary identities and ways of life present themselves, even if they are set to circulate with the labeling of subjectivity and the widest individual diversity. As if it compelled us to enter into the unknown and thus pressed us to establish new covenants between the subject of enunciation and the subject of conduct. It is from here that the hypothesis of an inventive, experimental writing derives. The second chapter brings us to the ground, allowing contact with the praxis of academic writing, in the context of learning framed by specialized centers for this purpose. In this chapter - Academic writing centers improving student’s skills-, Angela Repanovici, Ane Landøy, and Natalia

Introduction

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Cheradi present us a study of 28 academic writing centers from the USA and Europe based on information found on their institutional websites and show how this has inspired the development of academic writing centers in the Republic of Moldova. The method is information analysis to determine organizational and practical differences, and look for patterns, similarities and best practices. Against this background, a survey (a self-administrated questionnaire provided online by SurveyMonkey) of attitudes and practical concerns of the library leaders in academic libraries in the Republic of Moldova shows their confidence in several areas. They are certain that creating academic writing centers will maximize the libraries’ contribution to research, and enhance the quality. This will strengthen the library’s role in the framework of the academic knowledge system. In the next chapter, from Tatiana Sanches and Maria Manuel Borges, the focus is even closer, trying to elucidate some nexuses evidenced by the challenge of writing a thesis or dissertation. Facing the thesis with positive thinking and dispositions to act: contributions of information literacy training for higher education students’ skills development starts from the assumption that students need help when faced with this challenging task. When delivering information literacy training, librarians can introduce two kinds of contents that promote important skills development: dispositions included on the New Framework on Information Literacy and concepts from Positive Psychology, merging them to empower the necessary confidence in order to pursue the academic degree and conclude the thesis or dissertation. Based on a literature review about the concept of flow, proposed by Positive Psychology, as well on the dispositions to act, and related to each of the frames immersed on Information Literacy Framework, the study focuses on a case describing how a Portuguese university library responded to the needs of post-graduate students. The strategy was based on capacity building, as part of training in information literacy, as a manner of reducing stress factors and anxiety when faced with a challenging task such as producing a thesis. The analysis of the training contents, and on the results of students’ assessment of this training as well as their self-assessment, shows positive results regarding their empowerment, as they acquire skills to face the task of writing their thesis. The results show a major contribution, as these

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students’ assessment and self-assessment regarding training are upward of 3,9, in a 1 to 4 scale. Thus, training in information literacy skills is justified, not only because of new gains in skills but also because of the consequences in students’ behavior: the confidence they acquire and the possibility of converting a challenging task into a flow process. This case could be a good example of reflection and inspiration for other libraries wishing to enhance best practices in university students’ education. Part Two of this book – Practicing Academic Writing pathways, invites to action. The practices of academic writing are analyzed seeking to clarify structures, formats and applied solutions to a better performance in the scope of academic writing. The book editors Tatiana Sanches, Maria da Luz Antunes e Carlos Lopes are also the authors of all the next chapters. Starting from scratch: searching for the purpose of writing is the fourth chapter. In this the authors articulate the academic writing with the need to support it in scientific information, assuming that the basis for good works in this field is to develop good research. Knowing how to find relevant information is not the result of chance. Methods and techniques can be developed to begin a good research strategy, which is done based on information literacy. Information literacy addresses the need to train skills to deal with information and to develop competencies that allow the use and benefit of knowledge resources because it focuses precisely on how information is used for various purposes. In chapter five, Writing with ethics: strategies for quoting and referring - a very practical chapter, the authors maintain the importance of using citations and references in academic writing. Citations are used for several situations: for confirmation that the text was read, that the information obtained was incorporated in the construction of our knowledge and that there is a comprehensive commitment, especially in relation to the subjects and the authors cited, emphasizing that citations are essential since the sources cited to support the decision making, contribute to differentiating the important and the accessory and list the main trends in the area of study, allowing the consolidation of knowledge. In fact, the citation is a way of supporting the author's opinion, but also a demonstration of the networks that are formed among researchers, based on recognition and respect, as well

Introduction

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as being an important way of evaluating scientific production within a complex system that generates impact factors and bibliometrics. Architecture and morphology of a scientific article is chapter six. In it, the authors propose a model and script to how to write a scientific article well. The scope of academic writing for this purpose goes beyond the intentions of sharing information and knowledge of the author. The generality of the scientific articles obeys a consecrated structure either by the editorial tradition and scientific ethics or as a result of the consolidated experience of communication between scientists in this environment. This structure challenges the new authors in several ways, which serve as a motto and guide for this chapter: Why publish?; Publish yes, but where?; Improve the chances of acceptance; What writing style do you use?; How to organize writing?; What to consider before submitting?; and finally, How to proceed if the article is rejected?. The ideas expressed here serve as practical indications, which show important tips for publishing scientific articles. In order to be successful, we must carefully structure the article, carefully observe the instructions to the author of each scientific journal and organize the information in a formal, yet appealing and interesting way. Here are some clues to best practices in writing scientific articles. In the final chapter - Publishing within Open Science Challenges -, the editors’, with the contribution of Julio Alonso-Arévalo, relate the diffusion of scientific knowledge, materialized in its writing, publication, and circulation, with Open Science. It starts from the idea that the researcher's commitment to the scientific community is fulfilled through the permanent involvement in new contributions and discoveries, fostering the deferred dialogue between members of this community, in a context in which ideas are presented, discussed and can be reviewed, criticized, refuted or adopted, always from writing. Open Science is by nature a platform for dialogue, fostering more exchanges and stimulating researchers to adapt their publishing and dissemination practices, leading to cost reduction and enhancement of academic content and enhancing greater circulation and knowledge generation. To fulfill their academic objectives in higher education, students must mobilize knowledge learned in the classroom, but also obtained individually

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and with access to a variety of sources, in particular, the information resources available in their libraries. To obtain an academic degree as master or doctor, information resources grow in importance and meaning, since from them a great part of the theoretical and methodological support is obtained for the pursuit of this objective. The validation of their learning is carried out in large part by the written presentation of these academic works. The book reflects upon the importance of academic writing and presents methods and techniques for writing in a grounded manner. We appreciate the support of our host institutions, of those who participated in the investigations, sharing with us their knowledge, the professionals who contributed to the edition of this book and its authors. We are especially grateful to Sofia Coelho and Isabel Andrade, who conducted the language review, and to Manuela Barreto Nunes, who kindly agreed to peer review it. This work results from the cooperation between the members of a team and their common reflections, but each chapter reflects the theoretical positioning of each author and is, therefore, their full responsibility and merit. A final word of recognition for our students, who daily inspire us. The challenge that mobilized the accomplishment of this book was to encourage better learning and academic success, through awareness of a concrete action of teachers, students, and librarians who, in higher education, develop their activities in support of academic writing. We hope, therefore, that this will be a catalyst for renewed learning around this theme. The Editors, Tatiana Sanches Maria da Luz Antunes Carlos Lopes

PART ONE: EMBEDDING ACADEMIC WRITING THEORY INTO PRACTICE

In: Improving the Academic Writing … ISBN: 978-1-53615-671-3 Editors: Tatiana Sanches et al. © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 1

PLURAL WORD AND INVENTIVE WRITING: THE LEGACY OF POSTMODERN SOCIAL THEORY Jorge Ramos do Ó* Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

ABSTRACT The problem of writing is how to produce utterances that abandon the principles at all times expressed by the law - and by the institutions that introduce it into the social body through all sorts of routines of disciplinary and unitary representation of cultural inheritance, making use of knowledge as a body of prescriptions and a circle in which truths unfold by drawing language out of its usual furrows and making it communicate with what will be its own exterior. The chapter addresses the great problem of university research, which we try to transpose into the reality of the text, which is and will always be to force the present to leave the existing signification processes and their prohibited correlates and to become available to all kinds of encounters with the unknown. As if writing could *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

4

Jorge Ramos do Ó take on not only a skeptical dimension but more rigorously an agonistic force - in which what is assumed to be universal, necessary and obligatory is perceived as singular, contingent, and arbitrary - and whose ultimate effect is that of unleashing ourselves from the predictability and disciplinary homogeneity with which contemporary identities and ways of life present themselves, even if they are set to circulate with the labeling of subjectivity and the widest individual diversity. As if it compelled us to enter into the unknown and thus pressed us to establish new covenants between the subject of enunciation and the subject of conduct. It is from here that the hypothesis of an inventive, experimental writing derives.

Keywords: writing, postmodern social theory, university research, language philosophy

Perhaps patient meditation and painstaking investigation on and around what is still provisionally called writing, far from falling short of a science of writing or of hastily dismissing it by some obscurantist reaction, letting it rather develop its positivity as far as possible, are the wanderings of a way of thinking that is faithful and attentive to the ineluctable world of the future which proclaims itself at present, beyond the closure of knowledge. The future can only be anticipated in the form of an absolute danger. It is that which breaks absolutely with constituted normality and can only be proclaimed, presented, as a sort of monstrosity. For that future world and for that within it which will have put into question the values of sign, word, and writing, for that which guides our future anterior, there is as yet no exergue. (Derrida, Of Grammatology, 2000, p. 6)

INTRODUCTION After the seventeenth century, our civilization has treated scientific descriptions as if they were deities themselves, and from the end of the following century, we superimposed God on the subject and “ourselves, in the worship of our own spiritual nature or deep poetic” (Rorty, 1994, p. 45). This text proposes to face this tradition. I will defend the thesis that a sea of creative possibilities will open up before us when we decentralize ourselves

Plural Word and Inventive Writing

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from the transcendental subject. It is a question of substituting the essentiality of identity for a permanent work of redescription of the subject, that takes self-sacrifice as the ultimate goal of research and writing. Writing practices should impose themselves, as being sovereign, erasing or even burying all the declarations that around us do not cease to theorize and treat identity in the same way as self-consciousness or possession of the truth of itself. Through this route of restlessness regarding identity and distrust with respect to what is known of thought, academic writing would certainly become more open to the reinvention of the actual ethical and aesthetic conditions of writers themselves. In a word, to one’s own selftransformation.

POSTMODERN SOCIAL THEORY It is widely emphasized that the project of taking the social as object, theorizing and decomposing it for the purpose of systematizing it, was a concern of modernity, whose origins go back to the Enlightenment and the hypotheses formulated by the great philosophes around the emancipation of reason and freedom. At the same time, it will be easy to see that the reiterated obstinacy, characteristic of the science of Enlightenment, with rationality, universalism and the idea of progress, has been openly questioned and debated both epistemologically and ethically in the last decades of our time. This is settled and has no doubts. But to be rigorous, we should also recognize that a whole tradition of reflection, formerly in time, already anticipated postmodernism, through a very strong critical surveillance of the limits and restrictions of the modern social order. Indeed, both the premises of this and its cultural artifacts have been openly shaken, avant la lettre and only to name the best known, by Nietzsche, Heidegger - seen as the founders of the so-called philosophy of difference - Simmel, Weber, Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer. To them, we owe, in fact, the first attempts to problematize and frontally question the analytical propositions of modern social thought. And above all I would like to emphasize the criticisms both of the reiterated assumption that knowledge is progressive, cumulative, total,

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universal and rational, a notion that the classical image of the encyclopedia embodies as well as the principle that it is the subject which must be at the center of analysis and theory, and at the same time the source of thought and action. As if through the texts and interpretations handed down to us by those born in the nineteenth century, we could begin to understand, and sometimes very intensely, how much the programmatic bases of modernity were historically so far removed from the truth that the world was in the meanwhile evidencing. Reflecting on the postulates, practices, and achievements of modern life, these authors explored the “complexity, irregularity, and unpredictability of the consequences of modernity.” They, therefore, point out to us that the rationalization that was successively made over political-social life was obscure - or even refused, through utterances, presented with the value of truth, in which modern man emerges as the bound hero only to the ethical-political cause of peace and social harmonythe understanding of the contradictions and the most dramatic and brutal bursts that she herself engendered (Smart, 2002, p. 405-407). The condition of the social analysis to deepen therefore presupposes the recognition that all the explanation that is imagined absolute and omnipotent, wanting to clarify the order of the world of men and things, is only in the service of legitimation, that is, of a series of practices, a cultural self-image, a dominant discourse and, at the most, an institution. Now what we try to do, from the variety of disciplinary fields in which we find ourselves today, often deliberately ignoring them to transpose them, is to continue this gesture that seeks to produce an instability of meaning in the face of the modern episteme, since we admit that not only scientific knowledge as the idea of rational and autonomous subject have to be questioned in the most diverse ways. We work for a metaphysics of presence that breaks with the closed circuits of meaning and interpretation that for centuries have mediated and impoverished our relationship with reality. I am thinking here of the prologue that Deleuze wrote for Difference and Repetition, a book that appeared in 1968. He expressed it as “the air of time” which was then breathed “a generalized anti-Hegelianism.” One in which the “primacy of identity” was no longer enough to define “the world of representation.” The postwar realities reaffirmed the bankruptcy of all the

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old forces that acted “under the representation of the identical.” For Deleuze, the spectacle that the world already presented was that of the “simulacra.” And it was explained: “In him, man does not survive God, nor does the identity of the subject survive the identity of substance; all identities are only simulated, produced as an optical effect by a deeper game, which is that of difference and repetition “(2000b, p. 36). He also claimed Nietzsche's legacy there, stating that he had inaugurated the search for “new means of philosophical expression” in the clear demarcation of all those who wished to keep philosophy in the past. Deleuze then affirmed that thanks to the author of The Gay Science we could all “discover the untimely as being deeper than time and eternity,” it is in this perspective that the current philosophy goes beyond “the temporal-timeless alternative, historical-eternal, particular -universal, “or rather take as a starting point a radical critique of the subjective assumptions and postulates that the discipline itself has assumed to be natural. Otherwise: after Nietzsche, philosophy is no longer the philosophy of history and the eternal, but “untimely, always and only untimely, that is, against this time, in favor, I hope, of a time to come.” Hence Deleuze went on to a methodological confession in which he assumed inventive work as being far removed from any anthropological predicates: “I do, I redo and undo my concepts from a moving horizon, a center always off-center, a periphery always displaced repeats and differentiates them.” The positivity of our time is what makes us believe in a world in which “individuations are impersonal” and “preindividual singularities.” For these reasons, Deleuze assumed that a philosophy book should be like a detective novel or a science fiction. In the first case, it took the principle of specificity, meaning that concepts must intervene in the narrative economy only to solve a “local situation,” which means that they change with problems (Deleuze 2000b, p. 37-38). In the second he had in mind the principle that the plot of the philosophical text should, as in science fiction, point to a coherence to come, which would no longer be of the order of the world. From this derives the hypothesis of inventive, experimental writing, that opens up and feels the unknown. Deleuze expressed himself in these terms:

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Jorge Ramos do Ó How else can one write but of those things which one doesn't know, or knows badly? It is precisely there that we imagine having something to say. We write only at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into the other. Only in this manner are we resolved to write. To. satisfy ignorance is to put off writing until tomorrow - or rather, to make it impossible. Perhaps writing has a relation to silence altogether more threatening than that which it is supposed to entertain with death. We are therefore well aware, unfortunately, that we have spoken about science in a manner which was not scientific. (Deleuze, 2000b, p. 38)

Systematizing, the critical relationship with modernity tends to be consensual around the repudiation of universals, on the assumption that there is no common denominator that guarantees the unity of the world, invoking for it either Nature, God, Truth or Man himself. As Lyotard (2003) has also suggested in The postmodern condition, first published in 1979, modernity would have replaced the divine and providential narratives of human destiny with others, markedly secular, but none the less universalistic or metanarratives: the predominance of Reason and the Enlightenment project; the dialectic of the spirit and the self-consciousness in the sequence of the Hegelian philosophy; the emancipation of the rational or working subjects fixed by the Marxist currents. The postmodern age in which we live - “a social formation in which the impact of secularization, democratization, computing, and consumption has been redesigning maps and rewriting the status of knowledge” (Jenkins, 1991, p. 60), - disbelief in the face of this essentialist view of humanity. The social landscapes that are offered to our interpretation no longer hold the truth that science speaks through a subject who imagines himself sovereign. The analysis that is required of us will instead have to account for the multiplication and malleability of identities, for the “complexity and incommensurability of human worlds,” for “crossing borders,” for “hybridity,” for “collage” of contemporary discourses, “montage and pastiche” in artistic and cultural productions; it becomes the obligation of the researcher to perceive and respond to the complexity of the proposals and solutions of social life, to proceed through “irony, ambiguity and ambivalence” through “contingency and

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provisionality” or even “indeterminacy, insecurity, contradiction and violence” (Bauman 1993, Connor 2000, Harvey 1989). The texts that we will be led to produce in this interpretative context will assume exactly the same: as interpretations. And in conscience, they can only serve one service - that of the perpetual expansion of the explanation. There is no common denominator that guarantees that the world is one or that it supports the possibility of natural and objective thought. The main, and perhaps only, the law of postmodernism will be that information does not cease to multiply. The increase in social production recorded in our time will therefore only correspond to an accumulation of perspectives, models, angles, and contingent points of view of the researchers who subscribe them. This is how the universality of truth assertions is questioned, and it is argued that meaning is an active construct, dependent on both the pragmatics of context and the rules proper to discursive regimes. In this context, it is as if the dialectic work of Hegel's was replaced by the plays of the will of the power of which Nietzsche spoke so much. It is important for us to dwell on Lyotard's influential text with some wandering since it is the “condition of knowledge in more developed societies” which is taken as the object of study. The diagnosis that The postmodern condition presents to us in the first pages is that of the crisis or disuse in contemporary times of “the metanarrative device of legitimation,” which corresponds, in particular, “to the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution that depended on it.” Lyotard then takes the evidence according to which the narrative function is losing “its functors, the great hero, the great dangers, the great périplos, and the great objective,” to disperse “in clouds of narrative but also denotative elements of language, prescriptive, descriptive, etc., each conveying programmatic sui generis valences.” In their own way, these are the crossroads in which each contemporary subject is immersed. The essential point of the argument is made explicit when Lyotard states that “we do not form necessarily stable combinations of language and the properties of which we form are not necessarily communicable” (2003, p. 11-12). The problem of knowledge legitimation arises in entirely different terms, in a society and in a culture that no longer recognizes credibility in

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any unifying or totalizing discourse, even if it takes the form of speculation or emancipation. Lyotard argues that thanks to the development of techniques and technologies since World War II, there has been a shift from the “accent to the means of action to the detriment of its ends.” Since then, the crisis of scientific knowledge seems invariable to result from the erosion, on the one hand, of “the encyclopedic web in which each science should take its place” and, on the other, of the so-called independence of the interlocutors involved in the dissemination of knowledge. As for the first of these aspects, it should be pointed out that the classical configurations of the various scientific disciplines have undergone an intense “problematic work,” which has been translated in the “disappearance of certain knowledge,” in the production of “overlappings at the frontiers of sciences” and, finally, the birth of “new territories.” But for Lyotard, the institutional rearrangement of the “speculative hierarchy of knowledge” has led “the 'old' colleges to disintegrate into institutes and foundations of all kinds,” a situation which leads, in most tertiary schools , to a logic of mechanical, and therefore impoverished, transposition of the “judged established knowledges” and by ensuring, through didactics, “more the reproduction of teachers than that of sages.” As for the second aspect, The postmodern condition, the element that had already emerged with Aufklärung, here called the “device of emancipation,” is also emphasized. It is the current notion that tends to ground the legitimacy of science and its truth from the “autonomy of the interlocutors engaged in ethical, social and political practice.” Now, Lyotard notes in this regard, current science no longer has the conditions to support the existence of cognitive and denotative statements that are considered to be of practical value, of universal scope, that one wishes to impose as positive laws. This is an important thesis about postmodernity, which argues that “science plays its own game and can not legitimize other games of language; for example, that of prescription escapes him.” This is how this author also points to the self-reflexive exercise when he argues that the striking feature of the science of our time is the “selfimmanence of the discourse on the rules that validate it” (Lyotard, 2003, p. 81-82 and 111).

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Once away from a metadiscourse of knowledge, one must then try to think of the change in the status of science from the “research pragmatics” and its craftsmanship. In our time the legitimacy of knowledge comes to Lyotard, in the first line, from performativity. The “enrichment of arguments” and the complexity of “evidence management” are the fundamental characteristics that mark our office of researchers. The acceptance of scientific statements today is based on the “flexibility” of their means and the “multiplicity” of languages. And the most challenging of all this is that the development of knowledge may correspond to either an unexpected unfolding, a new throw of the argument, or the invention of new rules, that is, a change of the game itself. Lyotard discovers in this practice of multiplicity and multiplication an important shift in the very idea of reason. Instead of a universal metalanguage and a dialectic of the spirit, we have before us a plurality of systems that can even be publicly assumed to be “formal and axiomatic,” but which we all know to be finite in time and space. And it is explained: “that which went by paradox or even by paralogism in the knowledge of classical and modern science can find in one of these systems a force of new conviction and obtain a nod in the community of experts.” The sense of knowledge in postmodernity is thus shifted from the realm of knowledge and prediction to a logic of evolution seen as “discontinuous,” “catastrophic,” “unrectifiable,” and even “paradoxical.” The science we seek to do “produces not the known but the unknown,” he acknowledges. This is the essential to me: research becomes useful not because it has a “scientific method,” but rather because it presents a theoretical and empirical methodology of work which, by making manifest the presuppositions on which it is built, allows immediately thereafter the appearance of new ideas and new statements. The model of legitimation is now marked by the unexpected, or rather by a differentiating activity or imagination. And the concept of difference is translated by Lyotard by “paralogy,” referring directly to the notions of open system, of co-variation, of local consensus, and of complete information at the time considered, of finite and limited meta-argumentation. The scenario of scientific policy in which we are, and at the same time why we struggle within the university institution, despite the setbacks and refluxes, is, according to his words,

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marked by the “desire for justice and the unknown” (Lyotard, 2003, p. 8790, 119 and 133). Returning to the description of scientific pragmatics (section 7), it is now dissension that must be emphasized. Consensus is a horizon that is never reached. Research that takes place under the aegis of a paradigm213 tends to stabilize; it is like the exploitation of a technological, economic, or artistic “idea.” It cannot be discounted. But what is striking is that someone always comes along to disturb the order of “reason.” It is necessary to posit the existence of a power that destabilizes the capacity for an explanation, manifested in the promulgation of new norms for understanding or, if one prefers, in a proposal to establish new rules circumscribing a new field of research for the language of science. This, in the context of the scientific discussion, is the same process Thorn calls morphogenesis. It is not without rules (there are classes of catastrophes), but it is always locally determined. Applied to scientific discussion and placed in a temporal framework, this property implies that “discoveries” are unpredictable. (Lyotard, 2003, p. 122)

PREPARE TO MEET THE UNKNOWN I believe that the great problem with the investigation, which we try to transpose into the reality of the text, is and will always be to force the present to leave the existing processes of signification and their forbidden correlates, to be made available to any type of encounter with the unknown. That is why it is important to underline that the research objects are delimited, deepened and concretized in an individual resistance, proper of the ethical-political order, which is determined in confronting the statements that circulate and are taken for consensual certainties, in order to change self-consciousness. It is, therefore, work on the subject and not so much on others. As if writing could take on not only a skeptical dimension but more rigorously an agonistic force - in which what is assumed to be universal, necessary and obligatory is perceived as singular, contingent, and arbitrary - and whose ultimate effect is that of ourselves disregarding the predictability and

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disciplinary homogeneity with which contemporary identities and ways of life present themselves, even if they are set to circulate with the labeling of subjectivity and the widest individual diversity. As if it compelled us to enter into the unknown and thus pressed us to establish new covenants between the subject of enunciation and the subject of conduct. I have already returned to Deleuze once again and to his considerations on the power of writing, I mean, on the very production of life: To write is certainly not to impose a form (of expression) on the matter of lived experience (…). Writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed, and goes beyond the matter of any livable or lived experience. It is a process, that is, a passage of Life that traverses both the livable and the lived. Writing is inseparable from becoming: in writing, one becomes-woman, becomes-animal or vegetable, become molecule to the point of becoming-imperceptible. (…) To become is not to attain a form (identification, imitation, Mimesis) but to find the zone of proximity, indiscernibility, or indifferentiation where one can no longer be distinguished from a woman, an animal, or a molecule-neither imprecise nor general, but unforeseen and non preexistent, singularized out of a population rather than determined in a form.” (Deleuze, 2000a, p. 11-12)

Someone writes to try to access the manifold of existence. In this perspective, it must be admitted that the figures of the One and the Last those which in our culture best symbolize the closure of both the subject's identity and scientific knowledge - are exactly what language, as we understand it here, makes impossible to pronounce. Also in several books composed of texts-fragment of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, the considerations about writing follow as a practical exercise of shock against statements that feed on the illusion of identity and truth. It reminds us, in Profanations and comparing in this respect Michel Foucault, that writing is a human device and that the history of men is none other “than the incessant body with devices that they themselves have produced - and before any other, language.” Here too, we will begin to be able to critically discuss the reasons why the figure of the author, still so mystified among us, must be

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subordinated - in Agamben's terminology: “remain unexpressed” - regarding the work and the non-knowledge that language always determines and holds. If some subjectivity exists, it is produced at the moment in which the living being finds language, and in this comes into play “without reservations.” We are what we can display in this irreducibility. What is at stake in writing “is not so much the expression of a subject as the opening of a space in which the subject who writes does not cease to disappear,” clarifies Agamben (2006: 100 and 83-84). “Anyone is the figure of pure uniqueness,” he says in The Coming Community, a book in which he seeks to work the problem of knowledge out of the dichotomy between the “character of the individual” and the “intelligibility of universals.” The being that is missing, the being to come is, for Agamben, the “whatever being.” And this pure uniqueness of which he speaks to us does not refer to identity, but rather to “indetermination” and to the relation to the idea, that is, in its precise definition “for the totality of its possibilities.” So what someone, anyone adds to a singularity, is only the displacement of a “limit,” an “empty space,” and “pure exteriority.” Anything must, therefore, be taken as “the happening of the exterior” (1993, p. 11-12 and 53-54). In Profanations there is a detailed discussion about the etymology, meaning and uses of Genius, a god that the Latin tradition began to present as the protector of every man from his birth. There Agamben shows, collecting examples of different origins - recording his constant presence in narratives that reiterate an approach of the genius either of the act of the generation, or of the innate physical and moral qualities of each one, or of a secret relation that each one can have with its god - how this concept has also been associated with what is “more impersonal, the personalization of what surpasses and exceeds us.” It suggests, with this analysis, that spirituality does not refer only to what is considered noble and transcendent. Agamben’s thesis in this particular instance is that “all the impersonal in us is genius,” that our life is played around what does not belong to us or that any initiative to appropriate Genius, “to force him to sign on his behalf, is necessarily doomed to fail.” It is in the light of this evidence that one can understand both the ironic operations of the avant-gardes - of inoperability, de-characterization, de-creation, or even destruction of the work of art itself

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- and the idea often associated with Duchamp that the truly genius artist “is he who is devoid of work.” Nevertheless, the fundamental point is to understand that accepting to live with the presence of Genius means that one admits an intimate relationship of a strange being, “to be constantly in relation to a zone of non-knowledge,” which overlaps with the notion of oneself and consciousness. Great is here synonymous with impersonal, you see. And the creation, the consubstantiation of this walk into the unknown, in which the “I” watches, joyfully, its own shattering.” Translating and adapting to the desire to write: “I feel that, somewhere, Genius exists, that there is in me an impersonal power that impels writing.” And Agamben concludes: “Genius is our life in what does not belong to us.” (2006, p. 9-23)

So other forces cross us, capture us and put us in play when we write. We can take sides, separate, divide, confront – in effect, say something - but never express the Whole about things or ourselves. Duplicity and nononeness are what results from abandonment of insistent work on the word. Any “finishing act of thought,” Agamben stresses in Idea of prose, “must dissolve entirely in language,” thus making it possible to project and decipher new forms of life. And his conclusion in this respect could only refer us to the evidence that “it is precisely the absence of an object of knowledge that saves us from the sadness without remedy of things” (1999, p. 102 and 46). It is the lack - the incessant lack - that writing expresses. The imperious need to associate its exercise with an awareness of the infinity of language will inevitably lead us to Maurice Blanchot, and to have to remain close to his texts with the utmost attention, such is the range of plans, surfaces, and figures that he brings with the purpose of giving an account of this enigma, of that strange passion of the incessant to which the name of writing is also given. This, for Blanchot, affirms a vast, sparse, discontinuous, split, impersonal self; it materializes a narrative that produces and narrates itself, which changes direction incessantly because, in the search for the event, it leaves it behind and sees the reflection, at its core, of the difference, the contradictory, if not the absurd; it makes one dream the

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work as a navigation against the emptiness or the smallest gap, but what happens most is to connect to an indeterminate another-time, until, when at last the moment of its own realization occurs, it is once again perceived as being exposed to an emptiness, to an erasure, to the desert, at a distance, to a new setting on the way. Blanchot did everything to convince us that the happiness of creation presupposes the indetermination of the work, the exclusion of any allusion to an ultimate end or destiny - always questioning and, as with Agamben, the same movement of seeking and affirming exteriority. He will meticulously decompose the thousand problems that the practice of writing unearths. He never ceases to link it to metamorphosis, and therefore, in his view, the secret law of this practice is that of the book to come. It is precisely to this field, of all the least reflected upon, that I want to go, through its texts. Blanchot prefers literature as a preferential domain, but his analysis of the writings of Homer, Mallarmé, Sade, Proust, Kafka, Melville, Musil, Joyce, Borges, Beckett, among many others, have often made him also enter the territories of philosophy, with frequent references to Heraclitus, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Levinas, etc. In addition, his voice shines without stopping in many of the theoreticalmethodological beginning movements of Barthes, Deleuze, Foucault or Derrida, names that do not cease to visit us in this text. The Blanchot effect is associated, I believe, with the possibility that a research around language can add arguments in favor of the plural word - no longer grounded in a logic of the antinomic pairs equality-inequality, predominancesubordination, but rather in dissymmetry and in reversibility - and in the understanding of the “power of infinity” that writing carries within it. The first of the three volumes of The Infinite Conversation, published in France in 1969, begins by announcing and explaining the “requirement of writing” as being at the service of the thesis of the “end of the book” or the “absence of a book.” A vast theoretical program seems to build on case studies designed to question and shake the movement toward the unification and totality of the “civilization of the Book.” The research on the literature that Blanchot undertakes seeks to establish, in the writers who precede us in time, the transgressive performativity of writing, or in other words, the limit-

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experience that it manifests (2001, p. 36 and 39, 8 and 9). In his view, scriptural work has always been affected by a multiplying effect or by approximation to other spaces, because it is the very truth or law that is called into question by it. I take from the opening of that first volume by Maurice Blanchot a fragment which, in the general scheme of my narrative, I would liken to a manifesto, on the decisive question of making explicit a territory around which one assumes an irrevocable commitment, a transgressive vital belonging: “Writing, the exigency to writing: no longer the writing that has always (through a necessity in no way avoidable) been in the service of the speech or thought that is called idealistic (that is to say, moralizing), but rather the writing that through its own slowly liberated force (the aleatory force of absence), seems to devote itself solely to itself, as something that remains without identity, and little by little brings forth possibilities that are entirely other: an anonymous, distracted, deferred, and dispersed way of being in relation, by which everything is brought into question – and first of all, the idea of God, of the Self, of the Subject, then of Truth and the One, then finally the idea of Book and Work - so that this writing (understood in its enigmatic rigor), far from having the Book as its goal rather signals its end: a writing that could be said to be outside the discourse, outside the language. (...) When I speak of 'the end of the book', or better 'the absence of the book', I do not mean to allude to developments in the audiovisual means of communication with which so many experts are concerned. If one ceased publishing books in favor of communication by voice, image, or machine, this would in no way change the reality of what is called ‘book’; on the contrary, language, like speech, would thereby affirm all the more predominance and its certitude of a possible truth. In other words, the Book always indicates an order submitted to unity, a system of notions in which are affirmed the primacy of speech over writing, of thought over language, and the promise of communication that would one day be immediate and transparent.

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Jorge Ramos do Ó Now it may be that writing requires the abandonment of all these principles, that is to say, the end and also the coming to completion of everything that guarantees our culture - not so that we might in idyllically fashion turn back, but rather so we might to go beyond, that is, to the limit, in order to attempt to break the circle, the circle of circles: the totality of the concepts that found history, that develops in history, and whose development history is. To write in this sense (...) supposes a radical change of epoch – interruption, death itself - or, to speak hyperbolically, the 'end of history'. Writing in this way passes through the advent of communism, recognized as the ultimate affirmation - communism being still always beyond communism. Writing thus becomes a terrible responsibility. Invisibly, writing is called upon to undo the discourse in which, however unhappy we believe ourselves to be, we who have it at our disposal remain comfortably installed. From this point of view, writing is the greatest violence, for it transgresses the law, every law, and its own.” (Blanchot, 2001, p. 8-9)

Those who withdraw and preserve themselves in the solitude of writing are forced to understand that the work does not end. What is expressed in one book will be restarted or even destroyed in another. In The Space of Literature, a volume still published in the mid-1950s, Blanchot refers to this evidence as being the “privilege of the infinite” - the existence of a concrete, closed place, where the most essential solitude gives shape to a practice which never ceases. All the endings or outcomes that the writer or the artist experience, whether by pressure from the publisher, for financial reasons or other circumstances of ordinary life, do not prevent the continuation and recovery of the work left behind. In this perspective, one must then understand that “the infinite of the work is only the infinite of the spirit itself.” The writer writes “a book, but the book is not yet the work”; he happens to finish and publish the first but he knows that he only belongs to the second. And so he goes back to his work, to saying again, he returns to a privileged theme, rethinks, he picks up the word at some point and then disperses again into a new diversity of thoughts or matters. The narrative expresses a nascent power that fails to find a firm outcome. On this preservation at the new beginning, however, it is necessary to draw some

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conclusions. This is already true: the text belongs “to the shadow of events, not to reality, to the image, to the object.” For Blanchot, words can be confused with “appearances,” and it is therefore imperative that we make no mistakes about them by taking them as representing the “power of truth.” The work only reveals that writing “is the endless, the incessant.” The writer, he continues, “no longer belongs to the masterly domain in which to express himself means to express the accuracy and certainty of things and values in the sense of their limits” (2001, p. 11-16). In this way, the authority of a written statement becomes what is written and no longer the signature of the author. For this important reason, Blanchot also insists both on the need to “break the bond” or on “breaking the link” that unites “the word to the self.” The relationship is not between an author who speaks to a reader with the authority of one who dominates and provides the understanding. And if it is accepted that to write more is not to discover and incorporate the interminable and the incessant, then one will have to go deeper and take another consequence. Blanchot notes here a decisive transformation. It involves renouncing the self, accepting that “the writer belongs to the language that no one speaks, that addresses no one, that has no center, that reveals nothing; he may believe that he asserts himself in this language, but what he claims is entirely deprived of himself.” In the writer lies the mediation and the murmur that allow language, in a process of infinite dissemination, to become an image and an argument. He echoes what cannot fail to be said. The changes that are detected in the course of language do not assume that the writer works in a region moved by rational principles, which lead to the glorification of consciousness, progress, and overcoming, in an upward movement towards the ultimate truth and the universal. And we return to the central argument that brings me here. The writer - the researcher - is not on the path of “a safer, more beautiful, more justified world, where everything would be ordered according to the clarity of a fair day”; neither does he “discover the beautiful language that speaks honorably to all.” What is expressed in him, Blanchot argues, derives from the fact that “in one way or another, he is no longer himself, he is no longer anyone.” So, the endless machine of language determines the “erasure” of the one who writes. And instead of the authority of a sovereign subject or a

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hero, we are faced with enigmas and questions that take turns (2001, p. 1718). The literary writings of Stéphane Mallarmé and Jorge Luís Borges can be taken as impressive illustrations of the infinity of language and consequent erasure of the author. In a short chapter in The Book to Come, and on the subject of this Argentinian writer, Blanchot begins by stating that the whole truth of literature is “in the error of the finite,” thus clarifying to us that it is being on the way - this circumstance of the writer to dream the end without however being able to face it - that allows what is imagined finite to be transformed into infinity. Here Borges is considered as the “essentially literary man,” that is, the one who appears to us “always ready to understand according to the mode of understanding that literature authorizes.” Borges's fictions and forgeries, which account for a “desert and labyrinthine” subject - who walks without stopping - reiterate the idea that the world and the book are eternally reflected and confused in a “sparkling” multiplication. In his literary works, therefore, he ceases to have limits of reference, which is usually taken for real and unreal, all happening in the reciprocity of a set of mirrors. Borges will have, therefore, assimilated that the literature “carries something dangerous.” And the risk does not stem from it “leading us to imagine that there is somewhere between us” a great author, absorbed in imaginative mystifications,” but, quite differently, in” making us feel the approach of a strange, neutral, impersonal power.” Blanchot quotes Borges as he would have written about Shakespeare: “'He was like all men except that he resembled all men.'“ That is: Borges sees in all the authors a single author. The only meaning that the narrative has is what makes us understand that we are not faced with “events that really take place, not before people who perform them personally, but before a precise and indeterminate set of possible versions” (1984, p. 103-106 and 158-159). In the essay dedicated to Mallarmé, he begins by asking himself what the meaning of the word Book is in this poet, and soon the idea of impersonation imposes itself: “The book that is the Book is a book among others.” The recurrence of the speaker's disappearance reappears with another intensity when Blanchot reproduces this well-known affirmation of the poet of L'après-midi d'un faune: “the work implies the eloquent

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disappearance of the poet, who yields initiative to words, by the shock of their mobilized inequality.” Everything as if the book could only be when it stopped referring to the one who would have written it. Words only designate the extent of their relationships, and to that extent, the space in which they project is spreading. There is a movement of maximum dispersion and diversity around it. The comprehension of the thickness and the various dimensions of the space produced by the language will have been fundamental for Mallarmé, who affirmed to have experienced disquieting symptoms and despairing abysses caused by the simple act of writing. In it, Blanchot elucidates to us, “a sentence is not limited to linearly unfolding: it opens; through this opening, other movements of phrases, other rhythms of words that are related to each other according to firm determinations of structure, are spread out, separated, and narrowed again at different levels of depth.” The creative origin of the adventure of the poetic movement can thus be defined as that of a space that approaches another space, an analytic practice that tries to understand, through its speaking mobility, not the real known of the present time, but to accede the other thing. From the theoretical problems that Mallarmé has put to himself, Blanchot can, therefore, deepen his fundamental theses by associating writing with the construction of change. One is that the presence of poetry and all literature “is a presence to come: it comes beyond the future and does not stop coming when it is there.” And another is that “the work is the waiting of the work; only in this expectation does the impersonal attention that has the paths and place of the space of language meet “(1984, p. 234-255). Because in it is the attraction for the exterior that dominates, writing materializes the most radical experience of alterity, that of the exit from itself. However, philosophical discourse is also marked by concepts that aim, unsuccessfully, to achieve what Blanchot calls the “safe realm” or “permanence space” where truth can be resurrected. In fact, one tries tirelessly to build a world, “so that the secret dissolution, the universal corruption that governs it” can be suspended or even forgotten before the coherence of the conceptual apparatus, the notions, objects, and relations established between them by our analysis. But here another search becomes the opening of a crisis, and a new outward movement that wipes out the

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meaning, the idea, the universal. In the philosophical word, it is also the speaking exterior. For this reason, the possibility is, for Blanchot, much more than reality. The first found the second and this is how it, too, comes to the notion of power and the work of the construction of difference. The possibility, he clarifies to us, “is to be more the power to be.” And, in a more rigorous and perhaps more instigating way, he affirms the essential dimensions of our individual existence: “it is only with the power of being that we are what we are; here we soon see that man does not only have possibilities, but he is his possibility “. Again, we are faced with the challenge of confronting all powers established from a self-reflective dimension. Relationships “in the world and with the world” come to be understood as relations of power, being “contained in possibility.” When one takes the word, and even being in the “most apparent traits of language,” he always enters into a power relation: “I belong, whether I know it or not, to a set of powers of which I am serving, fighting against the power that is affirmed against me.” Also to Blanchot, “the whole word is violence, violence that is both more fearful and secret” (2001, p. 73, 85-6). We ask ourselves without cease, and no more yesterday than today, about the time and the forms of life that he installs. Still, according to Maurice Blanchot's testimony, the ability to keep up with this relational game with the course of the world and with ourselves is dependent on realizing that the way of being of writing is defined by questioning and that, once triggered, never ends. The word becomes the place of dispersion and the escape of meaning because there is a fantastic force that produces a permanent relay between the whole and the being. Now this force or power materializes in the very act of questioning. In The Infinite Conversation, the pages are succeeded to elucidate us as a cognitive structure is always diverting “the questioning of being a question and of obtaining a definitive answer” that appeases the spirit. There is invariably in our questions contact with something deeper that “escapes the whole question and exceeds all the power to question; the questioning is the very attraction of this deviation” (Blanchot, 2001, p. 41-61). It is this that overloads the written word of a relationship of infinity and strangeness, producing an essentially dissymmetric and discontinuous field, which makes speech sterilization

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unfeasible. The work of the question hinders the thought of tending toward unity and of realizing the whole. To question is to seek, and to seek is to seek radically, to go to the bottom, to sound, to work at the bottom and, finally, to uproot. This uprooting that holds onto the root is the work of the question. The work of time. (...). Freud more or less says that all the questions randomly posed by children turn on and serve as a relay for the one they do not pose, which is the question of the origin. We question ourselves about everything in the same way, in order to sustain and advance the passion of the question: but all questions are directed toward one question alone - the central question, or the question of the whole. (...) A question is a movement, the question of everything a type of relationship characterized by openness and free movement (...). The question waits for the answer, but the answer does not appease the question and, although it ends, does not end with the waiting that is the question of the question (...). The whole question, today, is already the question of everything. This whole question, which leaves nothing out and confronts us constantly with everything, in a strenuous abstract passion, is present, for us, in all things (...). To question is to play up the question. The point is this invitation to jump, which does not stop at a result. It takes a free space to jump, and a firm ground is needed, it takes a power that, from the safe immobility, turns the jump movement. The leap, from and without any firmness, is the freedom to question. (Blanchot, 2001, p. 41-53).

There are also several texts in which Deleuze, himself or in partnership with Guattari, reflects on the limiting experience provided by writing, an explicit connection with the Blanchotian notions of the relation of the text to the outside, of the unfinished and anonymous language. In the book, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature is the theme of the space delimited by a will to write, which is exerted only to express infinity of itself, to master the meticulous analysis of the duo Deleuze-Guattari. Kafka is taken here as the case of the purest passion for writing, confusing itself with the very life of the author of The Metamorphosis. They discover in it a real machine of writing in which all the different components of literary expression communicate among themselves in the task of displacement of the question

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Jorge Ramos do Ó

and for that reason of deterritorialization of the thought. The two philosophers go so far as to say that such a complete literary work would never have been constructed through movements that are always grim, but never cease to operate and relate structurally to each other. In Kafka the passion for writing does not cease, although the respective thresholds of intensity change: they are “letters stopped because a return blocks them”; “Novels that stop because they cannot develop in novels, divided in two senses that cover the exit”; “Novels that Kafka himself stops because they are endless and simply unlimited, infinite.” In his creative process, there is a drag or a line of escape, in Deleuze's well-known terminology, which allows him to question the political, economic, bureaucratic, or jurisdictional order at the same time. This strenuous passion for understanding the functioning of institutions has also enabled Kafka to anticipate and “extract incognito sounds that belong to the near future - Fascism, Stalinism, Americanism, the devilish forces that are knocking on the door” in the 1930s. Deleuze & Guattari find in this dynamic, in which the expression precedes the content and drags it, the fundamental thesis of this book. Living and writing only oppose what they call “major literature”; in Kafka, on the contrary, these two dimensions merge and constitute the objective conditions for the exercise of a “minor literature,” that is, a writing practice that offers the language “revolutionary conditions” through the “connection of the individual with the immediate political” and the “collective agency of enunciation.” They note that even dying, Kafka was “transported by an invincible flow of life” that came to him from letters, novels, romances as well “from their mutual incompleteness for different, communicating and interchangeable reasons.” It's all a matter of everything, as you just read in Blanchot. For this reason, the primacy of writing in Kafka can only have a meaning that is not confined in any way to what we commonly understand in literature. And the meaning is this: enunciation is constituted as a contingent desire, historically, politically and socially situated in its time, but projected “beyond the laws, states, and regimes.” Then we have in Kafka's writing a “micropolitics, a politics of desire that calls into question all instances.” The reasons that have led him to abandon this or that text are, after all, a vast map of transformations and intensities, almost molecular,

Plural Word and Inventive Writing

25

which give us account not of failure, but of a multivariate analysis determined to anticipate - exceed the thresholds established by any order. That is to say, there is in the experience of Kafka's writing the possibility of unveiling an “absolute deterritorialization” as opposed to the “relative territorializations that man produces about himself” when he travels, for example. The statement is no more than the possibility of organizing cognitive combat dominated by the possibility of relaunching the analysis, producing a “living escape line” before the transcendence with which the law always announces itself. Urgent and endless task of confrontation with all forms of desire and power, you see. Deleuze & Guattari conclude: “there has never been such a comic and cheerful author from the point of view of desire; has never been a more political and social author from the point of view of the statement.” In Kafka, “all is laughter, beginning with The Process; everything is political, starting with the Letters to Felice” (2003, p. 41 and 69-79). They have already problematized in What is philosophy, and still from Blanchot, the notion of event, linking it to concepts central to their work such as the cloud, flow, bifurcation or threshold transposition. A practice of the endless, that does not end nor begin. In his view of writing, it would also be connected with an experience that is distinguished from that of the ordinary state of things we go through, ourselves and our body because it produces a kind of event that is both “incorporeal and pure reservation.” In such terms, writing would be that “event in which we sink or rise, which resumes without ever having begun or ending, immanent internality” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1992, p. 138). The debt to Blanchot is reinforced at a time when Deleuze sought to incorporate in his philosophical language the theme of the relation with the outside. It is for him to imagine a line, a joint that is not in thought or in things per se but is found everywhere where the thought faces something that is more distant than the outside world and, at the same time, closer than the inner world. A process of “perpetual reinvestment” of the adjacent and the distant. For Deleuze, thought structures itself in this dynamic and is called to face “anything like madness, and life, anything like death.” The outer line would then be our “double,”

26

Jorge Ramos do Ó

precisely what crosses us “with all otherness of the double” (Deleuze, 2003: 151). In an often referenced article, which has the evocative title Nomadic Thought, Deleuze refers to the features of Nietzsche's texts - particularly his aphorisms - as if from his reading he seemed to be faced with a new kind of object, again insisting on the relation with the outside. When we look randomly at any book by the author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra it happens that “we no longer go through an interiority,” or that of the soul, consciousness or concept, principles that have always been part of philosophy. It ceases here to be mediated and dissolved by interiority Nietzsche “founds thought, writing on an immediate relation with the outside.” Deleuze clarifies his idea in the following terms: What is this: a beautiful painting or a beautiful drawing? There is a frame. An aphorism has a frame, too. But whatever is in the frame, at what point does it become beautiful? At the moment one knows and feels that the movement, that the line which is framed comes from elsewhere, that it does not begin within the limits of the frame. It began above, or next to the frame, and the line traverses the frame. As in Godard's film, you paint the painting with the wall. Far from being the limitation of the pictorial surface, the frame is almost the opposite, putting it into immediate relation with the outside. However, hooking up thought to the outside is, strictly speaking, something philosophers have never done, even when they were talking about politics, even when they were talking about taking a walk or fresh air. It is not enough to talk about fresh air, to talk about the exterior if you want to hook thought up directly and immediately to the outside. (…) Well then, what I am saying is that texts like these are traversed by a movement which comes from the outside, which does not begin in the page of the book, nor in the preceding pages, which does not fit in the frame of the book, and which is totally different from the imaginary movement of representations or the abstract movement of concepts as they are wont to take place through words and in the reader's head. Something leaps from the book, making contact with a pure outside. It is this, I believe, which for Nietzsche's work is the right to misinterpret. An aphorism is a play of forces, a state of forces which are always exterior to one another. An aphorism doesn't mean anything, it signifies nothing, and no more has a

Plural Word and Inventive Writing

27

signifier than a signified. Those would be ways of restoring a text's interiority. An aphorism is a state of forces, the last of which, meaning at once the most recent, the most actual, and the provisional-ultimate, is the most external. Nietzsche posits it quite clearly: if you want to know what I mean, find the force that gives what I say meaning, and a new meaning if need be. Hook the text up to this force. In this way, there are no problems of interpretation for Nietzsche, there are only problems of machining: to machine Nietzsche's text, to find out which actual external force will get something through, like a current of energy. (Deleuze, 2006a, p. 323-324)

In summary, in the perspective I take here, the problem that involves the act of writing is how to produce statements that abandon the principles at any time expressed by the law - and by the institutions that introduce it into the social body through the most varied routines of disciplinary and unitary representation of the cultural heritage, for which knowledge is used as a body of prescriptions and a circle in which truths unfold - pulling the language out of its habitual furrows and causing it to communicate with what will be its own exterior. The statements of some social theory which I have put my hands on to better suggest the inventive force of the scriptural exercise do not cease to speak of unfinishedness, of diversion, of organic disappearance, of foreign becoming, or of the intensity of a current of energy that comes and pulls toward the outside. They converge in the metaphor of nomadism, in the rigorous sense of perpetual displacement wrought by the very experience of writing - the hypothesis of an adventure, of a game that comes to the administrative machine that accompanies all sedentary groups and the state apparatus. The writing consubstantiates, in these terms, a migratory power for thought and, in this relationship with the outside, the possibility of traveling in the same place. Immobile-travel that is intense, imperceptible, unexpected, subterranean, anonymous, but capable of engendering extratextual practices and renewed possibilities of existence.

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REFERENCES Agamben, G. (1993). A comunidade que vem [The Coming Community]. Lisboa: Editorial Presença. Agamben, G. (1999). Ideia da prosa [Idea of Prose]. Lisboa: Livros Cotovia. Agamben, G. (2006). Profanações [Profanations]. Lisboa: Livros Cotovia. Bauman, Z. (1993). Postmodern ethics. Oxford: Blackwell. Blanchot, M. (1984). O livro por vir [The Book to Come]. Lisboa: Relógio d’Água. Blanchot, M. (2001). A conversa infinita: A palavra plural [The Infinite Conversation: the plural word]. Vol I. São Paulo: Editora Escuta. Connor, S. (2000). Cultura pós-moderna: Introdução às teorias do contemporâneo [Postmodern culture: Introduction to contemporary theories]. São Paulo: Edições Loyola. Deleuze, G. (2000a). Crítica e clínica [Essays Critical and Clinical]. Lisboa: Edições Século XXI. Deleuze, G. (2000b). Diferença e repetição [Difference and Repetition]. Lisboa: Relógio d’Água. Deleuze, G. (2003). Conversações [Dialogues]. Lisboa: Fim de Século. Deleuze, G. (2006). Pensamento nômade[Nomadology: The War Machine]. In A ilha deserta e outros textos: Textos e entrevistas (1953-1974) (pp. 319-329). São Paulo: Editora Iluminuras. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1992). O que é a filosofia? [What Is Philosophy?]. Lisboa: Editorial Presença. Derrida, J. (2000). Gramatologia [Of Grammatology]. São Paulo: Perspectiva. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity: An inquiry into the origins of social change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Jenkins, K. (1991). Re-thinking history. London: Routledge. Lyotard, J.-F. (2003). A condição pós-moderna [The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge]. Lisboa: Gradiva.

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Rorty, R. (1994). Contingência, ironia e solidariedade [Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity]. Lisboa: Editorial Presença. Smart, B. (2002). Teoria social pós-moderna [Post-Modern Social Theory]. In B. S. Turner (Ed.). Teoria social (pp. 405-436). Lisboa: Difel.

In: Improving the Academic Writing … ISBN: 978-1-53615-671-3 Editors: Tatiana Sanches et al. © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 2

ACADEMIC WRITING CENTERS IMPROVING STUDENTS SKILLS Angela Repanovici1,*, Ane Landøy2 and Natalia Cheradi3 1

Transilvania University of Brasov, Brasov, Romania 2 University of Bergen Library, Bergen, Norway 3 Academy of Economic Studies, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova

ABSTRACT In this chapter, the authors present a study of 28 academic writing centers from the USA and Europe based on information found on their institutional websites and show how this has inspired the development of academic writing centers in the Republic of Moldova. The method is information analysis to determine organizational and practical differences, and look for patterns, similarities and best practices. Against this background, a survey (a self-administrated questionnaire provided online by SurveyMonkey) of attitudes and practical concerns of the library leaders in academic libraries in the Republic of Moldova shows their confidence in several areas. They are certain that creating academic writing centers will maximize the libraries’ contribution to research, and enhance the

*

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

32

Angela Repanovici, Ane Landøy and Natalia Cheradi quality. This will strengthen the library’s role in the framework of the academic knowledge system.

Keywords: Moldova, Norway, academic writing center, academic library

1. INTRODUCTION Increasingly, there seems to be a general consensus that the traditional concept of learning and knowledge as it is transmitted in classrooms in institutions of higher education is inadequate. More and more, knowledge is stored and handled by the computing network, and students are charged with learning to manipulate that network. Students are also charged with learning to integrate the knowledge they find into their own writing, to make it their own, and to convey it to others in an accepted and ethical way. Libraries and writing centers deal with a high volume of students doing work under time pressure. Both libraries and writing centers have found themselves on the front lines of technology implementation, and have been among the first to explore online services and online tutorials to allow students to do their work remotely. Universities and their libraries utilize centers for academic writings as tools for enabling students to gain an education of higher quality (Denchuk, 2011; Milewicz, 2009). At the same time, academic writing centers come in many different forms and formats: they can be organized by the university library or an academic discipline, placed in the library or outside the library, and staffed by librarians, academics, masters students or a mix (Neurohr 2017; Rienecker 2009; UW-Madison, 2013). Academic writing centers are becoming more important tools for providing students with higher quality education, where one goal is to teach students to formulate themselves in line with the academic tradition and language of their chosen specialization. For many universities all over the world, the university library plays an important part in securing academic quality among students, through training in information literacy and antiplagiarism. The library also has an important role in other academic features as well as practical issues for students. Therefore, it will often be natural to

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look to the library to provide space and resources for an academic writing center. Both writing instruction and library instruction share a central belief in the importance of process. This belief is based on an understanding of student development and years of research that suggest that to improve student performance, instruction must engage learners in the context of their own efforts to do work that has meaning to them. It has become commonplace to say that library instruction and writing instruction are based on process, not product. In fact, issues that arise in both fields suggest that although the process is the dominant model, it is increasingly important in these outcomes-based times to make sure students can actually do the things they need to do. Process means nothing if it fails to produce a product (…) Hook and Elmborg (2005, p. 7).

Through an understanding of how students learn and work, libraries and writing centers have also grown toward a process-based model of instruction. The process model evolved after observation of students at work, coupled with constructivist learning theory. In librarianship, the process model was first articulated by Carol Kuhlthau, who identified six stages in the research process: task initiation, topic selection, exploring information, formulating a focus, collecting information, and closing the research process to begin the writing process (Kuhlthau, 2004). Constructivist learning theory explains that humans construct knowledge as part of their effort to make sense of their environment. Therefore, knowledge is constructed (or created) by each individual through a scaffolding of concepts and activities. Following Hook and Elmborg (2005), one may envision students as needing different “conversations” to succeed; they need support and understanding, as well as challenges and problems. In addition to teachers and librarians as authority figures who represent academic standards, students need peers. Many writing centers employ peer tutors who have a unique viewpoint and therefore provide students with this support. There are several advantages to employing student tutors:

Angela Repanovici, Ane Landøy and Natalia Cheradi

34  

They see the academic environment differently than do those employed within it. They have sympathy with each other’s plights, be they obscure assignments or arbitrary grading standards, and they share each other’s confusion over the system.

Peer tutors in writing centers may provide important and constructive help in figuring out the rules for what kinds of writing succeed in the university. In university, students need to learn how to write and how to do research. These processes are closely intertwined, but too often it seems like the library is focused on supporting the students in their research (finding information sources, citing in the appropriate way, etc.), while the writing center is focusing solely on the writing process itself. Hook and Elmborg suggest the optimal collaboration will entail the librarians and the writing center staff “Striking a balance between respecting the different processes and understanding their holistic nature allows them to pave the way for true collaboration. By working in collaboration, these two units can treat the research process and the writing process as a seamless whole, recognizing the commonalities in both and their respective differences” (Hook and Elmborg, 2005, p. 25). There are good examples to be found in the literature of benefits of using space situated in the library as room for the writing center (see i.e., Hook and Elmborg, 2005). For the library, one benefit may be that the added feature of an academic writing center will draw a different set of students to the library. The benefits may also include a system for cross-referral: When the two elements of instruction (i.e., writing and research instruction) are in the same facility and relatively close to each other, it will be easier for students to get the help they need. The same may be true of consolidated technology that can be used by students for both writing and research. The academic writing center can take advantage of the late hours that libraries typically provide, and a move to the library may include a significant upgrade in the academic writing center facilities.

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However, Hook and Elmborg warns that in “establishing a collaborative relationship, both units must be open-minded and willing to look for the practical commonalities that unite them but also must acknowledge any differences that make them unique” (Hook and Elmborg, 2005, p. 39) They need to sort out their separate roles in supporting students who are engaged in learning and in creating new knowledge. This means that librarians need to be willing to work with trained student tutors who will question practices and need explanations in terms they can understand and convey to their peers. There must be joint strategic discussions, and librarians and writing center staff will need formalized training from each other. In “Researching the writing center: towards an evidence-based practice” from 2012, Rebecca Day Babcock and Terese Thonus provide us with a list of very practical “recommendations for practice” about the context of tutoring: 

  

   

Consider providing “private” tutoring space through the use of dividers or cubicles in addition to open tutoring space (Bemer, 2010; Oliver, 2009). Provide computers as well as work space for students to bring their own laptops or to work with hard copies (Bemer, 2010). Rethink the stricture against required visits (Gordon, 2008). Recruit potential tutors by educating them about the personal and professional benefits of writing center work (Fallon, 2010; Gillespie, Hughes, & Kail, 2011). Encourage tutors to present at conferences (Vandenberg, 1999) Work to professionalize peer tutors (Courtney, 2009). Consider scheduling group tutorials in addition to individual ones (Hess, 2008; Montgomery, 1994) (…). Lengthen consulting times past 30 minutes; facilitate ongoing work with the same tutor; provide tutors versed in the subject matter of students’ papers, and integrate writing center tutoring into classroom instruction (Lerner, 1996, p. 85).

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Angela Repanovici, Ane Landøy and Natalia Cheradi

As Babcock and Thonus show, there is already a host of research done on best practice in developing academic writing centers, and some of them are included in libraries. However, Babcock and Thonus mainly deal with academic writing centers as separate entities, and in a North American academic environment. This, evidently, has an impact on the global usability of their advice when it comes to developing academic writing centers outside of the USA, and through academic libraries.

2. METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES In the research, we used document investigation, specifically text analysis of websites. This gave us qualitative data. We also employed a survey. Document investigations is a qualitative research method that utilizes a systematic procedure to analyze documents in order to answer specific research questions. In the summer school setting, the 18 library leaders were divided into small groups and given a randomly selected set of web pages from academic writing centers in the US and Europe. The web pages contained information about the academic writing centers in English. The groups were asked to write a summary, in Romanian or English, of the information, especially focusing on how the academic writing centers were organized (within the library or outside the library organization), how they were staffed (students, librarians, academics or combinations), and what kind of services were given. Also, how this was communicated on the website. The results of the groups’ work were collected, and the authors did further analysis of the data that emerged. As usual, examination and interpretation of the data were necessary in order to gain meaning and empirical knowledge of the construct being studied. The data was therefore entered in an Excel-sheet to be counted and analyzed. Typically, a document analysis could be conducted as a stand-alone study or as a component of a larger qualitative or mixed methods study. In the larger studies, it can be used to triangulate findings gathered from other

Academic Writing Centers Improving Students Skills

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data sources, and corroborate or refute, elucidate, or expand on findings across other data sources, which helps to guard against bias. Stand-alone, it can, for example, answer questions about policy, past events, cultural context, organizations, activities, groups, and more. Gross (2018) finds document analysis a viable independent research method and warns that it should not be considered merely as a supplement to other methods. She classifies web pages as “secondary types of data”, documents that were created for the purpose of sharing interpretation with a wider audience; often published in the public domain. On the basis of the information gained from the first document overview, the authors decided to continue with a survey of academic library leaders in the Republic of Moldova. The survey was set up as an expert evaluation, (the library leaders as the experts) in which the expediency of creating academic writing centers in Moldova, where to organize them and how to staff them would be investigated. The purpose was to determine the need for the services of the academic writing centers in the scientific community of Moldova and the possibility of their creation in higher educational institutions of the country. The instrument used for the survey is a questionnaire provided online by SurveyMonkey, and the survey was conducted in May-June 2018 in university libraries. The questionnaire was developed with the Romanian language, and the answers were translated into English for analysis and presentation of results. The questionnaire included different types of questions: closed, open, scale concerned with various activities of the academic writing centers. There were eight questions, and the answers were formulated to reveal the interest and the readiness of university libraries in creating and developing academic centers. Surveys are normally considered good instruments for collecting contemporary data, and for studying a larger number of cases, especially those that are geographically dispersed (Connaway & Radford, 2017). The 18 academic library leaders in Moldova are situated in different parts of the Republic.

Angela Repanovici, Ane Landøy and Natalia Cheradi

38

The purpose of the survey was: 

   

To ask the library leader’s help in identifying the need for the creation of academic writing centers in higher educational institutions in the Republic of Moldova; To identify the readiness to create centers’ and implement its services To find where the library leaders saw the place of university libraries in this process; To diagnose the set of resources which the libraries have for the creation of the academic writing center; To analyze the range of services that can be presented in the academic writing centers of the country.

The following hypotheses were formulated, which require confirmation on the basis of the research: 

  

The creation of academic writing centers in Moldova’s higher education institutions is necessary due to the increasing complexity of scientific production and the need to correspond with international standards in the field of scientific communication; Academic writing centers should be established in university libraries; Creation of academic writing centers requires clear coordination and interaction of all structures of the university; Some Moldovan university libraries have sufficient human, technical and financial resources to implement an academic writing center.

The results of the research of experts’ opinion will become the basis for making decisions on the establishment of academic writing centers in universities in the Republic of Moldova, their format and particularity of organization.

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3. ACADEMIC WRITING CENTER ORGANIZATION IN THE ACADEMIC WORLD – A QUICK LOOK In Europe and North America, the idea of academic writing centers has been in practice for some time. The authors did a small study of the organization and other aspects of academic writing centers, by comparing information found on the universities’ websites in July 2017. The information was gathered as part of the 2017 Summer school in the project “Modernisation of academic library services in Moldova – CPEA 2015/10014”, funded by The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project period is 2016-2019 and includes 18 academic libraries in the Republic of Moldova. The findings from the summer school can be summarized: 12 of the academic writing centers that were looked at were from universities in the US, 4 were from Norway, 4 from Canada, 2 from Ireland, 2 from the Netherlands, 2 from the UK, 1 from Turkey and 1 from Hungary. They all had web-pages with the English language. All academic writing centers we looked at had written declarations on the web page of what services they would offer, and 15 of them also stated what services would not be given – f. ex. proofreading of manuscripts. Only one of the writing centers was staffed singularly by librarians, 24 of the centers were staffed by other academics. In 3 centers the staffs were comprised of both librarians and others. 21 of the centers had student mentors as part of the services, where master students or Ph.D.-students contributed to tutoring or mentoring other students under the auspices of the center. Table 1. The organization of the writing center. Actual numbers. N = 28

Yes No Blank

Is the academic writing center organized under the library? 5 23

Does the academic writing center have another kind of connection to the library? 8 13 5

Is the service declared?

Is there a declaration of nonservice?

What levels does the writing center cater for? 1= Bachelor, 2= Master, 3 = PhD

Are there student mentors?

No

Who is working in the writing center? L(ibrarian)/O(ther)/B(oth)

Yes/No Yes

Does the writing center have another kind of connection to the library?

University name and writing center web-address Centre for Academic Communication, University of Victoria Library, Canada https://uvic.mywconline.com/ University of Toronto, Canada https://wdw.utoronto.ca/student-services/academic Queens University, Canada, Student Academic Success Services https://sass.queensu.ca/ Academic Writing Help Centre, University of Ottawa, Canada http://www.sass.uottawa.ca/en/writing Center for Academic Writing, Central European University, Hungary http://caw.ceu.edu/ Dublin Institute of Technology Academic Writing Centre, Ireland http://www.dit.ie/awc/ NUI Galway OE Gaillimh, Ireland www.library.nuigalway.ie/awc Nijmegen Centre for Academic Writing, Radboud University, The Netherlands http://www.ru.nl/asn/english/ University of Twente Writing Centre, The Netherlands https://www.utwente.nl/en/ces/tcp-language-centre/students/writingcentre/#writing-support

Is the writing center organized under the library?

Table 2. Analysis of academic writing centers. N = 28

Yes/No

L/O/B B

Yes/No

Yes/No

Yes/No

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3 1, 2, 3

No

O

Yes

Yes

No

1, 2

Yes

Yes

O

No

Yes

No

1, 2, 3

No

Yes

O

No

Yes

Yes

1, 2

No

No

O

Yes

Yes

No

1, 2, 3

No

Yes

O

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3

Yes No

Yes

L O

Yes Yes

Yes Yes

No Yes

1, 2, 3 1, 2, 3

No

Yes

O

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3

Does the writing center have another kind of connection to the library?

Who is working in the writing center? L(ibrarian)/O(ther)/B(oth)

Are there student mentors?

Is the service declared?

Is there a declaration of nonservice?

Yes/No No

Yes/No Yes

L/O/B O

Yes/No

Yes/No

Yes/No

Yes

Yes

No

1, 2, 3 1, 2, 3

No

Yes

O

Yes

Yes

No

1, 2, 3

B

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3

Yes

What levels does the writing center cater for? 1= Bachelor, 2= Master, 3 = PhD

Is the writing center organized under the library? University name and writing center web-address Norwegian Business School, Master your studies, Oslo, Norway https://at.bi.no/EN/campus/oslo/master-your-studies-oslo Norwegian University of Life sciences, Norway https://www.nmbu.no/en/students/writing University of Oslo Library, Norway http://www.ub.uio.no/english/) Middle East Technical University, Turkey, Academic Writing Center http://awc.metu.edu.tr/ University of York, UK https://www.york.ac.uk/students/studying/develop-your-skills/studyskills/writing/ University College London Academic Writing Centre, UK https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/academic-writingcentre Purdue University, USA https://owl.english.purdue.edu The Writing Center of University Wisconsin-Madison, USA www.writing.wisc.edu Harvard College Writing Program, USA https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/ The Writing Center at Zahnow Library, Saginaw Valley State University, USA http://www.svsu.edu/writingcenter/

No

No

O

No

Yes

No

1, 2, 3

No

No

O

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3

O

No

Yes

Yes

2, 3

No

No

No

O

Yes

Yes

No

1, 2, 3

No

No

O

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3

No

No

O

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3

B

Yes

Yes

No

1, 2

Yes

Is the service declared?

Is there a declaration of nonservice?

Yes/No

Yes/No

Yes/No

Yes

L/O/B O

Yes/No

No

Yes

Yes

No

1, 2, 3 1

No

Yes

O

Yes

Yes

No

1, 2

No

No

O

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2

No

No

O

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3

No

No

O

No

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3

No

No

O

Yes

Yes

Yes

1, 2, 3

No No

No No

O O

No Yes

Yes Yes

No No

1, 2, 3 1, 2

What levels does the writing center cater for? 1= Bachelor, 2= Master, 3 = PhD

Are there student mentors?

Yes/No

Who is working in the writing center? L(ibrarian)/O(ther)/B(oth)

Does the writing center have another kind of connection to the library?

University name and writing center web-address The Writing Center at the University of Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters, USA http://writingcenter.nd.edu/ The Writing Center at the Michigan State University, USA http://writing.msu.edu/ Temple University Writing Center, USA http://www.temple.edu/writingctr The UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center, USA https://writingcenter.unc.edu/ MIT Writing and communication center, USA https://cmsw.mit.edu/writingand-communication-center/ University of Cincinnati Academic Excellence & Support Services, USA https://www.uc.edu/learningcommons/writingcenter.html Princeton University Writing Center, USA https://writing.princeton.edu/center University of Richmond, Writing Centre, USA https://writing.richmond.edu/

Is the writing center organized under the library?

Table 2. (Continued)

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The study does not attempt to be a full-scale investigation of the situation for academic writing centers in or in connection with university libraries in the world. The number of subjects investigated is too small for this, and are not selected with any kind of representability. Also, not all academic writing centers had all the information we were looking for in their web pages. At the same time, they are indicative of some of the issues in this emerging field and formed a rich background picture for the survey of Moldovan library leaders.

4. SURVEY OF MOLDOVAN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES The creation of academic writing centers is becoming a trend in American and European universities. Academic production has become more complicated. The rapid development of information technology and the partial transfer of scientific activity to networks and internet has made it necessary to create intermediaries and assistants for scholars in the presentation and promotion of scientific results. Moldovan library leaders studied the experience of academic writing centers around the world, in the summer school organized by the project in 2017. As seen in the earlier part of this paper, academic writing centers can be quite different in format and organization. The web pages provide us with glimpses of diverse and rich experience, and this encouraged the Moldovan academic library leaders to organize similar structures in the universities they represent. Academic writing centers, according to experts, can be organized by university libraries or other structures, placed in the library or outside it, and are staffed by librarians, scientists, undergraduates, and other specialists. In our opinion, academic writing centers for writing scientific texts are very necessary for the university community in the Republic of Moldova. They can provide substantial assistance in developing a new tradition of Moldovan academic writing, which will meet the standards of international scientific communication. The quality of both Moldovan scientific products

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and the quality and competitiveness of the country’s scientific personnel will increase. The system of academic writing will allow to gradually and effectively train future and current researchers to communicate with the international scientific community. The academic writing center is an innovation, whose analogs we didn’t have in our academic and sociocultural environment. The novelty of this topic leads to the need to implement empiric research that will provide the necessary information for making effective management decisions for creating and operating academic writing centers in the country. The results of the research of experts’ opinion will become the basis for making decisions on the establishment of academic writing centers in the Republic of Moldova, their format and particularity of organization. The respondents were asked eight questions, the answers to which allowed them to reveal the interest and the readiness of universities libraries in the creation and development of academic centers. All the experts answered in the affirmative to the first question “Do you think there is a need to create academic writing centers in Moldovan universities?”. This suggests that in Moldovan scientific community exists the need of creating academic centers. Library directors have mentioned which services of the academic writing center can be requested in their universities (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Services of Academic Centres that can be requested at the university. Numbers of respondents for each given option. N = 15.

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According to the library experts, “Training on Information Literacy” (6) and “Trainings and consultations on writing academic texts” (4) are the most important services that the academic writing center can provide. Two experts noted “Assistance with quoting sources and refining bibliographic lists”, and “Informing on publication in peer-reviewed scientific papers and in journals with impact factor”. According to the respondents the popularity and relevance of such services as: “training on forms” and “techniques for avoiding plagiarism”, “training on the editing of scientific texts, proofreading and proof-listening” – is zero. It can be assumed that the services which are not noted by experts yet have no practical application in the Republic of Moldova, and are unpopular because of their novelty. The experts assessed the possibilities and resources of their university libraries by answering the question “Does your university library have the resources to create an academic writing center?”: 9 people answered “Yes” while 4 responded “No” and 4 “I don’t know”. Thus, more than half of experts consider that a modern university library has the necessary resources to create academic writing centers. However, there is a rather large number of those who consider insufficient resources for the creation of academic writing centers and don’t know if their libraries have sufficient potential to create these centers. The analysis of answers to the question “What resources does the university library have for creation and operation of an academic writing center” revealed the following results (Figure 2). First and foremost, according to experts, libraries have “sufficient information resources in support of scientific research” (7 respondents), “closely collaborates with scientific departments (4) and teachers” (2), have “trained personnel” (1), “closely interacts with native speakers of foreign languages” (1). The biggest problem in creating academic writing centers is the lack of financial resources and developed infrastructure, which are necessary for the launch and effective operation of these centers. Answering the question “Do you think the academic writing center should be organized within the university library?” all but one expert said Yes. There is also the opinion that academic writing centers should unite staff of various departments of universities (libraries, scientific departments,

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specialists of the Department of Foreign Languages, etc.) - and it’s not necessarily to function only within the library. The functions of this center can be much wider. Respondents were offered an evaluation scale “How attractive is the idea of creating an academic writing center in your university library?” on which they noted the attractiveness of the establishment of the centers. The weighted average score was 3.52 out of 5. The results of the answers to the scale question “How relevant is the creation of academic writing centers in the country’s universities?” determined a weighted average, which was 4.2 points out of the 5 highest possible. Thus, the analysis of the answers to the scale questions revealed that the creation of the academic writing centers is relevant and important for the country as a whole – 4.2 points, however, when the degree of attractiveness of the establishment of the centers in their own universities was determined, the experts’ assessment dropped sharply and amounted to only 3.52 points. Analysis of answers to the question “In your opinion, what resources does the university library have for the creation and functioning of the academic writing center?” revealed the following results (Figure 3).

Figure 2. Available library resources for the creation of academic writing centers. Numbers of respondents for each option given. N = 15.

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Figure 3. Available library resources for creating academic writing centers. A number of respondents for each given option. More than one answer possible. N = 15.

        

Information resources in support of scientific research – 9; Collaboration with the science department – 5; Collaboration with teachers – 4; Trained staff – 2; Collaboration with teachers of foreign languages – 2; Financial resources – 1person; Developed infrastructure – 1; Collaboration with experts in different fields – 1; Other – 2.

5. DISCUSSION The growth of the popularity of academic writing centers internationally does not yet mean the institutional readiness of universities in the Republic

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of Moldova to open such structures in their system. Thus, it can be argued that the experts recognize the importance and necessity of creating academic writing centers, but they also understand the difficulty of realizing this idea in practice in their universities. This is partially due to the changed conjuncture on the education services market of the Republic and the influence of certain external and internal environmental factors of the functioning of universities. The optimization of university activities in the country and the difficult financial situation of educational institutions, in addition to the outflow of qualified specialists, leads to an unstable market situation. Combined with migration, the aging of personnel and negative demographic processes, the situation does not contribute to the implementation of innovative services in the field of scientific production. Also, low salaries of specialists and the growth of the volume of work to be done are factors that hinder the development of new services. Therefore, creating academic writing centers requires careful preparation, thoughtful management, and government support. The library leaders’ that responded to the survey as experts’ have the following ideas and views on the academic writing service which can be implemented in libraries in the Republic of Moldova: 1. Students have different types of written works for most of the studied subjects. In general, scientific papers imply certain form and content rigor. Therefore, the academic writing center, through the services it offers, should aim to be a useful resource for both students and teachers. All major universities in the world offer such services to help students to consistently articulate, define their research theme and research questions, structure logically their works and/or speech, document themselves in order to share their research and respect the rules of academic honesty and ethics. 2. The services that can be provided by the centers are as follows:  Individual sessions – when the student faces dilemmas about how a paper is being done, what it should include, how to identify resources on similar topics. The students then should be

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3.

4.

5.

6.

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able to request an individual session with one of the tutors working at the center.  Occasional lectures on various academic writing topics backed by researchers and experienced teachers. Themes like “How do I find an interesting research topic” are dedicated especially to the students of the final years who have to choose their subject for the bachelor’s thesis.  Modular training on various topics related to academic writing and research. These training sessions, compared to occasional lectures, have a longer duration and include applied activities with participants.  Support materials about the development of scientific papers. The services offered by the center can benefit all students, license and master, full time or part-time. The academic writing center offers the opportunity to engage in structured conversations about writing with an experienced reader and/or researcher. Through a collaborative conversation, students develop strategies to reason and review written materials so that ideas become more convincing. The center is aimed not only to students who have difficulty in drafting papers and critical thinking. Experienced researchers and authors are constantly interested in the feedback from their colleagues for improving the quality and clarity of the materials they generate. The academic writing center works exactly like a peer review system, providing a space for constructive debate for those who want to communicate effectively through written texts. Tutors do not provide support for the actual content of the paper but relate to how students structure arguments, formulate phrases, search for sources, make citations, etc. They answer to the following questions: What are the distinctive elements of the academic discourse? How to structure a scientific work? Why is it important to refer to other papers? What are the characteristics of a research question that advances honestly the scientific knowledge? How do we choose bibliographic sources and integrate them correctly into

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Angela Repanovici, Ane Landøy and Natalia Cheradi our own text? The center offers the opportunity to participate in an academic writing course for students and practitioners interested in developing the ability to design and write a scientific paper. 7. The proposed approach is pragmatic, result oriented, in which theoretical information is accompanied by applied exercises and resources to enable course participants to put into practice what they have learned to achieve the desired results. 8. In order to fully benefit from the information and applications proposed during the course, it is desirable for participants to know English at a level that allows them to read a scientific article. They also need to use the university library in order to access certain scientific databases (this can also be shown during the course). 9. The structure of the course to which librarians also may participate may be as follows:  Introduction to academic writing. Academic writing styles.  Identification of bibliographic sources. Academic databases. Taking notes.  Structure of the research paper. Using academic language.  Formulation of the research question. Formulating of the thesis of academic work.  Reviewing the literature. Incorporating information taken from other authors. Ethics of academic writing.  Cross-presentation of the elaborated papers.

Recommendations of experts on the creation of academic writing centers can be combined into the following groups: 1. Informing and promoting the idea of creating centers at all levels: from the state level to the level of masters and doctoral students. 2. Clear coordination and interaction with the Ministry, the administration of universities and the department for science. 3. Development of a national strategy. Cooperation of academic writing centers in universities in the Republic of Moldova and other countries.

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4. Training of potential employees of academic writing centers, studying the international experience. 5. Well-thought-out management-marketing:  Training on Information Literacy  Training and consultations on the writing of academic texts;  Consultancy on the development of research skills;  Assistance with quoting sources and editing bibliographic lists;  Training on forms and techniques for avoiding plagiarism;  Informing on publication in peer-reviewed scientific papers and in journals with impact factor;  Proof-reading services;  Proof-listening services;  Individual meetings (consultations on the bachelor’s or master’s thesis - what should be included in the paper, how to identify the resources on the subject, etc.);  Modular training on various topics related to academic writing and scientific research;  Tutorials aimed at the process of elaboration of scientific papers and articles;  Introduction of online courses for researchers. In this context, an academic writing center, through the services it provides, should propose to be a useful resource for both students and professors. Such services will help students to consistently articulate, define their research theme and research questions, structure their work and discourse logically, document themselves in order to carry out research, comply with the rules of academic honesty and ethics. It is necessary to clearly distinguish the Scientific Centres of the universities and their functions, from the functions of the academic writing centers. The creation of centers for academic writing in Higher Education Institutions of the Republic of Moldova, whose mission will be to improve the quality of scientific production and promote Moldovan science, is difficult without effective external support. Government support and grants from ministries would be a significant help in the creation of such centers.

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A promising direction in the creation and development of centers can be international projects and their implementation (ex. writing center pedagogy in the United States). A good idea may be the establishment of an Inter-University Academic Writing Centre that will permit to save resources for its creation and unite specialists from various universities, including specialists on academic writing. This will also help to eliminate interdisciplinary and interdepartmental barriers. There are examples of creating Consortiums of Academic Writing.

CONCLUSION AND PLANS FOR THE WAY FORWARD One of the factors developing university libraries in the Republic of Moldova has been through the project “Modernisation of academic library services in Moldova – CPEA 2015/10014”, funded by The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project period is 2016-2019, and the project includes 18 academic libraries in the Republic of Moldova. Through this project, Moldovan academic libraries and their leaders have been asked to develop strategic plans. They have been taught about information literacy and bibliometrics, and they have visited academic libraries in Brasov, Romania, and Bergen, Norway. They have planned marketing and advocacy events, and have gained access to more electronic resources, both through project funding and through self-funded consortia agreements. The national network and collaboration have been strengthened with joint workshops, and some international networks have also emerged. Moldovan academic library leaders agree that academic writing centers should aim at becoming a bridge between scientific traditions and new traditions of academic writing, which will bring new experience, new knowledge and new meanings to the work of the researcher. The ability to function effectively in an international academic environment will greatly enhance the competitiveness of scientists. Moldovan science needs an innovative mechanism, which the academic writing center is, for its effective

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promotion into the world scientific space and occupying a worthy position there. Moldovan scholars, using the tools of academic writing, can become visible in the scientific world community. The libraries of the country can become a base for the creation of academic centers, which will allow optimizing the resources of universities, attracting library specialists in the field of information literacy and uniting specialists in the field of academic writing in the country. The establishment of academic writing centers will not only improve the efficiency and quality of scientific activities in the country but will also help to overcome interdisciplinary and interdepartmental barriers and promote the widest and fastest dissemination of scientific knowledge. These are important aspects of developing such centers. The way forward to establish academic writing centers in the Republic of Moldova, according to the library leaders that responded to the survey, and according to the literature, includes establishing collaborations with other stakeholders and departments of the university. Here, student support may be vital. Also, space and equipment need to be procured, and funding for the tutors must be found. If the university plans on using student tutors, training must be provided. Some institutions have successfully implemented a credit-system (ECTS) for the student tutors. These and more are important decisions to be made by the university management. The library needs to define its own role and possible contribution to this endeavor.

REFERENCES Babcock, R. D. & Thonus, T. (2012). Researching the Writing Center: Towards an Evidence-Based Practice. New York, Washington: Peter Lang. Connaway, L. & Radford, M. (2017). Research Methods in Library and Information Science (6 ed.). Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited. Denchuk, A. (2011). The Role of Language and Academic Literacy in the Success of Generation 1.5 Students at Two Canadian Universities

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(Order No. MR77333). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1022335734). Retrieved from https:// search. proquest. com/ docview/1022335734?accountid=8579. Gross, J. M. S. (2018). Document Analysis. In Frey, B. B. (Ed.). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation (pp. 544). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. DOI http://dx.doi. org.pva.uib.no/10.4135/9781506326139.n209. Hook, S. & Elmborg, J. K. (2005). Centers for Learning : Writing Centers and Libraries in Collaboration. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries. Kuhlthau, C. C. (2004). Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited. Milewicz, E. J. (2009). “But is it a library?” the contested meanings and changing culture of the academic library (Order No. 3360006). Available from ProQuest Central; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (305092448). Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/ docview/305092448?accountid=8579. Neurohr, K. A. (2017). First-generation undergraduate library users: Experiences and perceptions of the library as place. Available: https:// shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/54583/Neurohr_okstate_0664D_1 5232.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Rienecker, L. (2009). How to Start a University Writing Centre. Available: https://sisu.ut.ee/sites/default/files/writingnetwork/files/how_to_start_a _university_writing_centre.pdf. University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Writing Center Department of English College of Letters and Science (2013). The Writing Center at UW-Madison: An Overview. Available: https://writing.wisc.edu/About Us/PDF/uwmadison_writing_center_overview_july2013.pdf.

In: Improving the Academic Writing … ISBN: 978-1-53615-671-3 Editors: Tatiana Sanches et al. © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 3

FACING THE THESIS WITH POSITIVE THINKING AND DISPOSITIONS TO ACT: CONTRIBUTIONS OF INFORMATION LITERACY TRAINING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS’ SKILLS DEVELOPMENT Tatiana Sanches1,* and Maria Manuel Borges2 1

Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal 2 Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

ABSTRACT This study starts from the assumption that students need help when faced with the challenging task of producing a thesis or dissertation. When delivering information literacy training, librarians can introduce two kinds *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

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Tatiana Sanches and Maria Manuel Borges of contents that promote important skills development: dispositions included on the New Framework on Information Literacy and concepts from Positive Psychology, merging them to empower the necessary confidence in order to pursue the academic degree and conclude the thesis or dissertation. Based on a literature review about the concept of flow, proposed by Positive Psychology, as well on the dispositions to act, and related to each of the frames immersed on Information Literacy Framework, the study focuses on a case describing how a Portuguese university library responded to the needs of post-graduate students. The strategy was based on capacity building, as part of training in information literacy, as a manner of reducing stress factors and anxiety when faced with a challenging task such as producing a thesis. The analysis of the training contents, and on the results of students’ assessment of this training as well as their self-assessment, shows positive results regarding their empowerment, as they acquire skills to face the task of writing their thesis. The results show a major contribution, as these students’ assessment and self-assessment regarding training are upward of 3,9, in a 1 to 4 scale. Thus, training in information literacy skills is justified, not only because of new gains in skills but also because of the consequences in students’ behavior: the confidence they acquire and the possibility of converting a challenging task into a flow process. This case could be a good example of reflection and inspiration for other libraries wishing to enhance best practices in university students’ education.

Keywords: thesis, academic writing, information skills, information literacy, ACRL framework, positive thinking

1. INTRODUCTION In a context where more and more students are furthering their schooling, and increasingly information is processed, edited and made available, the role of higher education librarians gains renewed significance. Information is available in greater quantity and in multiple formats - printed and digital, video and audio - accessible through several ports - repositories, databases, files, libraries, and various sources. This is why more training is needed to guide information users into its proper use. In order to fulfill their academic goals in higher education, students must not only mobilize knowledge learned in the classroom but also obtained individually by

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accessing diverse sources, especially information sources available in their libraries. Gathering and selecting information resources become increasingly important and meaningful for attaining a Master’s or Ph.D. degree because better choices concerning information provide a more solid ground for theoretical and methodological support to achieve this goal. However, many students are faced with doubts, hesitations, fears and other feelings of insecurity or frustration throughout this process. In fact, there is already a social awareness, expressed by current media news, which gives an account of the effects of graduate and postgraduate studies on students’ mental health. As an example, based on a transversal investigation, Wong (2018, p. 1) reports that “Ph.D. candidates suffer from anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation at astonishingly high rates”. This study aims to reflect on this combination of events and how to deal with it, namely suggesting the way librarians can use teachings from Positive Psychology to prepare post-graduate students as regards the development of their information literacy. Two fundamental objectives stand out: the first is to contribute to librarians’ awareness of what Positive Psychology is, its advantages and practical application; the second is to embed this application in teaching information literacy. It is well known that if students know how to search, select, organize, evaluate and present information, in an ethical and legal manner, they will have better conditions to investigate, produce and submit new knowledge. Thus, our reflection aims at highlighting the support of higher education libraries in developing information skills that strengthen students’ transversal abilities, with which they will feel better prepared to deal with the challenging and potentially stressful situation of producing a thesis or dissertation. This is done by exploring the particularities that support the production of a thesis and the way postgraduate students confront it, and by presenting a case study where skill acquisition through training provided by librarians yielded good results.

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2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 2.1. Areas of Skills for Higher Education Students An educational proposal by Fadel, Bialik, and Trilling (2015) states that 21st-century students must develop capacities to deal with the challenges associated with the unpredictability that the future holds. These authors present a four-dimensional educational framework: character, skills, abilities, and meta-cognition. These four dimensions address the issues of knowledge (what we know and understand); skills (how we use what we know); character (how we behave and engage in the world); and metacognition (how we reflect on matters and adapt). Due to its scope, this vision includes the features that define the profile of a 21st-century student and has commonalities with the set of skills of various organisms, when seeking to define which skills post-graduate students or researchers should have. Knowledge, behaviors, and attributes of researchers are also defined by Vitae, an organization whose purpose is to support the development of UK researchers. This organization defines four domains encompassing the knowledge, intellectual abilities, techniques and professional standards to do research, as well as the personal qualities, knowledge, and skills to work with others and ensure the wider impact of research. Domain A includes knowledge, intellectual abilities, and techniques to do research. Domain B refers to personal effectiveness, underlying the personal qualities and approach to be an effective researcher. Domain C focuses on research governance and organization, including the knowledge of the standards, requirements, and professionalism to do research. Finally, Domain D encompasses engagement, influence, and impact, in other words, the knowledge and skills to work with others and ensure the wider impact of research (Vitae, 2010). Research Skills required by Ph.D. students, as defined by the UK Research Councils, include a set of abilities to be developed. They have produced a Joint Skills Statement (RCUK, 2016) which outlines training to be undertaken in the following seven areas: (A) Research Skills and Techniques (E) Communication Skills (B) Research Environment (F)

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Networking and Team-working (C) Research Management (G) Career Management (D) Personal Effectiveness. In a more limited context, directed at information skills, the Information Literacy Model was developed in the United Kingdom by the Standing Conference of National and University Libraries (SCONUL). This State-owned working group developed a tool which stratifies information literacy in seven spheres of skills (that can be progressively built), from the most basic (the ability to recognise a need for information) to the most complex one (the ability to synthesize and to build on prior information, thus contributing to the creation of new knowledge) (SCONUL Working Group on Information Literacy, 2011). In this framework, it becomes clear to situate undergraduate students at the basic level (initial skills) and graduate or post-graduate students and research at the more advanced levels. We can thus understand that nowadays, for higher education students, particularly those carrying out research, it is not enough to focus on the skills that allow them to search, acquire and secure knowledge, to use subsequently. It is also necessary that they understand how knowledge is learned and applied to various fields of life, so they can successfully and significantly reproduce this process in any circumstance, by mobilizing a set of diverse skills, which they develop and integrate as new challenges arise.

2.2. The Challenge of Producing a Thesis or Dissertation Many authors have already engaged in the elaboration of explanatory documents or briefs to support the production of these, explaining all the stages involved, from researching, to writing the thesis, including literature review, choosing research methodologies, data treatment, citations and references, to submitting it and publicly defending it (e.g., Lee, 2010). Such indications continue to be important and can be updated with indications about the search for support networks (Tribe & Tunariu, 2017). Cone & Foster (2006) actually suggest a Research Readiness Checklist, where candidates should evaluate themselves previously. This checklist includes questions regarding three topics: How well do you write?; Do you have the

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necessary methodological preparation?; General preparation. Although highly focused on skills aimed at successfully accomplishing tasks, these authors recognise the importance of analysing thoughts which can boycott completion of the thesis, warning and even asking the reader: “Is it keeping the research process deliberately drawn out so that you can stay in school and not have to face the cold, cruel world of job seeking and economic selfsufficiency?” (Cone & Foster, 2006, p. 27). Indeed, only recently have studies emerged referring to subjective aspects of the experience a student in this situation has, going into the emotional dimension. Sternberg (1981) had already observed this situation, reflecting deeply about the emotional side of writing a thesis, and about the number of students whose CV mentions they did All but the Dissertation. In light of this, he presents an interesting concept that he calls the dissertation wave. This is a description of the writer’s ups and downs, including the “three D” – dissertation depression, doubt or desperation – and sometimes riding crests of relative elation or satisfaction with the project (Sternberg, 1981, p. 157). The author develops this theory in detail, even stating that it seems normal that candidates show psychological disturbances while writing their thesis, and warning that if preventive measures are not taken, there is a danger that dissertation-precipitated disturbances can persist beyond the end of the thesis. So, what kind of potentially harmful behavior can be observed in the context of thesis-writing? Sternberg (1981, p. 190) summarises it: “Dissertation-caused anxieties and/or depressions are focused in three spheres: (a) negative feelings about the dissertation itself, particularly its doubtful outcome; (b) a diminishment of self-esteem; (c) a real or believed deterioration in significant other relationships, in which the demands of the dissertation are seen as the culprit.”

The author reflects on possible solutions, including the support given by members of the academic community (technicians, advisor, sympathetic professors, supportive students) or by other professionals (psychologists or psychiatrists, therapists on support groups), and concludes that a good

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choice for these cases is the support group. However, he warns (Sternberg, 1981, p. 191): “Even though dissertation groups may prove particularly helpful, the candidate’s best and most reliable resource in times of dissertation dumps is the accumulated wisdom and “capital” of his file. He is commanded to immerse himself in it on a regular schedule, even when matters seem blackest or most circular, solutions will emerge”

Testimony in the first-person states that “writing a doctoral thesis is a testament to years of anxiety, excitement, confusion, terror, and passion” (Weatherall, 2018, p. 2). But the author also states that is important to find your own voice and identity, against all odds. This means that although there are strong conventions and “the right way” to do this challenging task, it is necessary to reflect on the path and reconsider the conventional approach, leading students to write their thesis in a unique manner, that could even be funny or entertaining. The proposal of Ó and Cabeleira (2015) also aimed at reflecting on doctoral studies and the seminary practice as a meeting place and possibility of pedagogical innovation. This innovation is the key to self-reflection and the search for an individual, personal and meaningful creative writing that, although hostage to the status and rules of academia, can break with the paradigm of conformism and live up to the university’s desideratum, seeking plurality and individuation, creativity and inventiveness. Another study, involving hundreds of students in the doctoral process (Stubb, Pyhältö, & Lonka, 2012) mentions this malaise in students and sets out some results. It shows that doctoral candidates, who experience a personal meaning of working with the thesis and study engagement, seem to experience more well-being. Therefore, this well-being is related to the awareness of the processes and of one’s own capacities and may be a predictor of academic success, as Van der Westhuizen (2013) shows. The research of Castaño, Badia, & Garganté (2015) also corroborates these results, when associates the construction of meaning and purpose with the feelings that higher education students have when writing. These authors

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conclude that “feelings offer evidence that writing is perceived as satisfying and important activity, although demanding,” (Castaño, Badia, & Garganté, 2015, p. 731) meaning that, in authors words, “it seems advisable to design training purposes aimed at helping faculty to be aware of, and deal with the feelings associated with research writing, in order to be able to cope with these genres requirements” (idem, p. 732). We thus conclude that, instead of looking outside, the resources postgraduate students must gather should be looked for within themselves, with the development of skills such as resilience, persistence and self-confidence, features that can help overcome obstacles and are studied and listed, particularly by Positive Psychology, as positive characteristics, strengths or virtues, and forces.

2.3. Positive Psychology and the Concept of Flow Positive Psychology intends to gather themes like optimism, hope, happiness, and creativity under a scientific lens, in a structured way, for study and intervention. Unlike certain traditional psychological approaches focused on problems and pathologies, this line of investigation focuses on strengths and virtues. Its aim is to theoretically and empirically attain a better quality of life, in the subjective, individual and group dimensions (Marujo, Neto, Caetano & Rivero, 2007, p. 117). This field of study seeks to address positive experiences (such as positive emotions, happiness, hope, joy), positive individual features (such as character, strengths, and virtues), and positive institutions (Marujo, Neto, Caetano & Rivero, 2007, p. 118). In recent years, Csikszentmihalyi has been the main reference in Positive Psychology. This author proposes a theorization about what happens in terms of cognitive processes when people are happy (Csikszentmihalyi, 2013). He explains changes in perception and emotion through the concept of flow (developed by other authors who also engaged in these themes, such as Engeser, 2012). The state of flow, applied to individuals, is also called optimal state of inner experience, and it happens where there is order in consciousness. It has to do with investing our

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attention in realistic goals, together with individual skills matched with opportunities for action. As our attention is focused on relevant, attainable, albeit challenging stimuli, our engagement is completely directed at the goal and so activity flows (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). The individual inflow feels cognitively efficient, motivated and happy all at once. The contributions of Positive Psychology show that it is necessary to invest in attention, consciousness, purpose, interaction, and feedback. Together, all these concepts contribute to the optimal experience. This state is the opposite of psychic entropy, that is, a state where it is virtually impossible to reach goals, and where there is no accomplishment, satisfaction or fruition, or any kind of positive feeling. Actually, whenever something disturbs our consciousness, threatening its goals, we face with a situation of internal chaos, or psychic entropy, a disorganization of the self that harms its efficiency. This may be the case when we are concerned with the demands of our thesis advisor, with the organization of time for work, the need to know how to search or write bibliographic references accurately, the need to structure and write the thesis. A never-ending list of situations can contribute to a state of blockage that does not allow tasks to develop naturally, even the simplest ones. The way we view tasks contributes decisively to the results of our performance. That is why it is important to understand to what extent these concepts can apply to the concrete reality of higher education students, especially post-graduate students facing the demand of a thesis, and how university libraries, or even supervisors, can contribute to lessening these difficulties. The importance of this approach to the present study lies in the way it can be used to foster positive academic experiences, resulting in individual well-being, based on the description and explanation of the factors contributing to the creation of order in consciousness – the basis of the optimal state of inner experience. From here we can establish criteria to understand which good practices can apply to the education of students, particularly those involved in producing theses and dissertations in higher education, because this experience can be perceived as over-challenging and lead to states of stress and anxiety, or even to give up altogether.

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Other studies based on the same assumptions show that this area has great potential. Frank, Baldwin, & Bailey (2017) submit a proposal whereby mindfulness and slow movement could integrate information literacy education, by choosing an in-depth approach to information over speed and superficiality. Leontopoulou (2015) goes a step further and shows that direct intervention with Positive Psychology in higher education students yields excellent results in the way these find resources to deal with challenging situations. In the words of the author, marked positive changes were revealed with regards to youths’ well-being as a result of the intervention, particularly, elevated levels of hope, perceptions of social support and ability to handle social stress successfully, as well as levels of three out of six key character strengths, i.e., courage, humanity/love, and transcendence were observed. Similarly, Unsworth, Turner, Williams, & Piccin-Houle (2010) show how gratitude (a feature also studied by Positive Psychology) in the advisor/student relationship can be associated with academic achievement and completion of the degree. Almeida (2016) study on grit in the context of higher education shows how it influences learning strategies and academic performance, confirming that this positive feature relates to overcoming obstacles and establishing long-term goals. The impact of Positive Psychology is analyzed by Guse (2010) with regard to its inclusion in the professional training of future psychologists, with fine results. The concept of resilience is also vastly explored and associated with overcoming failures and the importance of hardiness in learning contexts (Maddi, 2013). Finally, Brooks, Brooks, & Goldstein (2012) reveal the power of a positive mindset for engagement, motivation, and resilience in students, predicting that students will thrive in such an environment. Therefore, we believe that theory can inspire us to seek solutions to the difficulties that students experience. In fact, an approach in this context will only be meaningful if it brings about a psychoeducational intervention, particularly in building and strengthening skills that lead to better performances. In other words, it is important to encourage learning contexts that allow people to understand how they can do their best, by drawing on their individual virtues.

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2.4. Information Literacy and Dispositions to Act For years, information professionals used several references as tools for planning, assessing and communicating the need to integrate information literacy skills in academic curricula: the skills for locating/accessing/ assessing/using information were performance indicators, together with assessment results. In 2016, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL, 2016) adopted the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The product of intense work to re-conceptualize both content and skills, this Framework regards information literacy as a pattern of integrated skills, which contemplate the reflective discovery of information, understanding how information is produced and valued and using information in the ethical and legal creation of new information. The main difference in this document is a behavioral change regarding a more philosophical theory of the threshold concepts – ideas that can be found in any discipline and act as a framework to ensure its wider understanding, but also ways of thinking and practicing within the same discipline: “focused on the whys of information instead of the hows” (Schaub & McClure, 2017, p. 2). Therefore, the threshold concepts approach in the teaching-learning process must focus on the student. Another difference concerns specific task-based learning objectives (such as accessing information one needs or critically assessing information and its sources). This Framework introduces a set of frames or major interconnected concepts, representing comprehensive ideas meant to be applicable to many academic disciplines (ACRL, 2016; Fisher, 2017; Swanson, 2017):      

Authority, which is built and is contextual; Creation of Information as a process; Information has value; Research as an interactive process; Academic Communication as a platform for dialogue; Searching for strategic exploration.

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Tatiana Sanches and Maria Manuel Borges Table 1. ACRL Framework Concepts and Dispositions to Act Authority Is Constructed and Contextual Information resources reflect their creators’ expertise and credibility and are evaluated based on the information need and the context in which the information will be used. Authority is constructed in that various communities may recognize different types of authority. It is contextual in that the information need may help to determine the level of authority required. Dispositions to Act Learners who are developing their information literate abilities are inclined  To develop and maintain an open mind when encountering varied and sometimes conflicting perspectives;  To motivate themselves to find authoritative sources, recognizing that authority may be conferred or manifested in unexpected ways;  To develop awareness of the importance of assessing content with a skeptical stance and with a self-awareness of their own biases and worldview;  To question traditional notions of granting authority and recognize the value of diverse ideas and worldviews;  are conscious that maintaining these attitudes and actions requires frequent self-evaluation. Information Creation as a Process Information in any format is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method. The iterative processes of researching, creating, revising, and disseminating information vary, and the resulting product reflects these differences. Dispositions to Act Learners who are developing their information literate abilities are inclined  To seek out characteristics of information products that indicate the underlying creation process;  To value the process of matching information needs with an appropriate product;  To accept that the creation of information may begin initially through communicating in a range of formats or modes;  To accept the ambiguity surrounding the potential value of information creation expressed in emerging formats or modes;  To resist the tendency to equate format with the underlying creation process;  To understand that different methods of information dissemination with different purposes are available for their use. Information Has Value Information possesses several dimensions of value, including as a commodity, as a means of education, as a means to influence, and as a means of negotiating and understanding the world. Legal and socioeconomic interests influence information production and dissemination. Dispositions to Act Learners who are developing their information literate abilities  respect the original ideas of others;  value the skills, time, and effort needed to produce knowledge;  see themselves as contributors to the information marketplace rather than only consumers of it;  are inclined to examine their own information privilege. Research as Inquiry Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers, in turn, develop additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.

Facing the Thesis with Positive Thinking and Dispositions to Act Dispositions to Act Learners who are developing their information literate abilities  consider research as open-ended exploration and engagement with information;  appreciate that a question may appear to be simple but still disruptive and important to research;  value intellectual curiosity in developing questions and learning new investigative methods;  maintain an open mind and a critical stance;  value persistence, adaptability, and flexibility and recognize that ambiguity can benefit the research process;  seek multiple perspectives during information gathering and assessment;  follow ethical and legal guidelines in gathering and using the information;  seek appropriate help when needed;  demonstrate intellectual humility (i.e., recognize their own intellectual or experiential limitations). Scholarship as Conversation Communities of scholars, researchers, or professionals engage in sustained discourse with new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of varied perspectives and interpretations. Dispositions to Act Learners who are developing their information literate abilities  recognize they are often entering into an ongoing scholarly conversation and not a finished conversation;  seek out conversations taking place in their research area;  see themselves as contributors to scholarship rather than only consumers of it;  recognize that scholarly conversations take place in various venues;  suspend judgment on the value of a particular piece of scholarship until the larger context for the scholarly conversation is better understood;  understand the responsibility that comes with entering the conversation through participatory channels;  value user-generated content and evaluate contributions made by others;  recognize that systems privilege authorities and that not having fluency in the language and process of a discipline disempowers their ability to participate and engage. Searching as Strategic Exploration Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding develops. Dispositions to Act Learners who are developing their information literate abilities  exhibit mental flexibility and creativity  understand that first attempts at searching do not always produce adequate results  realize that information sources vary greatly in content and format and have varying relevance and value, depending on the needs and nature of the search  seek guidance from experts, such as librarians, researchers, and professionals  recognize the value of browsing and other serendipitous methods of information gathering  persist in the face of search challenges, and know when they have enough information to complete the information task

Source: Adapted from ACRL (2016).

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Each one of these frames includes a knowledge practice section to demonstrate how mastering a concept leads to its application in new situations and to the creation of more knowledge; it also includes a set of dispositions for working on skills regarding the learning process Thus, this Framework introduces a new terminology: knowledge dispositions and practices, threshold concepts, and meta-literacy. Threshold concepts refer to the central ideas and to processes in any given discipline, which define that very discipline, but are so deep-rooted that they are tacitly conceived or go unacknowledged by the practitioner. What matters is that students understand them and are encouraged to think and act as professionals would – they imply the student committing to the discipline. The dispositions in the teaching-learning process are also greatly important, focusing on the students’ preferences and attitudes regarding the way they learn. This has implications for the way these skills are taught. Each frame aims to involve information professionals in the exploration of an original concept underlying information literacy, which will ideally empower students to understand the underlying concepts in information, beyond the simple mechanics of locating, using and citing information (Fisher, 2017; Schaub & McClure, 2017). The following table shows the dispositions for acting, associated with each knowledge practice regarding the frames.

2.5. Building Skills As librarians, we can help students to face their difficulties and live a positive and fulfilling experience when it comes to producing their thesis. Much of this activity is centered on training in the use of learning resources, both by providing users with adequate means and training them accordingly and through their own capacity building in new and different skills. Mauch & Park (2003) had already mentioned the support libraries could give: “Successful students learn quickly how to use help from librarians and how to use their own computers independently and to operate from distant workstations to make the most of library resources.” (Mauch & Park, 2003,

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p. 85). The support of librarians has taken on various forms, including structured training for learning information skills. However, Allan (2010) stresses that sometimes this learning takes place at the start of the year, with students with very little experience in academic libraries and information services, which hinders the full potential of this opportunity. Therefore, he recommends more specific courses and gives an example of specific training for Ph.D. students. So, it is important to analyze how to articulate Positive Psychology and information skills with students’ needs. In short, theory shows that certain conditions are essential for an optimal state of inner experience to happen: 1. A balance between challenge and skills; 2. A clear connection between the task carried out and the goal intended (the rules are clear); 3. Positive reinforcement through quick feedback, and 4. Concentration and focus

Figure 1. Experience of Flow, Csikszentmihalyi (2013, p. 399).

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Positive Psychology shows us that the balance between the feeling of a challenge brought on by a given activity and the perception of the capacity to solve it is the key to the experience of flow. This means that, when we know our capacities, we can adjust the tasks to our profile of skills, to do better what we know better. So, for this well-being in action to be extended, the complexity of the activity must increase alongside an increase in capacities and skills, for the resolution and acceptance of new, different challenges. Let’s look at the scheme below, proposed by Csikszentmihalyi to explain this phenomenon: When the challenge presented is reduced and the skill is equally poor, there may be apathy or worry towards the task. In the extreme opposite, when both factors – challenges and skills – are very high, this allows an experience of flow. Whenever one of these factors is at a disadvantage in comparison to the other, a totally positive or satisfactory experience cannot persist. If the challenge is too high for low skills, the main feeling is anxiety; if there are highly developed skills for tasks that are not very stimulating, where the challenge is very low, the feeling that arises is boredom. So, what should the role of librarians be in training students who are producing a thesis? The main idea we want to present is that librarians can help build skills, namely in information literacy, but also in transversal academic skills, which should also be included in their training. This intervention focuses, therefore, on balancing skills and challenge. The ability to notice we are becoming anxious or bored and to do something about it, to refocus, lies in our self-awareness and is the first step. Goleman (2014, p. 110) states that this metacognition allows us to keep our mind in a more adequate state for the task at hand, whether it is algebraic equations, following a recipe or high fashion. Whichever are our finest talents, our own self-awareness helps us use them to the maximum extent. According to Csikszentmihalyi (2002), for positive experiences to happen, it is important to understand the system we are framed in, investing attention in what we can and want to do, adjusting to the opportunities. Only then is it possible to let ourselves dive into the activity. Another very important aspect is positive reinforcement. Close monitoring of performance implies

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verifying the results that are being achieved and recognizing just that through immediate feedback. Finally, the fact that we are paying attention to what is going on (concentration) leads to our engagement, which can only persist with a constant investment of our attention. The intensity of our engagement is precisely what drives away insecurity. On the other hand, the absence of insecurity allows us to engage in depth. Learning to enjoy the immediate experience is about knowing how to look upon what happens as a potential source of joy, with determination and discipline.

3. METHODS This article presents a case study, supported methodologically by a literature review on the competencies required of students who are developing a thesis or dissertation. This review included an analysis of the dispositions in the new framework on information literacy, as well as concepts associated with Positive Psychology, both with a focus on transversal competences. The study analyses training in information literacy that combines two concerns: the application of strategies inspired by Positive Psychology and the response to the requirements identified as dispositions to act contained in the framework on information literacy, as a conceptual basis for intervention in the university context. The case study is distinguished by the depth with which it addresses an example in its context, reflecting the perspective of those involved, thus being idiosyncratic and specific (Amado & Freire, 2017); at the same time, it also allows for the analysis of real contemporary situations and considers their contextualization and influences (Yin, 2003). We present the intervention of a university library in Portugal, adjusted to the stages of the construction of a thesis or dissertation, structured in such a way as to support these students, showing a sustained example to make it reproducible for future applications.

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3.1. Participants This paper resorts to qualitative and quantitative methods to describe and explain how we implemented the module “Managing information for theses and dissertations”, and how users evaluated the sessions that took place. The qualitative methods seek to use the preceding literature review as a lens through which to observe a formative experience. The quantitative methods are based on a survey applied to 77 post-graduate students (master’s and doctoral) who attended a specific training session of the library aimed at supporting this route. It is important to mention that the library has systematically been doing training sessions since the 2007/2008 school year (Sanches, Revez, & Lopes, 2015), adapting the programme throughout the years to user needs. The library’s training programmes are based on international standards for information literacy education and therefore address training in techniques for searching, selecting, evaluating, using and presenting information. Currently, five independent modules are taught in a logical sequence. In the case of theses and dissertations, the need to develop more specific topics stemmed from the feedback we received over the years, as well as the theoretical knowledge developed to support post-graduate students.

4. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS Our case study focused on 2015-2017, comprising all the sessions of this module, which involved a total of 77 students from two higher education institutions: the Faculty of Psychology and the Institute of Education, of Lisbon University, with a 100% response rate. We will, therefore, analyze a total of nine sessions, distributed according to the following table:

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Table 2. Workshops held on “Managing information for Theses and Dissertations” Year 2015 2016 2017 Total

Sessions 2 2 5 9

Enrolled students 11 18 48 77

4.1. Content Description The contents of the two-hour module focused on the matters described next and were based on our accumulated experience and on methodological guidelines such as those by Abbott (2014), Lopes (2013), APA (2010), Burgess, Arthur, & Sieminski (2006), Sternberg (2003), and Lamas, Tarujo, Carvalho, & Corredoira (2002). In the end, it is essential to confirm if the following are clear: validity of our arguments; internal consistency; initial assumptions/starting points; implications of the study for the research area; the importance of the theme and proposals for its development. Before finishing, it is fundamental to check clarity and concision once again, as well as transparency of data, the strength of arguments; the academic basis of claims, the quality of theoretical underpinning, and to think about the defense of the thesis – the Viva. We should mention that throughout the training session motivational sentences are introduced, giving examples of the skills students already have and which can be improved. A practical application is also carried out, resorting to the themes the students present, of the topics listed. The aim is to transmit confidence, based on working methods and techniques, to allow students to feel safer in their academic course.

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Table 3. Contents of the workshop “Managing information for theses and dissertations” Beginning the thesis  Choice of theme and starting point  Methodologies to use  How to carry out fieldwork  How to set a timetable and work plan  Importance of bibliography  Looking at writing styles, the composition of arguments, exposition of the data  Giving an example of a typical structure for a thesis. Preparing the project:  Importance of good planning and thinking out the project clearly  Knowing the thematic field; main authors; main influences  Eventually presenting a historical timeline  Looking for examples of other works or theses with similar themes  Importance of gathering and managing important knowledge from the beginning. Literature review:  Concept and how to carry out a comprehensive listing and make a synthesis of a given topic,  Stressing the importance of making choices (analysis and critical selection of bibliography)  Despite being an initial step, it is to be resumed whenever necessary. Reading and recovering information:  How to choose parts of the document whose argument can be useful, considering the relevance and added value (that relates, contradicts or supports research)  Strategies for quick readings (seeing the index, reading the abstract, looking for keywords), and for checking dates and other indicators which allow us to assess information  Taking notes  Distinguishing citations from paraphrasing and one’s own ideas, to avoid plagiarism  Strategies for recovering information and organizing it  Time management. Organizing information:  Different sources of information, different needs of information, and different degrees of dependence and familiarity with new technologies  Importance of creating a legible, efficient personal archive, to recover information quickly. Writing strategies:  Hints for developing writing skills, such as segmenting work, within each chapter, in an organized manner, or writing according to thematic topics. Obstacles for optimal performance:  Distractions, disorganization, procrastination, perfectionism or rigidity,  Constraints to manage time and suggestions to bypass them, by creating calendars to distribute tasks. Updating knowledge:  Being aware of the most recent developments of a certain research topic, to find new research opportunities and to have new ideas.

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4.2. Workshops Assessment The data presented are the result of an on-site questionnaire survey, handed to individuals at the end of the sessions, with a twofold purpose: to perceive user assessment regarding the training session, and to perceive user self-assessment regarding acquired skills. Based on a systematic assessment performed at the end of the sessions, the outcome of the training sessions carried out the period considered was very positive. This assessment used a Likert scale, with scores between 1 (dissatisfied) and 4 (very satisfied), with ten issues, for accomplishing the first objective. The results of the questionnaires given to users in every session are proof of the positive feedback regarding this programme. Analysis of the data referring to each of the set of questions of this training module – the first set concerning the quality of the training and the second set concerning self-assessment – is shown below, separately, in the following tables. To achieve the second goal, understanding the perception that students had of their learning, we posed the following questions: We quantified and analyzed the questions to obtain a general panorama of the module’s assessment. Table 4. Set of questions regarding the quality of the training

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q 10

Quality of the workshops General quality of the trainer’s exposition Content organisation The relevance of the topics covered Clarity of the exposition Adequacy of training to student needs Trust in the information provided by the trainer Supporting documentation Quality of the tutorials presented Adequacy of training to students’ level of knowledge The comfort of the room.

Satisfaction 4,0 3,9 3,9 3,9 3,8 4,0 3,9 3,9 3,8 3,9

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Table 5. Set of questions regarding self-assessment

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q 10

Self-Assessment Identifying and avoiding plagiarism Identifying forms of selective reading Finding strategies to take notes with better quality Identifying strategies to better manage and organize information Identifying strategies to recover information Identifying clues to improve writing processes Identifying available information management tools Understanding the advantages of using online resources in updating knowledge Identifying constraints to time management Identifying possible methodologies for a better performance in producing a thesis or dissertation

Satisfaction 3,7 3,7 3,8 3,7 3,6 3,7 3,4 3,4 3,8 3,7

5. DISCUSSION In the workshop analyzed, the concerns were focused on the effective training of students, particularly those who intend to present a thesis or dissertation. The strategy resulted from the convergence of the theoretical contributions of Positive Psychology, while the knowledge practices and dispositions to act emanated from the Framework for Information Literacy. Hence, they have been particularly focused on learning information skills by encouraging the dispositions to act, as the Framework recommends. In this study, we could verify that it is possible to provide postgraduate students with contents in information literacy with an effective adjustment to building skills necessary for the development and presentation of a thesis. In detail, we can mention that the demonstration of effective competences in information searching, locating, selecting, retrieving and evaluating, was based on the understanding of concepts of contextual authority, information as value and research as strategic exploration, and on dispositions such as the need to keep an open mind, be aware of the importance of contents, critically assess and recognize that there are necessarily problems in the face

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of the traditional notion of ownership and authority. It was important to pass on such dispositions as persistence, adaptability, and flexibility, as well as the recognition of the value of navigation and information retrieval methods, understanding that the first attempts to search do not always result. Through the writing of the thesis example, the concept of involvement in the process of investigation and construction of knowledge was deepened, and an attempt was made to invest in knowledge about academic communication as a platform for dialogue and again in research as a strategic exploration, highlighting the disposition for critical analysis and demand for evidence. It was based on the recognition that academic communication occurs at various levels, the value of the content emanating from the user and the understanding that the responsibility of academic creation is associated with the contribution of various channels and other types of participation in science. The notions associated with the creation of information as a process were also approached by demonstrating the systematization and communication of information in various formats and emphasizing the concept of research as an interactive process. The dispositions that were worked on included persistence, adaptability, and flexibility, as well as the practice of critical thinking and the recognition that learning and discovery are processes based on errors. Finally, it should be stressed that the demonstration of dispositions was carried out throughout the whole teaching-learning process, enhancing the need to create confidence to apply knowledge to new problems and situations. The results presented show that the impact of this training module is very positive. The importance given by students to the topics addressed is clear in their levels of satisfaction, with an average of 3,9, reinforcing the importance of the library’s role in supporting the academic path of students, particularly post-graduate students. On the other hand, a 3,6 average regarding the quality obtained in self-assessment is a solid indicator that students also generally perceive the importance of this training, has managed to integrate this knowledge into their learnings.

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CONCLUSION The organization of contents of information literacy related to theses and dissertations, together with concepts from Positive Psychology, namely flow, and the specific adjustment to student needs were decisive factors for these results. In the present case, we sought to show evidence of training aimed at teaching strategies that would increase students’ skills, so these would feel their capacities strengthened and face the challenge of producing a thesis with more confidence. The results of the assessment of the training, and of the self-assessment regarding the knowledge acquired, make us very hopeful about attaining this goal, precisely because students understand that the task is at their fingertips as long as they have the necessary tools. The results achieved show that knowledge of these matters is useful and had to impact on the students. We hope that the sequel to these actions is a reduction of dropouts in post-graduate courses, and the submittal of more theses, based on the awareness of how to write a thesis and what this implies in terms of management and information literacy. We conclude that this case may be used to stimulate reflection and inspiration for other libraries seeking to facilitate improvements in university students’ academic writing, namely by integrating strategies proposed by Positive Psychology and tools adapted from de ACRL framework for information literacy.

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Ó, J. R. & Cabeleira, H. (2015). Toward a pedagogy of advanced studies in the University: the production of an inventive academic writing in the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities. REDU: Revista de Docencia Universitaria, 13(1), 125-152. RCUK. (2016). Joint Statement of the UK Research Councils’ Training Requirements for Research Students. Retrieved from http://www. dmu.ac.uk/documents/research-documents/graduate-school/currentstudents/research-development-programme/jointstatement.pdf. Sanches, T., Revez, J. & Lopes, C. (2015). Sete anos de experiência, sete lições para o futuro: formando utilizadores em literacia de informação [Seven years of experience, seven lessons for the future: training users in information Literacy]. In 12º Congresso Nacional de Bibliotecários, Arquivistas e Documentalistas. Lisboa: BAD, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.bad.pt/publicacoes/index.php/congressosbad/article/view/1 312. SCONUL Working Group on Information Literacy. (2011). The SCONUL Seven pillars of information literacy core model for higher education. London: Society of College, National and University Libraries. Retrieved from http://www.sconul.ac.uk/sites/default/files/ documents/ coremodel.pdf. Schaub, G. & McClure, H. (2017). Information literacy threshold concepts and the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. O-bib, 4(1). doi: 10.5282/obib/2017H1S1-9. Sternberg, D. (1981). How to complete and survive a doctoral dissertation. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2003). The psychologist’s companion: a guide to scientific writing for students and researchers (4th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stubb, J., Pyhältö, K. & Lonka, K. (2012). The Experienced Meaning of Working with a Ph.D. Thesis. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 56(4), 439-456. doi:10.1080/00313831.2011.599422.

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Swanson, T. (2017). Sharing the ACRL Framework with faculty: Opening campus conversations. C&RL News, 78(1), 12-4, 48. doi: /10.5860/ crln.78.1.9600. Tribe, R. & Tunariu, A. D. (2017). Preparing for and writing up your doctoral thesis. Psychology of Education Review, 41(2), 4-13. Unsworth, K. L., Turner, N., Williams, H. M. & Piccin-Houle, S. (2010). Giving thanks: the relational context of gratitude in postgraduate supervision. Studies In Higher Education, 35(8), 871-888. doi:10.1080/03075070903348396. Van der Westhuizen, S. (2013). Psychological well-being and postgraduate students’ academic achievement in research methodology at an ODL institution. South African Journal Of Higher Education, 27(5), 13241342. VITAE. (2010). Researcher Development Framework. Retrieved from www.vitae.ac.uk/ CMS/files/upload/Vitae-Researcher-DevelopmentFramework.pdf. Weatherall, R. (2018). Writing the doctoral thesis differently. Management Learning, 1350507618799867. Wong, A. (2018). Graduate school can have terrible effects on peoples’ mental health. The Atlantic, Nov. 27th. Retrieved from https://www. theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/anxiety-depression-mentalhealth-graduate-school/576769/. Yin, R. K. (2003). Case study research: Design and methods. London: SAGE.

PART TWO: PRACTICING ACADEMIC WRITING PATHWAYS

In: Improving the Academic Writing … ISBN: 978-1-53615-671-3 Editors: Tatiana Sanches et al. © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 4

STARTING FROM SCRATCH: SEARCHING FOR THE PURPOSE OF WRITING Maria da Luz Antunes1,2*, Carlos Lopes2,3 and Tatiana Sanches2,4 1

Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal 2 APPsyCI – Applied Psychology Research Center Capabilities & Inclusion. ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisboa, Portugal 3 ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisboa, Portugal 4 Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

ABSTRACT The authors articulate academic writing with the need to support it in scientific information, assuming that the basis for the accomplishment of good work is based on good research. Knowing how to find relevant information is not a matter of chance. Methods and techniques can be developed to initiate a good research strategy, which is done basead on the knowledge of the information needed, on where to look for it, on how to *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

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Maria da Luz Antunes, Carlos Lopes and Tatiana Sanches select it and on to evaluate it for better use. This chapter shows how to train skills to deal with information and how to develop skills that allow the use and benefit of knowledge resources by understanding that information is used for various purposes.

Keywords: information literacy, information search, search strings

1. INTRODUCTION Scientific communication involves four important efforts: researching, reading, writing and reviewing. Writing and review will be approached in a separate chapter. Research and reading are, however, essential and constitute the foundation of writing and revision. In fact, as you will see in this chapter, scientific writing is necessarily based on an inquiry that is generally based on two broad areas: the experimental research, where questions are asked and tested and methods are applied, experimented and proven, and where new ways of looking at science are discovered; and, on the other hand, theoretical support, a fundamental basis for framing research, situating it in the discipline, understanding at what point of knowledge the researcher is and with which reference authors dialogue, regarding their field of investigation. To begin to write implies to be willing to understand these two aspects and to know how to know, that is, to document itself, in order to better situate the starting point for experimental research. Hence, all research must be the first step in academic writing. Knowing how to identify the information need, where to find the most relevant information, how to select and evaluate the most pertinent information to build the writing of the work is the first step to good writing in the academic scope. This chapter explains and fits these objectives, presenting a set of practical and valuable strategies to choose the best information, from practical guidelines for research that will sustain academic writing.

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2. BEFORE THE SEARCH … It is not easy to locate scientific information that meets the basic criteria of rigor, authority, relevance, and timeliness. However, these are essential requirements for framing any scientific research. Scientific communication involves the presentation of the results of an investigation on a given topic, based on a critical analysis, where the researcher must answer a research question or hypothesis. In order to do so, it is necessary to gather evidence, from various sources, that allow for making critical interpretations and judgments, building a well-grounded argumentative text. The diversity of documentary sources, timeliness, reliability, and appropriateness to the subject under investigation are core points that should guide any good research. So why is it so often that university students neglect this important stage, essential for academic writing? The main reasons, given by Lefort (1992), coincide with situations we all know: students, using only the documents recommended by teachers, achieve a remarkable time savings and efficiency – save the time of the research and benefit from a selection prior, reliable and quality. However, the exercise of research, not only to immediately satisfy the academic work, but to pursue the studies and fulfill other objectives, like publishing, is fundamental. It is, therefore, necessary to develop an information literacy that, applied to research, proves to be fundamental for the entire professional career.

3. HOW TO CHOOSE THE SUBJECT? Ideas are needed at this stage. Some strategies are presented for the definition of ‘ideas’ (O’Leary, 2017):  

Someone who suggests a subject. Ideas from readings (notes, scientific articles and/or literature from your discipline).

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Controversial issues or new approaches to a subject. An idea that arises and is intended to be substantiated. The last paragraph of the articles is, for the most part, a suggestion on how to take that idea to another level. The personal/professional experience. Topics covered in conferences. Talking with people from other areas, with different experiences and points of view, are fundamental because they look at research from another angle.

  

The choice of the subject to be investigated should also consider the development possibilities, the aptitude and the trends of the researcher, as well as the relevance. It will be wise, even before making a final decision, to make some exploratory readings on the topics under consideration. This is because, at the outset, it is natural that the new researcher still does not know much about this topic. These first readings allow him to know the most common terms used by the specialists and thus familiarize the researcher with the concepts (Teaching & Learning, 2018).

3.1. Common Errors     

Ignore that one research subject can result in several research questions. Ignore the personal mark that any researcher must incorporate in his work. Herculean research topics involving decades of research. Ignore whether or not research contributes to the advancement of knowledge. Ignore the budget (or lack thereof) when choosing the subject to investigate.

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4. WHAT ARE YOU SEARCHING FOR? Once the research subject has been defined, we should think about the sources of information to be researched – it is here that the researcher begins to construct the scenario of his story. This story follows a basic structure, a script that allows guiding the researcher, according to what is next: 1. Define the subject to investigate, stating it as the research question. 2. Identify the main concepts. 3. Build the search expression: use the brainstorming to clarify ideas and present questions. 4. Define the level of completeness, insofar as the sources of information to be used and the type of search vary according to the research work to be carried out. Then define the type of information you need and select the type of sources you want:  Primary sources  Secondary sources  Tertiary sources  Databases  Repositories  Search engines 5. Narrow or extend search by associating or dissociating related terms through Boolean operators. 6. Draw a concept map for:  Systematize ideas  Identify subconcepts  View relationships between concepts  Find keywords and search terms The mind map or conceptual map is a powerful visual tool in which ideas or concepts are represented, a structure is recorded and the relationships between them are explored. It is meant to collect ideas and compile notes – brainstorming. Helps organize work or structure a presentation, it should be done manually, with colors to better visualize, explore in greater detail the relationships between

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Maria da Luz Antunes, Carlos Lopes and Tatiana Sanches ideas and/or concepts and stimulate the imagination and the capacity for an association. How is it done? At hand (although there is software that does it), the main subject is placed in the center, in a radial form, and branches are added according to the possible thematic subdivisions. From these lines secondary branches for the specification of the subtopics are added. In addition to words it may contain images. Some tutorials:  http://www.library.arizona.edu/help/tutorials/mindMap/ (University of Arizona)  https://canvas.hull.ac.uk/courses/423/pages/mind-mapping (University of Hull) Some softwares:  MindMap (a tool from Google Chrome)  MindNode (Mac)  XMind (Windows, Mac e Linux) 7. Translate the concepts associated with the topic into English. Generally, searches in databases should be done in English, the language of science. It is possible to search in other languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, etc.), but the universe of articles available is very small compared to English. 8. Choose where to look for the information you want. Know the resources most appropriate to the discipline in question, as well as the resources subscribed by the university.

At the same time, it is advisable for those who are starting to take notes in each of these steps. Not only to set the steps developed, and eventually to reshape them, but to adjust search thinking to the needs of writing to begin. According to Horton (1982), the notes may include facts you gather reminders or notes to yourself, questions to and for yourself, thoughts about potential statements. And “some notes you will take simply to get yourself going, to start the adrenalin flowing, to get your mind thinking” (Horton, 1982, p. 165-166).

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5. WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO SEARCH? Searching on the Internet is not easy. Those who resort to Internet search are often confronted with despair and the will to give up. The researcher must be aware that there are no miracle recipes and that the entire Internet searching process is a constant trial-error-attempt-success. Sources of information are varied and can be used to visualize the subject overview, to understand the terminology of a given scientific subject, and to search for data. Due to their complexity, they are classified at different levels, according to their degree of originality and depth. 1. Primary sources. They contain original information on the subject, that is, when information is first expressed: theses; research articles published in scientific journals and reporting new results; scientific and technical reports; conference proceedings; books and articles that present original ideas; statistics, interviews, and surveys. 2. Secondary sources. These are sources that analyze, interpret and comment on primary sources and whose main function is to summarize and structure information from primary sources. Examples: books and articles (review articles) that report or summarize the findings of others, i.e., a summary of existing knowledge; library catalogs; WorldCat, etc. 3. Tertiary sources. They are specialized works that cover a set of knowledge or concise explanations referring to subjects, authors, among others; these sources catalog, select and organize information from primary and secondary sources (Faria & Pericão, 1999). Some examples: encyclopedias; dictionaries; reference books of the different scientific disciplines that allow familiarization with the terminology and that help to form a general idea of a subject (e.g., handbook, textbook). 4. Databases. They present, as general features, the possibility of performing an advanced search, fields with structured information, quality control in information retrieval, additional results of analysis tools, journal information and indexed content, as well as citation

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Maria da Luz Antunes, Carlos Lopes and Tatiana Sanches counting by article and search by reference cited. They are subdivided into:  Referential databases. They contain the reference to the publication metadata (authors, title, publication name, year, volume, number, pages, digital object identifier, ISSN, sponsors, among others), but also abstract and keywords describing the main contents of the publication, such as terminology and classification. Its features have been improving over the years. Thus, although they are referential databases, they have incorporated add-on to editors and/or full texts in order to provide researchers with faster and more efficient access to full texts – access to full text can be free or paid and in this case, the researcher is invited to pay the amount set by the publisher. The database is merely an access facilitator. Because they are updated with great regularity (some daily), these databases index and disseminate the most recently published information – e.g., Web of Science, Scopus, MEDLINE, Embase, etc.  Full text. They contain publications in full text (theses, dissertations, scientific articles, books, chapters of books and proceeding papers, mostly). Its great advantage is to directly facilitate access to the document – e.g., EMERALD, ProQuest, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, SciELO, etc.  Factual. They contain data in the form of numbers – e.g., Eurostat, etc. 5. Institutional or specialized repositories. The repositories are a set of services that any institution (university, scientific or corporate) offers to the members of its community for the management, preservation, and dissemination of digital contents. They represent an organizational commitment for the management, preservation, and dissemination of scientific production. The repositories can be institutional when they represent the institution and specialized when subscribed to a discipline.

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Some examples of institutional repositories: Curtain University e Macquarie University (Australia), York University e Athabasca University (Canada), Universität Bielefeld e Alfred-WegenerInstitut (Germany), or Universiy of Minho and University of OPorto (Portugal), etc. Some examples of specialized repositories: AARN = Anthropology & Archaeology Research Network (anthropology), AgriXiv (agriculture), arXiv (physics), bioRxiv (biology), Cogprints (cognitive science), Computing Research Repository (computer science), Earth Prints (Earth science), EconStor (business), E-LIS (library and information science), E-Prints (technology), Kultur (arts), Mathematics Preprint Servers (maths), NASA Astrophysics Data System (astrophysics), OER Commons e OER Research (open educational resources), OnePetro (energy), PsyArXiv (psychology), PubMed Central (medicine), RePEc (economy), Social Science Open Access Repository (social sciences), Zenodo (open content from all fields of sciences), etc. Digital repositories that adopt the Open Archive Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PHM) model share the same metadata, ensuring interoperability between each other and the compilation of their metadata by more global service providers. 6. Search engines. Search engines, such as Google, analyze the full content of a page, the exact location of each word, the content of neighboring pages, and the links between pages. The results may be similar to those of the subscribed databases but, unlike these, access to the full text is not guaranteed. In recent years, Google has entered into agreements with a number of international publishers to obtain permission to access their databases and search – it has created Scholar Google, a search engine that wants to be academic and scientific. Search in Scholar Google actually retrieves articles from scientific databases, articles made available by journals or open access platforms such as repositories, and documents obtained from websites, blogs, personal pages, and other resources.

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Maria da Luz Antunes, Carlos Lopes and Tatiana Sanches Most of the documents located have, to the right of the register, one or more links that allow the researcher to access the full text. These are in many cases documents retrieved from subscribed databases and whose access is allowed by the fact that the researcher or his institution is recognized (by the IP addresses) as a subscriber of that content, that journal or that database.

As the information is analyzed, reinterpreted and republished, it loses its rigor, so academic and scientific work must mainly use primary sources in order to ensure its reliability. On the other hand, as time goes by, knowledge is also stabilizing and gaining reliability, so it is important to keep in mind these two divergent views on information. Thus, in addition to knowing the type of sources and what purpose they serve best, it is important to associate this knowledge with the so-called ‘information timeline’. Hisle and Webb (2017) explain in detail this concept: The information timeline is one way for us to think about how different kinds of publications provide different perspectives on a topic based on when they are published, from when information on a topic or event appears in initial broadcasts or web-based reports to far more comprehensive analysis and coverage in peer-reviewed scholarship and books. Understanding the information timeline lets us know when we can expect information sources to appear in publication, and more broadly improves our understanding of the role each type of source plays in our research. Different formats of information, after all, have varying levels of research depth, credibility, and proximity to the event you might be researching. (p. 32)

In fact, when an event occurs naturally we only get information about it from the radio, television or social media. After some time, on the day or the next day, the information will appear in the daily press. Only months later can text appear in periodical scientific publications, written by specialists, about this same event. Even later books appear, where the contents are more pondered and in which the very process of publication forces a more extensive time of maturation of the stories. The importance of knowing the

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information timeline is greater when we search for new information, in topics still emerging.

6. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT? The search strategy requires thorough preliminary work, and some of the steps can be repeated during the information search. How should the search be operationalized? The search for information should be very objective according to what is intended to be achieved. To help the researcher, most databases feature simple search and advanced search functions: 



Simple search allows the use of natural language and/or keywords but can retrieve many results because the system searches all fields of bibliographic records. Advanced search enables the use of a controlled language (thematic thesauri embedded in the system itself), associate terms and search for specific fields.

What are the prerequisites for finding relevant information for a particular topic?   

Know how to identify search terms. Know how to implement search strategies. Know how to evaluate search results.

These parameters should be applied and, when appropriate, repeated, refining the strategies, either about the identification of terms to be searched, either the combinations and expressions of search, or even from the understanding of results, that is, if there were ‘Silence’ (zero results) or ‘noise’ (excess results) resulting from the search.

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Table 1. Search by word versus search by subject (Abbott, 2014) Word Words used in natural language that describe your theme It allows a more flexible search (i.e., different combinations)

The information system searches the words in any field of the record It may show few results or, on the contrary, too many (‘noise’) It can produce many irrelevant results

Subject Pre-defined words (controlled vocabulary) used to describe the content of each document It allows for more rigorous research, it implies that one knows exactly what the term used to designate a certain concept The system searches only in the subject field The presented results can be refined by some limits (sub-theme, date, type of document, author, etc.) Usually produces results

6.1. Databases Search Strategies  

Start by searching for specific concepts that describe the topic (keywords). Use Boolean operators to refine the search and improve search results. Boolean operators define the interaction between words. The most common are AND, OR and NOT, but there are others also important: NEAR, WITH, IN,...

AND It combines two or more concepts/ideas, links the search terms with the word AND, decreases the number of records, increases relevance, and retrieves only the intersection of the two circles.

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OR The search retrieves articles that contain either term or all terms. It can be used to find synonyms for a particular subject as well as linguistic variants. The resulting number of records is very large.

NOT The search retrieves results that include only the first term, excluding all results that include the second term.

NEAR It retrieves two search terms in the same sentence. Searching for diabetes near child only retrieves records that contain diabetes and child in the same sentence. The order of appearance of any of the terms is indifferent. A number may be added to near to specify how closely the search terms should appear, e.g., diabetes near3 child will retrieve information when the two terms are in the same sentence separated by a maximum of three words from each other. WITH It retrieves information that contains both terms in the same field. Searching for diabetes with child only obtains records that contain diabetes and child in the same field. It is indifferent to its order of appearance.

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Also use truncation and wild cards [question mark (?), the pound/hatch symbol (#) or the asterisk (*)]. These can be used anywhere in the search term, except as the first character.

Search with the asterisk * allows variations to the search term when the search was constructed. The * symbol serves as a substitute for any series of zero or more (up to five) characters – e.g., searching cat* retrieves category, Catherine, cataract, catholic, catheter, catering, etc. And child* retrieves child, children or childhood. Search with the question mark ? serves as a substitute for one or more characters (e.g., m?cdonald retrieves both mcdonald and macdonald). In some databases, the ! or # is used. It is therefore suggested that the HELP function is consulted. 

   



 

Use controlled vocabulary (thesauri) to better identify search expressions. If it is imperative to use common language, use simple terms or compound objectively and singularly. Analyze results. Check the field descriptors and/or subjects and note the terms used to describe the document. Search again using these controlled terms. Look up the keywords of the most relevant works, discover the similarities, the use of terms in the plural/singular and the acronyms. Then look in thesauri terms and standard expressions. Consult the references of the works considered more relevant and identify those that seem relevant to the work to be developed. Later try to access the full text of the selected references and repeat the process (these are retrospective steps that allow evaluating the course and the development of concepts). Compare the results achieved using keywords and those obtained through the field of subjects (more precise). If the results are not satisfactory, it should be raised in the hierarchy of concepts. Use, in this case, related or broader terms.

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Other search filters: the publication date, the authors, the publication type (case studies, reports, peer-reviewed, conference proceedings, etc.), the journal title, among others. If the search is done by title, remember that title and source title are different elements (Abbott, 2014). Use the help button when necessary.

 

6.1.1. Common Errors   

Avoid stop words (a, an, are, be, in, if, into, of, that, the, which...) considered irrelevant to the search. Avoid searching in the simple format – highlight advanced search. Avoid phrasal constructions of a common language – highlight expressions (which may have up to four or five words) normalized in a controlled language (thesaurus).

6.2. Engines Search Strategies Also in search engines, such as Google, the search should be very objective regarding what you want to get. Finding what you really want depends on your ability to clearly define what you are looking for. Designing and planning search requires clear answers to questions such as: what information is intended (and on which links) and which keywords lead to that information. The options offered by the search engines, which allow limiting the language and the region to be searched, are irrelevant since the presented results are always the most relevant according to the research equation (Bell & Waters, 2018). Some strategies are presented below, namely: 

Try to answer: Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why?, How? in the design of the search.

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 

       



 

Reflect on what exactly one is looking for and what one intends to do with the information searched, even if one does not know to answer all the questions presented above. Use a controlled language, using thesauri. Use exact quotes in quotation marks. When using an expression composed of several terms and between quotation marks, it is understood as an exact expression, so the results reflect the words in the order entered (e.g., “evidence-based medicine”). Choose names for the search and use verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns for quotation marks. The greater the number of words used, the more the search is restricted. Start with the most important words, because word order is a relevant factor in some search engines. Choose combinations of terms to be searched, using Boolean operators. Options (e.g., Gore legacy + environment) can be excluded or added. You can limit your search to web page titles (e.g., “children diabetes” “in title” or title + (“children diabetes”). When searching for a topic that reflects a current social concern, official sites (e.g., edu + “information literacy”) should be favored. You can also define the type of file you want to find (e.g., file type: ppt site: edu “information literacy” – in this case, the search retrieves only powerpoint files from university websites on this subject). Use of parentheses, which are used to compose search expressions and combine related terms or search for synonyms. They help clarify the order of the terms searched and also clarify results – e.g., (Myspace OR Facebook) AND privacy. You can also choose from the advanced search right away, creating the limits that you consider relevant. Google can also search for pages by subject category (http://www.googleguide.com/directory.html).

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To ensure access to the information selected in the following days, the address found in the bookmarks list must be entered. Do not forget to indicate the access link, as well as the date of this access, if the information is quoted in some work.

6.2.1. Common Errors   

Avoid generic terms that are likely to cause too much ‘noise’. Avoid using acronyms when using an exact quotation mark – different disciplines may have the same acronyms. Do not protect the information immediately (volubility of the location of the information).

6.3. Refining Search Strategies If the results are not satisfactory, although the described methodology is applied, it is necessary to do the search again. The following methodology closely follows the previous process, but there are processes of permanent improvement, namely: 





Ordering from the database. The result list defaults to the date (i.e., from the newest to the oldest); this criterion can be changed according to the need (e.g., the number of citations received). The citation count per article. It is a characteristic element of databases; is a powerful indicator of the relevance and impact of that article in a given area of research. The subject terms. When they are related to the same subject, the articles are indexed in the databases with the same descriptors (they are subject terms, the keywords, and the topics). Consulting a relevant article in his discipline allows the researcher to find the correct form of the term to use, as well as identify the descriptors that qualify it.

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Updating the results. Most large databases are updated daily. For the researcher, depending on the stage of his research, it is essential to update the results of his search (e.g., subscription of alerts with a defined periodicity and/or RSS feeds for a given search).

Do not forget: everything is not on the Internet! Whereby:      

Books should not be forgotten. Many of the books are not available in full text on the Internet. Books have historical content that may not be located elsewhere. Libraries have computerized catalogs, which are important sources of information. Do not forget the scientific journals in paper format – not all are available in digital format. Do not forget also that libraries and librarians can be great partners in the research process and friends for life.

7. WHERE DO YOU FIND THE FULL-TEXT? With the references to be read, analyzed and reflected, it is necessary to retrieve them in full text. How to access preferentially without associated costs? 1. In the researcher’s own institution. Most institutions have a specialized library that subscribes to a set of specialized journals and databases that allows access to the full text of articles. If the researcher does not have access to the full text of an article, he must request it in the library (do not forget the precious partnership with libraries and librarians). 2. The research of articles in open access. Many articles can be found on the Internet thanks to open access. In addition to directly searching directories and journals in open access, plug-ins and

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browser extensions can be installed to make it easier to locate those articles. Some examples:  Dimensions (www.dimensions.ai/) which, in its free version, allows you to perform searches and separate the results between open access and paid access;  Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/), open repository developed by CERN where the researcher can deposit their works, preprints, software, and research data;  BioRxiv (www.biorxiv.org/), a repository developed by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for open access preprints for life sciences;  OpenDoar (http://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar/), a global directory of open access repositories;  ScienceOpen (www.scienceopen.com/), which aggregates more than 52 million articles, the majority in open access;  DOAJ (www.doaj.org), open access journals directory;  Delayed Open Access Journal, which contemplates the journals that make articles available to the scientific community with a period of an embargo of a few months and that can vary between six months and fifteen years in some journals. Over time, the articles that have passed through this embargo are released and made available for free. A complete list of such journals is not known, but perhaps these two may be useful: Elsevier Delayed Access Journals (www.elsevier.com/about/open-science/openaccess/open-archive) e Highwire Press Free Content (http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl). 3. Contact the author. Many authors share their work if the copyright policy they have signed up to allow. So far, the most common option was to write directly to the author and request a copy of their work. But there are also social networks of researchers that allow direct contact, and you do not need to know their emails, such as ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net/) or the Academia (www.academia.edu/).

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4. Kopernio (https://kopernio.com/). This tool allows you to install a browser extension that will search the pdf version of the article. It works great on the PubMed platform and the Web of Science. Through a floating message on the screen, a green button appears to download the pdf. Search between multiple databases, but also between subscriptions of the researcher’s institution. When an article is unloaded, a version is saved in the system user’s locker; in a future search, Kopernio will include the investigator’s locker, in case that pdf has already been stored. 5. Unpaywall (https://unpaywall.org/). Another browser extension that searches for open access of articles. Can be installed in Chrome and Firefox. It also allows integration with the institution’s own subscriptions, as well as institutional repositories to facilitate the localization of articles. 6. Open Access Button (https://openaccessbutton.org/). Let’s you search the site directly or install the browser extension. In addition, if the article is found but includes a fee, the system offers the option to ask the authors to place their article in an institutional repository to enable its location in open access.

8. WHERE AND WHAT FOR ARE YOU GOING TO LOOK? The search for reliable information is appropriate to all fields of knowledge. What should be asked about the information found? How do we assess it? 

  

Identify the information author: if a form of contact is made available; whether he is a specialist in the field; if published on behalf of an institution or on an individual basis. Clearly identify the author’s institutional affiliation. Identify the information sponsor if it is a website. Identify the website nature: it provides forms of contact (electronic, mail); whether it is an institutional, educational, recreational,

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associative, commercial or personal website; if the competence and website reliability or its authors on the subject are recognized; if it redirects to trusted links; and if those links designated as trusted have created the link to the first website. Identify, if identified as an official website, whether it belongs to universally known domains [gov = government websites; edu = university websites of Anglo-Saxon countries; org = scientific societies websites; int/eu = international organizations websites (e.g., who.int/europa.eu), etc.]. Identify the updating of the website in the bottom margin: if the document needs an update and the date of the last update. The websites of trustworthy institutions are updated with great regularity; websites updated two years ago are outdated and have been forgotten. Identify the website subjects, its depth, the level of its update and the sources of information on which it is based (other journals, other databases, etc.). Identify the objectives that originated the information retrieved and the target audience for which it is intended. Analyze the presentation of the recovered information: how it presents itself; if the wording is clear; if it is well structured; if the sources are well referenced. Identify access to information: whether it is open or paid access; if the website navigation is easy and oriented; if the website information loads quickly. Identify the relevance of the information retrieved: if it is exactly what is intended; if the level of this information corresponds to the researcher’s requirements; if the website addresses the subject under study in a sufficiently elaborate way; whether the information will be valid in another scientific, social or geographical context other than that of the researcher.

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AUTHORITY RELEVANCE ACCURACY CURRENCY

Authority, relevance, accuracy, and currency are benchmarks for the pursuit of good searches, resulting in a solid and well-built basis for academic writing. Information search is, therefore, the first step in the direction of research, since the creation of new scientific knowledge is also based on what, before us, others have said and wrote. They are our peers, the members of a scientific community with who dialogue becomes possible through the circulation of information.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have tried to show the importance of a good search strategy to support academic writing. In answering the questions that structured the chapter, some guidance was given when referring to the choice of a subject, to the associated concepts, and to the search terms. From this on, we started to select the sources of information and the relevance of each of them for each research objective. We then explained the best way to develop and apply a search expression, as well as some practical guidelines for finding the information. Finally, the importance of knowing how to relocate and reuse information once the results of the retrieved information are evaluated became clear. This course thus begins the complex process of

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writing in an academic environment, evidencing that without good searches leading to the most reliable information it is not possible to develop a wellwritten research work.

REFERENCES Abbott, A. (2014). Digital paper: A manual for research and writing with library and internet materials. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bell, J. & Waters, S. (2018). Doing your research project: A guide for firsttime researchers (7th ed.). London: Open University Press. Hisle, D. & Webb, K. (2017). Information literacy concepts: An open educational resource. Joyner Library, ECU. Retrieved from http://me dia.lib.ecu.edu/DE/tutorial/OER/Information_Literacy_Concepts.pdf. Horton, S. R. (1982). Thinking through writing. Johns Hopkins University Press. Lefort, G. (1992). Saber documentar-se [Know how to document yourself]. Mem Martins: CETOP. O’Leary, Z. (2017). The essential guide to doing your research project (3rd). Los Angeles: Sage. Teaching & Learning, University Libraries. (2018). Choosing & using sources: A guide to academic research. The Ohio State University. Retrieved from https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/.

In: Improving the Academic Writing … ISBN: 978-1-53615-671-3 Editors: Tatiana Sanches et al. © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 5

WRITING WITH ETHICS: STRATEGIES TO QUOTING AND REFERRING Carlos Lopes1,*, Maria da Luz Antunes2 and Tatiana Sanches3 ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisboa, Portugal Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal 3 Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal 1

2

ABSTRACT The purpose of this chapter is to systematize the main guidelines of scientific writing suggested by the American Psychological Association. We begin by briefly reviewing the process that led to the development of such guidelines and the advantages of using them. Then we describe and illustrate the guidelines regarding the general writing and formatting styles, references and source citations. The chapter presents a set of examples in the area of information literacy, from citations to electronic references, complemented with a set of normative procedures that facilitate the task of organization and writing, ensuring the methodological and terminological accuracy in the standardization of criteria according to the APA standarts. *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

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Keywords: APA guidelines, APA style, bibliographic references, citations

1. INTRODUCTION If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. Isaac Newton

A significant part of the writing of scientific papers as well as academic reports is spent in the application of style norms. This article “Writing with ethics: strategies for quoting and referring” is intended as a guide for students and researchers wishing to submit a scientific or technical report, a master’s or doctoral dissertation or the result of an investigation, in the writing of quotations and of references of different styles according to the new edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed., 2010). It presents a set of examples in the area of information literacy, from citations to electronic references, complemented with a set of normative procedures that facilitate the task of organization and writing, ensuring the methodological and terminological rigor in the standardization of criteria according to the norms of the APA. It also seeks to answer, in a practical way, among others, the following questions: o o o o

o o o o o

Why cite the sources? How to assess the sources of information? How to combat plagiarism and self-plagiarism? What principles and rules govern the new APA regulations in the context of citations and bibliographical references in printed and electronic sources? What are the relationships between quotes and references? How should citations be written in the text? What are the new rules for the standardization and writing of bibliographic references? What is the Digital Object Identifier (DOI)? How to cite and elaborate the references of the electronic sources?

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2. WHY CITE THE SOURCES When citing information, we should cite its source. We should cite the study of people whose ideas, theories, or research have directly influenced our study. Citation of an article means we read it. In addition to recognizing the ideas of others we use to build knowledge, the sources increases the credibility of the author (APA, 2010). The keyword is the “reader”. For Sternberg and Sternberg (2016) we can consider four reasons that justify providing this kind of information: 



First, the reader can check if the source has been referenced accurately. You can doubt the information and want to check if it was properly quoted. Second, the reader can prove that the source is credible. If only one

As a result, the reader has no way of proving the quality of evidence supports.  

Third, the reader can find out and discover the existence of a reference unknown and who may be interested in reading. Fourth, the reader is shown to be familiar with the bibliography on the subject and thus increases the credibility of the author as a source of information.

3. WHEN AND HOW TO REFERENCE Another look at the importance of citing sources as a form of commitment is suggested by Cordón Garcia, Arévalo, Goméz Diaz, and López (2012), with the aim of: 

Publicizing previously published studies that served as support for the information, hypotheses and conclusions presented. For this

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  

purpose it implies identifying the original sources of ideas, methods and techniques from previous studies with the utmost precision. To give reliability to the investigation by documenting its origin and thus allowing its verification. Enable the reader to expand the contents of the research by consulting the sources directly. Comply with the principle of recognition of the merits of others, thus avoiding plagiarism.

In summary, the sources of information support our decision making by identifying what is important to know and what has been published in our area of knowledge discern between the important and the accessory know the main trends in our area and also use the conventional methodological mechanisms: standards, recommendations, citations. Table 1. Information Sources Evaluation Criteria Authority

How to evaluate information sources?  Who is the author?  Is he an expert in the field?  What institution does he belongs to?

Audience Update

 Who is it addressed to?

Editor

 Who edits the document?  Is it a business or institutional publisher?  Are the contents reviewed prior to publication?

 Is the information updated?  Does the document haves the publication or revision

date?

Criteria Content

Conditions of use

        

How to evaluate information sources? Does it address the issue in depth? Is the information presented objectively? Is writing done clearly? Is the information well organized? Does it have indexes, tables, charts? Does it have a bibliography? Does it explains what kind of use can be made of the document? Are all rights reserved? Are there any Creative Commons licenses?

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4. HOW TO EVALUATE INFORMATION SOURCES? Once the sources of information are located, we have to analyze and evaluate them. For this purpose we present a set of criteria (see Table 1) that allow to evaluate the validity and pertinence of the information (Cordón Garcia et al., 2012).

5. PLAGIARISM AND SELF-PLAGIARISM Plagiarism refers to the practice of claiming authorship for the ideas and ideas of others: “Authors present the study of another person as if it were their own” (APA, 2010, p. 170). Another complementary concept is autoplastering: it refers to the practice of presenting one’s own published study as if it were new. Several authors have drawn attention to this phenomenon of plagiarism (APA, 2010; Beins, 2012; Jesson, Matheson, & Lacey, 2011; Parson, 2012). Plagiarism consists in using, not to mention, material originally produced by other authors. According to its extent and severity, plagiarism can range from occasional plagiarism, terrorist plagiarism, and self-plagiarism, namely: 





Occasional plagiarism, practically exclusive of the phase in which the research report is written, occurs when transcribing or paraphrasing lines of text by other authors without reference to them. The complete copy of whole paragraphs, or step by step imitation of the drawing followed in other investigations, establishes the contours of the terrorist plagiarism (eg. Hoffman, 2013; Kail, 2015). The self-plagiarism refers to the presentation of own study already published as if it were new (see Beins, 2012).

Plagiarism is synonymous with lack of knowledge, lack of investigative practice and negligence. Plagiarism consists of not referring to the sources

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of information used belonging to third parties (i.e., ideas, images, figures, graphs, tables, tables, text). To avoid accusations of plagiarism and autoplastering it is necessary to become familiar with the ethical standards on duplicate publication and legal norms, as well as to make proper use (see Beins, 2012; Lopes, 2013). How to use the information in an ethical way? We must use information effectively, avoid all forms of plagiarism such as:       

Refer to sources in the bibliography that were not used in the study or on the contrary, otherwise, omit sources used at study; Download a job from the Internet; Ask someone to do a job for us; Buy a job from a commercial site; Copy and paste from multiple sources; Say in other words the idea of an author without referring to the source; Present the same study in various disciplines.

In order to face self-grappling, we must realize that: “The essence of the new document must constitute an original contribution to knowledge, and only the amount of previously published material necessary to understand that contribution must be included, especially in the discussion of theory and methodology” (APA, 2010, p. 170). It is essential that any study, refers to the authors where the information was retrieved, paying attention not only to intellectual honesty but also to copyright that is safeguarded by the law (APA, 2010, 2012; see also Sternberg & Sternberg, 2016). In summary, when using knowledge whose authorship does not belong to us, we must make explicit that this information is not ours, thus paying tribute to its authors, avoiding the accusation of plagiarism and giving the reader a possibility to check and confirm the sources (APA, 2010).

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6. REFERENCING SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF APA STYLE The American Psychological Association (APA) is the leading organization of psychology professionals in the United States. Founded in 1869, since 1952, this association makes available to its members and the scientific community, in general, the Publication Manual, which already has six editions in English. The bibliographic reference system that underlies the APA standard is the author-date system. It consists of, after transcription or paraphrase, a reference notation consisting of the author’s last name and the date of publication of the cited study in curved brackets. The list of references is sorted alphabetically by the author’s last name. During the writing of the text, particularly during the Introduction and the Discussion, we should mention the studies of other authors who helped to establish the theoretical and empirical frameworks, arguments and comparisons. These mentions can be made in two ways: by quoting directly the lines from these authors - transcription, or by integrating the ideas or affirmations of the authors in their own speech, and if this is the case, a paraphrase (APA, 2010; see also Purdue Online Writing Lab., 2010). Both methods are legitimate to insert into the text of other authors, but the paraphrase is more difficult to practice than the transcription since it implies a fusion of the statements of other authors in our own discourse, a procedure that requires a subordination of our thought to that others have written. Although it requires a great deal of effort, paraphrase has some advantages over transcription, especially with regard to the fluidity of discourse, which tends to be difficult to read when the text is interrupted by abundant transcriptions (eg, APA, 2010; Beins, 2012; Jesson, Matheson, & Lacey, 2011). ***

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Box A.1. Content of the Citation and Identifier of the Study

 Body Text1 In 2016 the ACRL presented a new Framework for Information Literacy for higher education to replace its earlier standards (ACRL, 2000), which is strikingly different than the old. The new edition “is based on a cluster of interconnected core concepts, with flexible options for implementation, rather than on a set of standards or learning outcomes” (Aharony & Gur, 2017, pp. 1-2). The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy provides a rich site together of inquiry for bringing together information literacy theory and practice:

Content of the citation

“The Framework is developed around a set of ‘frames,’ which are those critical gateway or portal concepts through which students must pass to develop genuine expertise within a discipline, profession, or knowledge domain. Each frame includes a knowledge practices section used to demonstrate how the mastery of the concept leads to application in new situations and knowledge generation. Each frame also includes a set of dispositions that address the affective areas of learning”. (ACRL, 2016, p. 12)

References Aharony, N., & Gur, H. (2017). The relationships between personality, perceptual, cognitive and technological variables and students’ level of information literacy. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, Online First, 29. doi: 10.1177/096100061774 2450. Association of College and Research Libraries. (2016). Framework for information literacy for higher education. Chicago, IL: American Library Association. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ ilframework. 1

Extract from the document: Association of College and Research Libraries [ACRL]. (2016). Framework for information literacy for higher education. Chicago, IL: American Library Association. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework

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This compilation study is intended to be used as a quick reference guide to the application of the APA standard in the writing of citations and references in academic and scientific reports (see toolkit: www.apastyle.org), but it does not replace the original manual: American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

In any case, you must indicate in the space immediately after the transcription or paraphrase that this piece is not yours. To this end, according to the author-date2 system, a notation is used in the text that consists of writing the author’s surname followed by the year of publication in curved parentheses corresponding to it. In the list of cited sources (ie in the list of bibliographic references) a sufficient set of elements for easy identification of the author and the study in question is presented (see Box A.1). This functional set, consisting of quotations from the text of other authors, by the reference notation indicated in the text of the citation and by the elements of identification that are included in the list of references, will be detailed and exemplified in the following pages.

6.1. Relationship between Citations and Bibliographic References The identifier allows the reader to locate, in the list of bibliographic references, the entry corresponding to the study in which the content of the citation is found. The APA (2010) standard supports three formats for identifiers: 1. surname (year) 2. (last name, year) 2

In addition to the Name and Year system (e.g., APA) there are several reference systems of which the most used are: Numeric-Alphabetical, by Order of Mention - Vancouver (eg, Biomedical Sciences), which include notation systems, International Standard Organization (ISO), namely ISO 690; University of Chicago, Turabian, Modern Languages Association (MLA), Harvard, among others.

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3. ... year ... last name ... (last name ... year ...)

You have to choose what suits you best according to the wording of the text. Consider three situations: 1. At the beginning or middle of the paragraph. For example:  Lucas and Willinsky (2010) refer that this digital age carries with it a new set of epistemological and ethical responsibilities that are the result of changes in how scholarly work is now being published.  In 2015, Watson noted that Open Science was the way to research in a complete, available and transparent way, allowing other researchers to build more knowledge based on existing knowledge.



It is observed that the content of the citation is the same, only changing the format chosen for the identifier.

2. At the end of the paragraph:  Nowadays, Open Science suggests the free circulation of knowledge and the transparency of the research process (Basili, 2017).

3. In the same paragraph and concerning the same authors:  According to Saunders in 2011, a changing pedagogy was the starting point for the development of information literacy and changes in higher education in general. Saunders assumes with the expansions of curricula, which became more complicated, which created the need to educate patrons on how to use them.



When an author is quoted more than once in the same paragraph, the year may be omitted from the second quotation.

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7. HOW TO MAKE QUOTATIONS IN THE TEXT? The incorporation of material quoted in the text is, in the case of paraphrase, indicated only by the inclusion of the reference notation. In the case of transcription, the form that this incorporation takes depends fundamentally on the extension of the same. The citation allows identifying the publication where the idea was obtained, the excerpt, etc. and indicates its exact location at the source. When the citation is used in accordance with a list of bibliographic references it must contain enough data to ensure the exact match between it and the reference of the identified document.

7.1. Short Transcripts According to the APA (APA, 2010) standards, a short transcript is one that takes up less than 40 words of text from the report. This type of citation must be enclosed in double quotation marks (“...”), inserted in the text itself, that is, in the continuity of the author’s lines and using the same type of characters in the text of the research report. For example:  Text and quotations The idea, already explained by Serrano Sanz, Holocher-Ertl, Kieslinger, García, and Silva (2014), is that through the concept of Open Science comes the concept of Citizen Science: “Citizen Science refers to the general public engagement in scientific research activities when citizens actively contribute to science either with their intellectual effort or surrounding knowledge or with their tools and resources” (p. 8).

Reference list: Serrano Sanz, F., Holocher-Ertl, T., Kieslinger, B., Sanz García, F., & Silva, C. G. (2014). White paper on citizen science for Europe. Brussels:

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Carlos Lopes, Maria da Luz Antunes and Tatiana Sanches European Commission. Retrieved from www.zsi.at/object/ project/ 2340/attach/White_Paper-Final-Print.pdf

7.2. Long Transcripts Long transcripts are those that occupy a large number of words (over 40). They are also known by direct or block quotes, extracts or excerpts. This type of citation is not enclosed in quotation marks and should be highlighted from the text, which can be carved out by transcribing some spaces to the right of the left margin (half an inch, 5 spaces or 1,3) of the text page and the beginning is not indented. For example:  In text: In their foundational study, Johnston and Webber (2003) provide the following definition of information literacy: Long transcript

Information literacy is the adoption of appropriate information behaviour to obtain, through whatever channel or medium, information well fitted to information needs, together with critical awareness of the importance of wise and ethical use of information in society. (p. 336)

In the end of the reference list, the reference shows like: Webber, S., & Johnston, B. (2000). Conceptions of information literacy: New perspectives and implications. Journal of Information Science, 26, 381–397. You can choose to present the transcribed material with a smaller character type than the one used in the rest of the text. Whatever the option, which may even be a combination of several of these methods, the transcribed material must be collected (between five and seven spaces

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keystrokes) from the left margin of the paper and separated from the preceding paragraphs and followed by a triple space. Block transcripts should seek to maintain the subdivision into paragraphs of the original text. Citations that appear within a long transcript are enclosed in single quotation marks (...’.....’...). Although the distinction between short transcriptions and long transcriptions is fundamentally based on their extension, this should not be the only criterion used in the choice between one or the other. According to Beins (2012), other factors deserve to be considered: 





Homogeneity: If, for example, it is decided to consider long transcription all those that occupy more than 40 words of text, this criterion must be kept throughout the entire study and should not be presented quotes of 30 highlighted words from the text (see also APA, 2010); Purpose: If the transcriptions have a relative autonomy in relation to the author’s text or are intended to be analyzed comparatively, all carvings must be presented, including those with only one or two extension lines; Attention of the reader: Too many long transcriptions distract the reader and will almost inevitably lead you to skip those parts of the text. In the same way, a study full of transcriptions of unequal size (short and in text, long and prominent) will lead to the dispersion of the reader and in this case it is best to present all the transcriptions included in the natural alignment of the text, even if they have more than ten lines.

7.3. Text Body Abbreviations The Latin expressions in the body of the text (Box A.2), recommended by the APA standard, are:

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Box A.2. Latin Expressions in Body Text       

cf. [confere] = use compare e.g. [exempli gratia] = use for example etc. [et cetera] = use and so forth i.e. [id est] = use that is viz. [videlicit] = use namely vs. [versus] = use versus et al. [et alii] = and others

For this purpose, they should be used sparingly and in accordance with the following points:        

They are not written in italics; They are only acceptable in parentheses, except for the abbreviation “et al.”; Plurals of abbreviations have an “s” ending (with the exception of the plural for page - p - which should be pp.); Do not use the traditional abbreviations for subject, experimenter, and observer (S, E, O); Do not use periods within degree titles and organization titles (PhD, APA); Do not use periods within measurements (ft, s, kg, km, lb) except inches; Whenever possible, do not start a sentence with an abbreviation and never do it with lowercase abbreviations; In abbreviations of names and countries shall be punctuated.

Example: J. K. Elmborg from U.S.A.  Elmborg et al. (2017) it argues that to be educators, librarians must focus less on information transfer and more on developing critical consciousness in students.

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7.4. Authors’ Citations in the Text We present three situations of authors in the text, considering two types of citation: (a) direct, and (b) indirect, in which we can distinguish the following cases of references within a text:

7.4.1. A Paper by 1 or 2 Authors A. Direct citation (i.e., the author’s name is part of the narrative)  In 2017, Basili characterizes it as an organized, cumulative and structured system of processes, objects, and links with each other, as an open and non-isolated system purposely created to produce knowledge, which depends on scientific information and prepared to share information with the surrounding community

B. Indirect citation (i.e., the author’s name is not part of the narrative)  The progressive weakening of the quality of academic information, therefore, calls for the strengthening of the critical thinking of the consumers of scientific information (Basili, 2017).

In this case you should always refer to both authors in the text:  (...) With the introduction and extensive use of digital information in classrooms, which is characterized by pluralism, controversy, autonomy, fluidity, replicability, and accessibility as opposed to uniqueness, reliability, authenticity, and control commonly associated with the traditional paper-based resources, the need for information literacy in the learning process was more than apparent (Špiranec & Banek Zorica, 2010).

7.4.2. A Study of 3, 4 and 5 Authors  The idea, already explained by Serrano Sanz, Holocher-Ertl, Kieslinger, García, and Silva (2014), is that through the concept of Open Science

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comes the concept of Citizen Science [the first time cited within your paper]  The Citizen Science refers to the general public engagement in scientific research activities when citizens actively contribute to science either with their intellectual effort or surrounding knowledge or with their tools and resources (Serrano Sanz, et al., 2014). [the second time you cite the same study]

From the second time they appear in the text:  Serrano Sanzet et al. (2018) Citizen Science, a broad network of people collaborate. Participants provide experimental data and facilities for researchers, raise new questions and co-create a new scientific culture.

All are mentioned the first time the reference appears and, in the following, keep the first author and replace the following by “et al.” and the year.

7.4.3. A Study of 6 or More Authors  The studies of Elmborg et al. (2006) recognized: people produce, read, and interpret texts in communities, not in isolation. Communities reach consensus about interpretation, sometimes easily and sometimes contentiously. Literacy cannot be described, therefore, in broad terms as a set of universal skills and abstractable processes. Rather, literacy is in constant flux and embedded in cultural situations, each situation nuanced and different from others.





Always the first author and “et al.” (without emphasis and with a dot) except where this leads to confusion of the document to be cited. In the list of bibliographic references all the authors who produced the document (except in the case of more than 7 authors, see example #7.3.5).

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7.4.4. Citation of Several Authors to the Same Idea (Two or More Studies) When it comes to two or more studies for the same idea, the following situations are considered: 7.4.4.1. From the Same Authors with Different Publication Dates Example 1:  Information literacy was measured through a previously developed and validated instrument – IL-HUMASS (Pinto, 2010a, 2010b, in press).

When citing different articles by the same author, they should be placed in ascending order of the year in which they were published, separated by a comma. Example 2:  Several studies suggest that spirituality can increase the intuitive and creative potential of employees, foster honesty and trust among organizational members and between them and other stakeholders (Rego, 2014; Rego & Cunha, 2013; Rego & Solange, 2015).



Cite the authors in alphabetical order of surnames.

7.4.4.2. From Different Authors  Several studies have shown that open access benefits research and researchers, and in publicly funded research, benefits tax payers and increases the return on investment in research (RAND Europe, 2017; Rodrigues, Swan, & Baptist, 2013; Suber, 2012; Willinsky, 2015, 2016).



The different studies are ordered alphabetically and separated from each other by a semicolon.

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7.4.4.3. From Authors with the Same Last Name Example 1:  Familiarity in the evaluative process is the object of investigation of social cognition by many professionals in the area of social psychology, as we can observe in the studies of L. Garcia-Marques (2015) and T. GarciaMarques (2010).

Example 2:  The studies of Miguel Cunha (2012) and Rita Cunha (2012) point out the importance of quality service management ...

References Cunha, M. P. [Miguel]. (2012). Effective quality of service ... Cunha, R. C. [Rita]. (2012). Management research ... 

If there is a coincidence of authors’ surnames, include the initials of the name in all citations, even if the year of publication differs. When the coincidence remains, the names are extended.

7.4.4.4. Authors with the Same Publication Dates Example:  Recent studies by Basili (2015a, 2015b, 2015c) assume that Open science is about the way research is carried out, disseminated, deployed, and transformed by digital tools, networks, and media. Open science relies on the combined effects of technological development and cultural change towards collaboration and openness in research.

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A lowercase letter (suffix) is added shortly after the date of publication. In the preparation of the references, the same identifying letters of the documents are presented.

7.4.4.5. Author is a Collective Entity: Group or Institution Example:  According to the new rules of the American Psychological Association [APA] (2010), electronic resources introduced major changes in the standardization of academic study ... [first time] The APA regulation (2010) marks as novelty ... [following times]  When authors are groups or institutions, the first time their name should be indicated in full followed by the abbreviation or acronym in brackets and then only the date. The next time the entity is mentioned, only the abbreviation and the date can be used.

We present below a summary table (see Table A.2) of the types of citation of authors in the text according to the APA regulations with their respective notations.

7.4.5. Citations from Secondary Sources Citing a study cited by another author is the direct or indirect transcription of a text not directly consulted. In this case, the expression “as cited in” is used to identify the secondary source that was effectively consulted. For example, if one has read the chapter by Rego, Souto and Cunha (2017) that refers to the study of Seligman (2000) on positive psychology, and if you want to refer to this study, it should be done following form:  The spirituality of individuals as a force and a positive trait that have been generally disregarded in the psychological discipline has been championed by Seligman (as cited in Rego, Souto, & Cunha, 2017) ...

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Carlos Lopes, Maria da Luz Antunes and Tatiana Sanches Table 2. Types of citation in text

Type of citation

First citation in text

A study with an author A study with two authors

Tuominen (2019)

A study with three authors

Kuhlthau, Maniotes, and Caspari (2018) Pinto, FernandezRamos, Sanchez, and Meneses (2017) Lopes, Sanches, Andrade, Antunes, and Alonso-Arevalo (2016)

A study with four authors

A study with five authors

A study with six or more authors Collective author (using abbreviation)

Collective author (without abbreviation)

Webber and Johnston (2017)

Subsequent citations in the text Tuominen (2019) Webber & Johnston (2017) Kuhlthau et al. (2018) Pinto et al. (2017)

Lopes et al. (2016)

Bruce et al. (2019)

Bruce et al. (2019)

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL, 2016) ISPA-Instituto Universitário (2019)

ACRL (2016)

ISPAInstituto Universitário (2019)

Format between parentheses of the first citation (Tuominen, 2019) (Webber & Johnston, 2017) (Kuhlthau, Maniotes, & Caspari, 2018) (Pinto, FernandezRamos, Sanchez, & Meneses 2017) (Lopes, Sanches, Andrade, Antunes, and AlonsoArevalo, 2016) (Bruce et al., 2019) (Association of College & Research Libraries [ACRL], 2016) (ISPA-Instituto Universitário, 2019)

Format between parentheses of subsequent citations (Tuominen, 2019) (Webber & Johnston, 2017) (Kuhlthau et al., 2018) (Pinto et al., 2017)

(Lopes et al., 2016)

(Bruce et al., 2019) (ACRL, 2016)

(ISPAInstituto Universitário, 2019)

References Rego, A., Souto, S., & Cunha, M. P. (2017). Spirituality in organizations, positivity and performance. Organizational Behavior and Management, 13, 7-36.

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In the page of the references of the study only the readings made should be indicated and, therefore, in this case only the article Rego, Souto and Cunha (2017).

7.5. Main Ideas to Keep about Quotations Quotations in the textual production of an academic or scientific study are made to support a hypothesis, to sustain an idea or to illustrate a reasoning. The citation allows identifying the publication and indicating its exact location at the source (see Box A.3). Box A.3. Citation of Author(s) in the Text Source

Examples of citation of authors in the text

Without Author

(“Short title”, 2018) (“Information literacy”, 2019)

Chapter

(APA, 2010, Chap. 6)

1 Author

(Corral, 2018) (Corral, 2018, p. 23)

2 Authors

(Pinto & Lopes, 2019) (Pinto & Lopes, 2019, p. 138)

3/5 Authors

(Andrade, Sanches, & Antunes, 2018) Subsequent citation: (Andrade et al., 2018, p.7)

6 + Authors

(Bruce et al., 2018, pp. 234-278)

Group or Institution

(United Nations [UN], 2019) Subsequent citation: (UN, 2019. pp. 234-278)

Publication in the process of being published

(Malheiro & Ribeiro, in press) (Malheiro, in press)

Message/E-mail

(J. Marôco, personal communication, September 17, 2018)

Multiple

(Pinto, 2018; Sales, 2019; Sanches, 2017)

Undated

(Bruce, n.d.)

Reissue (Translation)

(Freud, 1920/2002)

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



When the citation is used in accordance with a list of bibliographic references it must contain sufficient data to ensure the exact match between it and the reference of the identified document. That is, studies that have not been mentioned in the text (and this is the difference of a bibliography) should not be included in the list of references. Its main function is to offer the reader the necessary support so that he can prove the veracity of the information provided and enable its deepening. When, throughout the text, citations are made from sources consulted, this should be given at the end, in alphabetical order, according to the chosen standard.

8. HOW TO MAKE REFERENCES? The reference is a standardized set of descriptive elements, taken from a document, that allows their individual identification (APA, 2010). It is a set of elements that allows you to identify a document. In general, a reference built according to the APA regulations, consists of four parts: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Authors Year of Publication Title Additional data for the location.

Tabulation 4-5 spaces paces

Lupton, M. (2004). The learning connection: Information literacy and the student experience. Adelaide: Auslib Press.

Figure A.1. Reference structure according to APA Style.

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The first three parts are common to all types of documents, while the fourth part (location) varies considerably from one to another (see Figure A.1). 

In the presentation of references, keep the margin, from the second line of each reference, on the fourth letter of entry.

The examples below are a non-exhaustive interpretation of the APA standard on bibliographic references; this document, despite several examples, does not replace the APA Publication Manual (APA, 2010, Chaps. 6 and 7, pp. 198-215).

8.1. Books Box A.4. Reference of a Book General Form Surname, Initial. (year). Title of the book in italics. Place of Publication: Publisher. Rockman, I. F. (2004). Integrating information literacy into higher education curriculum: Practical models for transformation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.





The reference of a document begins with the last name (surname) of the author, which follows (after a comma and a space) the two initials of the author’s surnames. When the name of the author is unknown, identification can begin with the title of the book. The year of publication is placed within curved parentheses followed by end point. When the year of publication is missing, use s.d. (undated) to mark it. The title of the book follows, in italics and with the initial of the first word in capital letters. The subtitle, when

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Box A.4. (Continued)







it exists, is separated from the title by two points and a space with the initial of the first word in upper case. In the case of a book reprint, which must be indicated after the subtitle and separated from it by a few parentheses where the number of the edition with the corresponding Arabic numerals and the abbreviation of the word “edition” (ed.) will be indicated in the document language. The place of publication generally corresponds to the city where the publisher responsible for publishing the book is based. When several cities are indicated, the first of the cities listed is chosen as the place of publication. In situations of omission of place of publication (make sure in the page dedicated to the property rights or page of the copyright) it is used S. l. (without location) to indicate it. All references are closed by an end point.

8.1.1. One Author Seel, N. M. (Ed.). (2012). Encyclopedia of the sciences of learning. London: Springer. In the text, use the following quotation []: (Seel, 2012)

8.1.2. Book in Which More than One Author Participates Meyer, J. H., Land, R., & Baillie, C. (2010). Threshold concepts and transformational learning. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.  (Meyer, Land, & Baillie, 2010)



It is with commas followed by space that separate different authors, the latter separated by a sign of conjunction (&).

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8.1.3. Institutional Authoring American Library Association. (1989). Presidential committee on information literacy: Final report. Chicago, IL: Author. 8.1.4. Republished book Wilson, C. (2019). Media and information literacy: Curriculum for teachers. Paris: UNESCO. (Original work published 2010)  In the text, the (Wilson, 2010/2019).



following

quotations

should

be

used:

First, the date of the original publication, separated by slash (/) from the date of the edition consulted.

8.1.5. Revised Edition of a Book Sternberg, R. J., & Sternberg, K. (2016). The psychologist’s companion: A guide to scientific writing for students and researchers (6th rev. ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. 8.1.6. Editing the Same Book Eisenberg, M. B., & Berkowitz, R. E. (1990). Information problem solving: The Big Six approach to library and information skills instruction (2nd ed.). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. 

In the parentheses (in the original language) and without underlining, the corresponding edition should be specified.

8.1.7. Unpublished Study Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L. K., & Caspari, A. K. (in press). Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century. Westpor: Libraries Unlimited.  (Kuhlthau, Maniotes, & Caspari, in press)



Put the notation: “in press”.

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8.1.8. Book of Corporate/Organization Author American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.  (American Psychological Association [APA], 2010).



When the publisher is the same organization responsible for authorship and has already been mentioned, the word “author” is indicated after the place of publication.

8.1.9. Encyclopedic Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary (20 vols.). (2008). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. 8.1.9.1. Entry(s) to an Encyclopedic Dictionary Cunha, M. P. (2008). Paradox. In S. R. Clegg & J. R. Bailey (Eds.), International encyclopedia of organization studies (Vol. 4, pp. 12221224). Thousand Oaks: Sage. 8.1.9.2. Volumes That Make Up the Work Fiske, S. T., Gilbert, D. T., & Lindzey, G. (Eds.). (2010). Handbook of social psychology (5th ed., Vol. 1). New Jersey: Wiley.

8.1.10. Book with Organizers (Editors, Coordinators) or Anthology 8.1.10.1. Chapter of an Anthology VandenBos, G. R. (Ed.). (2006). APA dictionary of psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.  (VandenBos, 2006)

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In the case of a complete collective work (compilation3), specify the name of the organizer (s) or publisher (s).

8.2. Book Chapters Box A.5. General Rules for the Writing of Book Chapters General Form Author, A. A. (year). Title of chapter. In B. B. Author (Ed.), Title of the book (page of beginning of the chapter-page of the end of the chapter). Location: Publisher. Peacock, J. (2005). Information literacy education in practice. In P. Levy & S. Roberts (Eds.), Developing the new learning environment: The changing role of the academic librarian (pp. 153-180). London: Facet. 







3

The identification of the study of an author published in a book whose chapters were written by different authors begins with the surname of the author followed by the title of the study. The study that is part of the chapter is referenced with “In” followed by the initials of the name of the editor, which appear here before the surname followed by a (Ed.) or (Eds.), Which indicates the editors of the book followed by a comma. Next comes the title of the book (highlighted in italics) where the study in question is found, followed by the pages it occupies in the book with the reference “pp.” In parentheses. Immediately after the title, all information necessary to identify them in parentheses (Examples: 5th ed., Vol. 2, rev. ed., etc.) should be mentioned.

A derivative, composed exclusively of extracts collected from various studies on the same subject and published under a certain title (Pericão & Faria, 1999).

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8.3. Articles of Scientific Journals Box A.6. General Rule for Scientific Journals General Form Surname, Initial. (year of publication). Title of the article. Name of the journal in italics, volume number in italics, start page-end page. doi: xxxx.xxx [add if available] Mackey, T. P., & Jacobson, T. E. (2011). Reframing information literacy as a metaliteracy. College & Research Libraries, 72, 62-78. doi: 10.5860/crl-76r1  



 

The reference to a journal article begins with the author’s surname, followed by the two initials of the author’s name. Followed by year of publication in parentheses. The reference continues with the title of the article, which should always be written in lowercase, except for the first letter of the initial word and any words whose writing requires the use of a capital letter in the first letter (e.g., proper names). The reference, after a period and a space after the article title, continues with the title of the journal (the first letter of each word of the title is a capital letter), followed by a comma-space of the volume number (written in italics). The pages (first and last) where the article in question appears and end with an end point. Add the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) if available.

8.3.1. Article Published by Two or More Authors Pinto, M., & Sales, D. (2008). Knowledge transfer and information skills for student centered learning in Spain. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 8, 53-74.  (Pinto & Sales, 2000).

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8.3.2. Article Published by Three to Five Authors Limberg, L., Alexandresson, M., Lantz-Andersson, A., & Folkesson, L. (2008). What matters? Shaping meaningful learning through teaching information literacy. Libri, 58, 82-91.  (Limberg, Alexandresson, Lantz-Andersson, & Folkesson); next: (Limberg et al., 2008).

8.3.3. Article Published by Six Authors Saunders, L., Kurbanoglu, S., Boustany, J., Dogan, G., Becker, P., & Blumer, E. (2015). Information behaviors and information literacy skills of LIS students: An international perspective. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 56, 80-99.  (Saunders et al., 2015).

8.3.4. Article Published by Seven Authors Anderson, A., Johnston, W., Mowry, A., Broughton, S., Jones, V., Fyles, G., & McDonald, A. (2013). Information literacy in adult returner students. Library and Information Review, 37, 55-73.  (Anderson et al., 2013).

8.3.5. Article Published by More than Seven Authors Box A.7. General Rule for Scientific Journals with More than 7 Authors General Form Author, A. A., Author, B. B., Author, C. C., Author, D. D., Author, E. E., Author, F. F., . . . Author, U.U. (year). Title of the article. Journal title, volume number, initial page-no. doi: xxxxxxx [add if available]

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O’Donnell, V., & Tobell, J., Spector, P. E., Allen, T. D., Poelmans, S. A. Y., Lapierre, L., …Widerszal-Bazyl, M. (2007). The transition of adult students to higher education: Legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice? Adult Education Quarterly, 57, 312-328.  (O’Donnell et al., 2007) 

The sixth edition of the Publication manual (2010) integrates a new notation for documents made by more than seven authors. Proceed as follows: 1. Write the name of the first six authors; 2. There are three spaced points (. . .); 3. Next, write the last author of the reference.

8.3.6. Unknown or Anonymous Authorship Article Annual smoking attributable mortality, years of potential life lost and economic costs: United States 2016-2018. (2019). Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 91, 300-303.  (“Annual Smoking,” 2019).

8.3.7. Special Issue of a Journal Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (Eds.). (2000). Positive psychology [Special issue]. American Psychologist, 55(1).

8.4. Articles of Newspapers and Magazines 8.4.1. Newspapers’ Articles Cook, D. (2018, January 28). All in the mind. The Age, Section 1, p. 8.  Cook (2018), …

 

The highlight is for the name of the newspaper; It must contain the year, month and day of publication;

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Prepend page numbers from newspaper articles with ‘p.’ or ‘pp.’; If an article appears on a discontinuous page, enter all the page numbers and separate the numbers with commas (eg A1, A5-A7).

8.4.2. Newspapers’ Articles (Without Author) Scientists say music manipulates shoppers. (2018, September 14). Human Management, pp. A1, A20.  The role of music in society (“Scientists say,” 2018) …



Alphabetize the first meaningful word of the title.

8.5. Theses, Dissertations and Reports Many research papers are not published getting out of the business circuit. These make up a valuable material that is designated by gray literature. We present how some examples should be referenced. General form Surname, A. A. (Date). Title (Doctoral thesis or Masters degree [not published]). Name of Institution, Place. Retrieved from URL [add if available]

8.5.1. Doctoral Thesis Red, J. (2019). Prospective leadership development in colleges and universities in Canada: Perceptions of leaders, educators and students (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. 8.5.2. Doctoral Thesis Deposited in a Repository Soares, A. E. (2015). Psychological safety, authentic leadership and social networks: A psycho-structural approach to the study of groups

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(Doctoral dissertation, ISPA-Instituto Universitário, Lisboa). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/4664  

Title in italics. In parentheses, type of thesis. Name of university, and place. If available in a repository (e.g., Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal [RCAAP, see www.rcaap.pt]), after the title and type of thesis, the access notation: Retrieved from URL is added.

8.5.3. Master Thesis Richet, E. (2017). The citizenship education system in Canada from 19452014: An overview and assessment (Master’s thesis, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada). Retrieved from http://library2.usask.ca/etd 

If available on the Internet, access (URL) is added.

8.6. Conferences, Symposiums and Colloquiums 8.6.1. For a Paper Presented at a Conference General form Surname, A. A. (Year, Month, Day). Title of contribution. In A. A. Surname (Chairman), Title of the symposium. Symposium held at the meeting of the name of the Congress, City, Country.

Singh, R. (2008, February). Multiplying versus differential: weight averaging the interaction rule in attribution of gift size. In C. M. Bathia (Chair), Dimensions of information processing. Symposium conducted at the meeting of the Indian Science Congress Association, Calcutta, India.

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It emphasizes the title of the communication and specifies the month of the celebration of the Congress.

8.6.2. Paper Presented at a Conference and Later Published in a Book Lopes, C., Antunes, M. L., & Sanches, T. (2019). Information literacy and open science: Before and after the new ACRL Framework. In S. Kurbanoğlu, S. Špiranec, Y. Ünal, J. Boustany, M. Huotar, E. Grassian, D. Mizrach, & L. Roy (Eds.), Information literacy in everyday life (pp. 244-253). Cham: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-13472-3_23. 8.6.3. Communication at a Symposium and/or Conference Anderson, A., McDonald, A., Johnston, W. (2011, November). Experiences of adult learners studying on the pre-entry access course at the University of Strathclyde. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Scottish Education Research Association, Stirling, Scotland. 8.6.4. Poster Session Geldart, S. (2009, August). The beauty of an attractiveness facial rating scale. Poster presented at the 117th APA Annual Convention, Divisions 3 and 6: Experimental and Comparative Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience, Toronto. 8.6.5. Electronic Resources Electronic sources are those documents that are in electronic form, created, stored and disseminated by a computer system. They can be definitive or not, both in form and content. They include databases, ejournals, websites or websites, blogs, newsgroups, discussion groups via email or online, etc. (e.g., APA, 2012). However, the great innovation in this new edition of the Publication Manual APA, is that it has the DOI - digital object identifier as reference, which allows to quickly identify and access the digital object of any scientific article.

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8.6.5.1. What is the Digital Object Identifier (DOI)? Box A.8. What is the Digital Object Identifier (DOI)? The DOI, acronym of Digital Object Identifier, is the numbering that allows to identify, locate and recover digital contents, called objects, through computer networks. The system offers univocal identification of the intellectual property of books, articles, periodicals and even images found on the Internet, associating each object with its basic data and its origin. Its most frequent application is for scientific publications and studies with protected intellectual property, many of them associated with virtual libraries.

The DOI - digital object identifier consists of an alphanumeric system divided into two parts: a prefix that identifies the document editor and a suffix that identifies the publication (see Figure A.2), both determined by the International DOI Foundation (http: //www.doi.org).

Figure A.2. Location of DOI in an article in a scientific journal.

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8.6.5.2. Article with DOI, Obtained from the EBSCO Database Figure A.2 illustrates the location of DOI in scientific articles, most of which is in the upper right corner. In the data bases we can find retrospectively DOI of the old articles. The reference of the scientific journal article with DOI, obtained in the Academic Search Complete database of the EBSCO platform (Figure A.2) would be as follows: Pinto, M., Ponjuán, G., Fernández, M., & Sales, D. (2017). Information literacy life cycle and its standards and models: A view from IberoAmerica. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 49, 409– 423. doi: 10.1177/0961000616654750 8.6.5.3. Article without DOI Sillick, T. J., & Schutte, N. S. (2006). Emotional intelligence and selfesteem. E-Journal of Applied Psychology, 2, 38-48. Retrieved from http://ojs.lib.swin.edu.au/indExemplophp/ejap  (Sillick & Schutte, 2006)

8.6.6. Web Page General form Surname, I. (year). Page title. [On-line]. Retrieved from URL

British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2016). Students from refugee backgrounds: A guide for teachers and schools. Retrieved from http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca /esl/refugees_teachers_guide.pdf  (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2016)

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8.6.7. Newspaper and Magazine Article (Online) Brody, J. E. (2011, December 11). Mental reserves keep brain agile. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com  (Brody, 2011)

8.6.8. Electronic Book Levy, Y. (2006). Assessing the value of e-learning systems [NetLibrary version]. Retrieved from http://www.netlibrary.com/Details.aspx? ProductId=136240  (Levy, 2006)



The mention to the publisher and the place of publication is not indicated in the reference.

8.6.9. Online Dictionary Plagiarism. (2010). In Merriam‐Webster’s online dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/heuristic  (“Plagiarism”, 2010)

8.6.10. Thesis Obtained from Institutional Site Axford, J. C. (2017). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Queensland, Australia). Retrieved from http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:158747 8.6.11. Web Article European Commission. (2014). Public consultation on Science 2.0’: Science in transition. Final report. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/research /science-2.0/science_2_0_final_report.pdf

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8.6.12. Thesis Obtained from Web Mercer, J. J. (2013). Corporate social responsibility and its importance to consumers (Doctoral Dissertation, The Claremont Graduate University, United States). Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did 8.6.13. Images Obtained from Websites Drake, R. (2017). Hello Kitty toaster [Digital image]. Retrieved from http://www.slipperybrick.com/2007/hello-kitty-toaster/

8.7. Audiovisual and Multimedia Materials 8.7.1. Video (e.g., DVD vs. YouTube) American Psychological Association. (Producer). (2008). Inclusive cultural empathy in practice [DVD]. Available from http://www.apa.org/videos Bruce, C. (2019, November 4). Building information and learning experiences through partnerships [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vja83KLQXZs  (Bruce, 2019)



The video document format notation is mentioned in parentheses, examples: [DVD] and [Video file].

8.7.2. Podcast Green, C. D. (Producer). (2006, October 9-15). Thomas Blass on Stanley Milgram’s shocking studies of obedience [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.yorku.ca/christo/podcasts/  (Green, 2006)

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8.7.3. Movie Travica, B. (Producer). (2005). Information politics and information culture: A case study [Motion picture]. Glendale, CA: Belson/Harwright. 8.7.4. TV Program MacIntyre, L. (Reporter). (2016). Blended or flipped classrooms [Television series episode]. In H. Cashore (Producer), The fifth estate. Toronto, ON: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  (MacIntyre, 2016)

9. ALPHABETICAL ORDER OF REFERENCES 9.1. References are Sorted Alphabetically by Author’s Surname Elmborg, J. (2006). Critical information literacy: Implications for instructional practice. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32, 192199. Farrell, R., & Badke, W. (2015). Situating information literacy in the disciplines. Reference. Services Review, 43, 319-340. Grafstein, A. (2002). Discipline-based approach to information literacy. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 28, 197-204.

9.2. Documents of the Same Author Published on Different Dates Basili, C. (2008). Information and education policies in Europe: Key factors influencing information literacy academic policies in Europe. In C. Basili (Ed.), Information literacy at the crossroad of education and information policies in Europe (pp. 18-32). Rome: CNR Edizioni. Basili, C. (2011). Report on current state and best practices in information literacy. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/

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259334208_Report_on_Current_State_and_Best_Practices_in_Inform ation_Literacy Basili, C. (2015). Open Science in the context of the EU Responsible Research and Innovation approach. Conference “Scienza aperta per una ricerca migliore”. Rome: Sapienza University.

9.3. Documents by the Same Author with the Same Date Pinto, M. & Sales, D. (2008a). INFOLITRANS: A model for the development of Information competence for translators. Journal of Documentation, 64, 413-437. Pinto, M. & Sales, D. (2008b). Knowledge transfer and information skills for student centered learning in Spain. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 8, 53-74. 

For one author’s studies published in the same year, use a, b, c, and so on.

9.4. Documents in Collaboration with Various Authors Pinto, M. (2010). Design of the IL-HUMASS survey on information literacy in higher education: A self-assessment approach. Journal of information Science 36, 86–110. Pinto, M., Escalona-Fernandez, M. I. & Pulgarın, A. (2013). Information literacy in social sciences and health sciences: A bibliometric study (1974-2011). Scientometrics, 95, 1071-1094. Pinto, M., Fernandez-Ramos, A., Sanchez, G. & Meneses, G. (2012). Information competence of doctoral students in information science in Spain and Latin America: A self-assessment. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 39, 144-154.

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Pinto, M. & Sales, D. (2015). Uncovering information literacy’s disciplinary differences through students’ attitudes: An empirical study. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 47, 204-215. 

For one author, with co-authors too, sucessively alphabetize by second co-author’s name, then third, forth and so on.

10. LIST OF REFERENCES We present twelve general rules for the preparation of the list of references, as well as an example of presentation (see Box A.9), namely: 1. The list of references should appear at the end of the text. It consists of a complete list of references to the documents marked in the body of the text. 2. The list starts on a new page, the “References” heading appears centered at the top of the page. 3. Paging is continued. 4. References are sorted alphabetically by author’s surname. 5. The first word can be a corporate authorship or a title if the publication has no author. 6. The first letter of the title is always in upper case. 7. References should be typed, using single spacing between the lines and double spacing to separate them. They are written in Times New Roman, 12 pt. 8. The justification is made on the left. Box A.9. Example of a List of References References (Sample) Annual community watch volunteer participation report for 2002-2003. (2003). Community Watch, 15(3), 7.

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Van den Bos, G. R. (Ed.). (2006). APA dictionary of psychology (2nd rev. ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Zurkowsky, P. G. (1974). The information service environment relationships and priorities. Related Paper No. 5. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id5ED100391

9. In the presentation of references, keep the margin from the second line of each reference, under the fourth or fifth letter of the entry (i.e., tab of 4 to 5 spaces). 10. When there are several references of the same author indicate them in order of seniority (first oldest), beginning with the publications in which the author appears alone and only after that the ones where he appears with other authors. 11. If there is no author the first word with sense of reference (usually the title) is placed in alphabetical order. 12. Include the DOI number whenever available in both the print and electronic versions.

10.1. Main Ideas to Keep on References Throughout this article, the rules governing the preparation of citations and references (see Box A.10) were analyzed according to the APA regulations. For its adoption and application, some of its principles are recalled as a conclusion (eg APA, 2010; Beins, 2012; Lopes, 2013). The presentation of the list of references as a complement to a scientific study must:  

Provide a set of carefully chosen references for the writing of a document or article. Be helpful to the reader because it helps him judge the value of the text.

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Restrict themselves to the references of the documents consulted and be directly related to the subject of the document or article in question. Do it according to the APA/2010 standards: the elements that constitute it are very strict. Be presented in the form of a reference list ordered alphabetically. Place it in the final part of the study, before the annexes. Remember! References use hanging indent, double line spacing, and 1 space after punctuation (commas, colons, and periods).

   

At the end of the report or scientific article, master’s dissertation or doctoral thesis, his/her performance on the proper use of citations and references, according to the APA (2010, 2012) regulations, based on the following checklist (Box A.10). Box A.10. Verification List o o o o o

o o o o o

Are references cited in both the text and the references? Do citations in the text and entries in the list of references agree on spelling and date? Are the titles of scientific journals quoted in the list of references? Are references (both quotations in parentheses in the text and those in the list of references) sorted alphabetically by authors’ surnames? Are inclusive page numbers provided for all articles or book chapters in the list of references? Are references to studies included in a meta-analysis preceded by an asterisk? Is the criterion of spatial and typographical processing of transcripts (short and long) constant throughout the report? Are short transcripts always enclosed in double quotation marks? Did you close all quotation marks that you opened? Do all citations have reference notation?

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Do all citations correspond to a reference in the list of bibliographic references? Is the list of references sorted by alphabetical order of the authors’ surnames? Do references to electronic documents comply with the new principles stipulated by APA/2010 for this type of documents? References to electronic articles that have a digital object identifier - DOI appear in the references? In the list of references are all references closed by a period?

CONCLUSION I listen and forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand. Confucius

We present, to conclude, some critical points in the elaboration of citations and references in a scientific paper (e.g., APA, 2010, 2012): 

 

  

Allow those who read us (or see) to know the references that were considered relevant and thus allow the confrontation with the sources. Consistency is the most important rule to take into account both in the list of references and in other formalities of the text. The fundamental principle of the relation of citations in the text and the list of references: there is always an exact correspondence between the references made in the body of the text and the list of references. Confirm, page by page, if you have not forgotten to put in the list of references some study cited in the text; To certify, in the list of references, if not put some author who has not been cited in the study. Avoid situations that can be considered as plagiarism.

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Never leave an incomplete citation (without author, without text, without study, without page, etc.) that makes it impossible to locate and confirm. Always check the position of bibliographic references when exported from EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley or another reference manager. If you are writing an article to submit for publication in a scientific journal, you should follow the style defined by this publication (guidelines for authors). Search the web page of the magazine editor for this information. In the case of a communication to present at a scientific conference, always consult the instructions for the authors defined by the scientific committee of that event.

REFERENCES American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. American Psychological Association. (2012). APA style guide to electronic references. Washington, DC: Author. Hoffman, A. H. (2013). Scientific writing and communication: Papers, proposals, and presentations (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jesson, J. K., Matheson, L. & Lacey, F. (2011). Doing your literature review: Traditional and systematic techniques. Los Angeles: Sage. Kail, R. V. (2015). Scientific writing for psychology: Lessons in clarity and style. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Lopes, A. C. (2013). Como fazer citações e referências para apresentação de trabalhos científicos? Aplicação prática da norma APA (2010, 6ª ed.) [How to make citations and references for the presentation of scientific papers? Practical application of the APA standard (2010, 6th ed.)]. Lisboa: Edições ISPA. Parson, V. (2012). Study and communication skills for psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Pericão, M. G. & Faria, M. I., (1999). Dicionário do livro: Da escrita ao multimédia [Dictionary of the book: From writing to multimedia]. Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores. Purdue Online Writing Lab. (2010). APA Formatting and style guide. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/1/ Sternberg, R. J. & Sternberg, K. (2016). The psychologist’s companion: A guide to scientific writing for students and researchers (6th ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

In: Improving the Academic Writing … ISBN: 978-1-53615-671-3 Editors: Tatiana Sanches et al. © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 6

ARCHITECTURE AND MORPHOLOGY OF A SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE Carlos Lopes1,2*, Maria da Luz Antunes2,3 and Tatiana Sanches2,4 ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisboa, Portugal APPsyCI – Applied Psychology Research Center Capabilities & Inclusion. ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisboa, Portugal 3 Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal 4 Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal 1

2

ABSTRACT The overview of the scientific articles follows a structure established either by the editorial tradition and scientific ethics or as a result of the consolidated experience of communication in science. This architectural and morphological structure, worked for the purpose of publication, challenges the new authors in several ways, which serve as a motto and guide for this chapter: Why publish?; Publish yes, but where?; Improve the *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

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Carlos Lopes, Maria da Luz Antunes and Tatiana Sanches chances of acceptance; What writing style do you use?; How to organize writing?; What to consider before submitting?; and finally, How to proceed if the article is rejected? The ideas expressed here serve as practical indications that show important strategies for publishing scientific articles.

Keywords: science communication, scientific article, publishing

1. INTRODUCTION In an academic environment, the purpose of writing often crosses with that of publishing. Thus, knowing how to write in the university context is also proven through the submission and publication of a scientific article. However, good scientific content in an article does not guarantee publication in a good journal. There are several variables in the process of writing that determine if an article will be published – fortunately, some of these variables depend directly on the author. The anticipation and alteration of some of these determinants will increase the effectiveness of the author, helping him to do more in less time, reducing the frustration factor (Kotz, Cals, Tugwell, & Knottnerus, 2013). A good structure of a scientific article seems to be the key to its publication, not only because it is clear the method by which the contents are presented, as it becomes more effective, for those who read, the perception of the exposed arguments, through a clear and wellknown way, which allows the appropriation by the reader and enhances the scientific dialogue. In the world-known Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.), it is mentioned, by the way, “Authors of scientific articles contribute most to the literature when they communicate clearly and concisely” (APA, 2010, p. 9). In this sense, the work of Sanders and Schilperoord (2008) indicates that in addition to an introduction, the characterization, and conclusive arguments, “mature writers also develop themes further, for example, by elaborating on them, evaluating them, or adding context to them. Introducing, characterizing, evaluating and so on, can thus be seen as a repertoire of retrieval strategies that mature writers have apparently mastered” (p. 395). In this chapter, the authors present a script to well write

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a scientific article. The scope of academic writing for this purpose goes beyond the intentions of sharing information and knowledge of the author. In order to be successful, we must carefully structure the article, carefully observe the instructions to the author of each scientific journal and organize the information in a formal, yet appealing and interesting way. Here are some clues to best practices in writing scientific articles.

2. WHY PUBLISH? Scientific publication is the ultimate goal of scientific research. In fact, the learning carried out in the academic environment is based on scientific research and this research must be published to give a chance of dialogue within the scientific community. In this dialogue, there can be space for opposition, rejection, acceptance or even change of paradigms. It is the scientific dialogue, particularly what is done through the publication of scientific articles, which increases science. Some authors have already synthesized the objectives of the scientific publication (Gastel & Day, 2016, p. xv):     

Disseminate our work Discuss the implications of working with peers Progress in the academic career/research Improve the chances of funding research proposals Publish or Perish!

At the same time, the author must ensure that his contribution is relevant, valid and of quality. For this purpose, it should be asked:    

Is it worth writing? What do you have to say? Has this information been published? In what format was it disclosed?

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Who are the recipients? Which is the appropriate journal?

Common errors  Not having the notion of the contributions already existing in the field of investigation and, therefore, consider that the work is totally innovative or original.  Not presenting the text in carefully and well-founded way.  Not ensuring that language is appropriate to recipients.

3. PUBLISH? YES, BUT WHERE? Before you start writing, you should think about where to publish and consider the journal features:       

Basic research vs. applied research. Generic vs. specialized journal. The format of the traditional journal (printed) vs. electronic. Subscribed vs. open access journal. Control the willingness to publish in high-quality journals with the need to publish quickly. Consider, analyze, but do not be fooled by impact factors. Prepare a list of three to five journals considered as priorities.

An important clue is to look at the references that were used to sustain or inspire the research and to see to what extent some of them are from the subject area that interests us. From this it should be checked whether they meet certain criteria:  

Journals with scientific peer review. Journals referenced in international databases (e.g., Web of Science, Scopus, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, etc.).

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Journals with an impact factor (created by Eugene Garfield, from the Institute of Scientific Information, it is the measure of the frequency of citation of an article published in this magazine per year) desirably greater than 0.5:

If an IF =>1 is considered, then the journal is once cited, on average, for each published article. Some examples are presented from the impact factor of 2017:      

Nature – 40.137 Science – 37.205 Annual Review of Immunology – 28.396 Psychological Bulletin – 16.793 Annual Review of Biochemistry – 19.939 American Psychologist – 6.86

Source: Web of Science (e.g., Journal Citation Report).

Common errors  Choose a journal to publish whose scope does not fit the objectives and contents of the work.  Choose a journal without scientific arbitration.  Not to ensure that the peer review process is clear and transparent.  Choose a predatory journal.

4. HOW TO IMPROVE THE CHANCES OF ACCEPTANCE? An important idea to consider is that submission of papers must necessarily meet originality requirements (e.g., it should not have been previously published). Acceptance of publication by publishers will depend

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on a number of factors, including whether the article will be a valid and highquality contribution to the disciplinary field. Another critical aspect is the strict adherence to the publication standards. In summary, there are some ideas that, properly considered, can improve the chances of acceptance of a scientific article for publication. Key factors: 1. Writing and presentation quality. 2. Relevance and pertinence of the subject. 3. Quality of results. 4. Implications for increasing the knowledge in the field. 5. Fulfillment of ethical responsibilities in research. Follow exactly the journal’s standards for format: 1. Thematic framework. 2. The number of characters in the title. 3. The number of characters in the abstract. 4. Organization of article sections. 5. Overall dimension of the article (e.g., number of pages, number of words). 6. The format of figures and tables. 7. The format of references and quotations in the text (e.g., in the field of Psychology: application of APA standards, Publication Manual, 6th ed., 2010). Common errors  Ignoring instructions to authors.  Not explain the article contributions to knowledge.  Confusing scientifically based opinions and findings.

5. WHAT WRITING STYLE DO YOU USE? A scientific paper is a detailed description of experiences and results in a simple, clear and objective way, with conclusions supported by the data

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and the literature. It is not a work of creative writing or literary fiction! Data and experiences may be immaculate, but if the writing does not respect the consensus of the scientific publication, the article will certainly be refused. One important idea to keep in mind is that the scientific communication language is English so that for non-native speakers it is imperative to pay more attention to linguistic issues. In the study of Lillis and Curry (2010), “given the number of communities that scholars are seeking to publish for, alongside the increasing pressure to publish in English, meeting the range of demands represents a considerable challenge and struggle” (p. 61). For a possible answer, the authors add: “Participation in academic research networks seems to offer a key way for scholars to manage their writing for publication – particularly for publishing in English (…)” (Lillis & Curry, 2010, p. 61). Therefore, whenever a scientific article is written in collaboration and this collaboration is part of someone proficient in the English language there are obvious advantages, namely in the mobilization of language skills for scientific writing.

5.1. The Grammar Reading articles should not be a tedious task, so what you write and how you spell it is of fundamental importance. Grammar is important in every section of a manuscript and in every kind of scientific production, so a wellwritten manuscript may look better than it is. And when it is an «academic» to write correctly is a responsibility. Some strategies:     

Be clear, objective, concise, and use a simple writing style. Write in style, showing organization, systematization of ideas, methodology, consistency, clarity, and fluency. Verbs are usually conjugated in the past for the procedures described and at present for the results obtained. Paragraphs are short (less than 40 words) and convey one or two ideas at most. Write in the 3rd person singular.

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Use digits for values greater than or equal to 10, except when they are placed at the beginning of the sentences. Repeat scientific terms without fear. Use examples from the literature to support the description of your opinions or ideas. Write so that the reading is pleasant for the referee. Write and describe with the quality the data, the reasoning, and the rigor. Write, write, write ... edit and cut only in the end!

Common errors  Do not be repetitive, or mix ideas that are irrelevant to the construction of the line of reasoning.  Do not leave important concepts described in an abstract way – exemplify!  Leave confusing or difficult ideas in paragraphs where you do not know very well what to say.  Use preconceptions about prior knowledge whose correct interpretation is fundamental to reading.  Assume that the reviewer is an expert and therefore knows certainly what is meant by saying something.  Use abbreviations that are not universal or have not been previously defined.  Be repetitive or mix ideas that are irrelevant to the construction of the line of reasoning.  Wrong grammar «spoils» a good manuscript.  Use loose sentences.  Describe states of mind, problems, anguish, existential doubts about the academic course, science or the meaning of life...

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5.2. The Style Style is what sets your writing apart and makes it unique. One might think of style as the way in which writing is dressed (good or bad) and whether this clothing is appropriate to the specific context, purpose, or audience. The choice of words and the fluency of the sentences/paragraphs of the writer contribute to the style in writing (Cali & Bowen, 2017). a) The choice of words:  Good writers are accurate and concise, choose the most appropriate words to convey what they want and do not use «extra» or «fancy» words.  Use exact words – active verbs, concrete subjects, and specific adjectives – that help the reader to visualize the phrase.  Use adjectives with caution and few adverbs, letting subjects and verbs do their job.  Choose words that help in the flow of phrases; polysyllabic words, alliteration (repetition), and consonance that help create phrases pleasing to the ear; onomatopoeia and short words that can be used to break the rhythm. b) The fluency of sentences/paragraphs:  It is the rhythm of sentences and paragraphs.  Use a variety of phrases with different sizes and rhythms to convey the desired effect.  Use parallel structures in the same sentence or paragraph to convey associated thoughts.  Avoid monotonies by varying the sentence structure.  Organize the sentence for greater effect, avoiding extra words.  The links between sentences and paragraphs must have a logical order.

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5.3. Authorship Purpose: The authors assume responsibility for the article. The production of scientific work results from the contributions given by various people and entities. However, not all contributions confer the attribution of authorship of the work. It is important to consider writing a document that describes the role of each author and to ensure that the expected performance of each one is clear. The preparation of a document formalizes the discussion in the team about the authorship. Who are the eligible authors?    

Those that have a substantial contribution to the design, data collection or data analysis and interpretation. Those who participate in the writing or critical review of the article for intellectually important content. Those who review the final version of the manuscript and approve its publication. Those who take responsibility for all aspects of work, ensuring that issues related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are properly investigated and resolved.

The initial draft must be made by the team leader with the help of another author, after which it will circulate for the remaining elements of the team. An accurate deadline must be established for the critical review of each. And as the document circulates, the leader cannot work on it. The final draft, almost ready to submit, implies that all authors pronounce on the text, methodically validate their names, initials, titles, and affiliations. Common errors  People who may have contributed to the job, but who do not meet the criteria for authorship – they should be mentioned in the acknowledgments.  Persons or entities that have contributed exclusively to labor financing.

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Being a tutor/director of service is not being an author – this mention should go to the acknowledgments.

5.4. Ethics Committee Purpose: Research on human beings implies ethical conduct that complies with the standards set out in the Helsinki Declaration. The authors submit an objective analysis of the importance of the research work, disclose the details and references necessary to allow the reproduction of the experiences. The research protocol should be submitted, prior to the start of data collection, to the opinion of the Ethics Committee for Health of the health institution(s) where the study is planned to take place. 





The favorable opinion of this committee should be included in the documents to be submitted in the submission of articles – approval by the Commission/Ethics Board is essential. In case studies, authors should ensure anonymity in the case presented, with the informed consent of the subject(s) required for their participation in the study and dissemination – informed consent of the patients is essential. The authors decide to abdicate approval (in doubt, ask for an opinion).

5.5. Copyright Purpose: The authors grant the publication the exclusive right to publish and distribute in physical or electronic support the content of the manuscript identified in the copyright assignment statement. Generally, copyright granted to publications the following:

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     

The right to use and exploit the manuscript, in particular, to cede, sell or license the content (e.g., Creative Commons). This authorization is usually permanent and valid from the moment the manuscript is submitted, has the maximum duration allowed by the applicable national or international legislation and is worldwide. For authors, this transfer is free of charge. If the manuscript is not published, the exclusive assignment of rights stops immediately. The authors authorize the journal to act on its behalf when it considers that copyright infringement exists. Copyright is assigned to the journal/exclusive use license. Copyright varies between journals. The fine print should be strictly read and analyzed.

6. HOW TO ORGANIZE WRITING? The order of writing in the writing process does not obey the order of the various sections of an article. It is generally preferable to read several scientific publications in order to follow the literature on the subject indexed in databases. Many authors find it difficult to write the introduction and the discussion, so they begin by writing the methods and the results. Only then they do the introduction and the discussion/interpretation of the data because the choice of the journal will make the options associated with the methods and the data treatment remains open. The last part to be written will surely be the abstract. Before beginning to write, the corresponding author must agree with the other collaborators on the purpose of the research and the key results to be achieved. Also before beginning to write, it is not important to answer the question «How to search»; «When» and «Where» seem to be more relevant questions: where to find the ideal environment, motivation, and stimulus to writing? The idea is to write every day and for a few hours, and the first hour is intended to create the link with the content written the day before.

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6.1. Article Title The title is the «front door» to the article. Purpose: Be clear, concise, revealing, and provocative. The title should summarize the main ideas of the paper in 10-15 words. Good example: Online ‘predators’ and their victims: myths, realities, and implications for prevention and treatment (published in American Psychologist, Feb-March 2008). Bad example: The effects of online predators on their victims and their implications (e.g., Lopes, 2013).      

It is a business card that will decide whether or not the article is read. It should give the idea of the problem under study. It can identify the methodology of the study. It presents a formal language. It contains subject keywords. Does not contain abbreviations.

Common errors  Poetic titles, suspension points, journalistic style, inadequate punctuation.  It is too long or too short.  Does not match the article or study design.  Includes abbreviations, jargon, or attempts to be witty at the expense of clarity.  Inadequately describes the study.

6.2. Abstract The abstract is the «hall» of the article. Purpose: Provide a brief and comprehensive summary of the study, its objectives, and main conclusions.

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The first impression, coming from the reading of the abstract, is fundamental. Often, editors decide to continue submission or immediate rejection at the time of reading the abstract. It is the systematized version of the article contents, allowing the reader to read the main ideas and results.     



Be concise and clear. Be structured or not. Clearly present four or five concepts, findings, and most important implications or conclusions of the study. Use digits for all numbers, except when they start at the beginning of the sentences. Write in the active form and not passive (but without personal pronouns), conjugating the verbs in the past for the procedures described and in the present for the achieved results. Check if you meet the four Ws:

“Background: What is known and why is this study needed? Methods: What did you do? Results: What did you find? Discussion: What does it mean?” (Cals & Kotz, 2013, p. 585).

  

Enable understanding of the general features of the article. Have a clearly informative character. Always at the beginning of the paper.

Common errors  Present references, statistical significance, tables and figures, statements not supported by the body of the article and/or data.  Abstract results are not the same as the reported results.  Abstract methods are different than the methods in the manuscript.  Abstract conclusion is different than what is stated in the manuscript.  Exceeds the word limit allowed by the journal.

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It is incorrectly formatted for the journal (e.g., unstructured versus structured).

6.3. Keywords The words or set of words that describe the subject of a text, used by the search tools for the purpose of presenting relevant and accurate results. Purpose: Keywords show the scope of a subject and its main concepts and are useful in indexing search mechanisms and categorizing texts. “Investigation into the importance and characteristics of keywords has focused on various aspects such as efficiency in retrieving information, automatic extraction using different methods and algorithms” (Miguéis, Neves, Silva, Trindade, & Bernardes, 2013, p. 114).    

Select keywords from a controlled language. Privilege specialized thesauri (e.g., MeSH/BIREME for the health discipline). Keywords should represent the main topics covered. They should highlight the topic addressed from the general to the particular.

Common errors  Choosing keywords at random.  Duplication or redundancy of terms, rather than precision and accuracy. Figure 1 presents methodologically the proposal of scientific writing.

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Figure 1. Tips for writing the research proposal (Yahaya, 2016).

6.4. Introduction It is the basis of the study. Purpose: To frame the study, in the current state of knowledge, and its importance, indicating to the reader why this subject and its study is important in the context in which it was carried out (see Figure 1). It must begin provocatively to the imagination and curiosity of the reader. The first paragraph of the introduction is fundamental: 83% of the

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readers read no more than the first paragraph of the articles (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2016). How should the introduction be organized? 1. First paragraph:  Present the relevance of the study and the relevance of open questions.  Show implicit interest in the article and why the reader should read it.  Consider the target reader (e.g., doctors, teachers, students, etc.).  Write carefully, with short sentences, in a creative and provocative way.  Remember: the first paragraph is fundamental! 2. From the second to the penultimate paragraph:  Define the problem / what is known / state of the art.  Do not forget what you do not know.  Evok the relevance and importance of the subject.  Explain why the study was done.  What is expected to add to scientific knowledge.  Present the literature review relevant to the subject and fundamental to the understanding of the state of the art.  Make the framework of the terminology and linkage of the previous studies with the present work.  The literature review should focus only on the study domain should include the most cited/relevant references; a relevant paper of an unnamed referee is halfway to rejection, but the referee does not want to be buried by hundreds of relevant, or irrelevant references (e.g., Sternberg & Sternberg, 2017).  Present a balanced view of the main currents and opinions; referees do not like revisions that favor one position over another (especially if they favor one).

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All paragraphs in the introduction should present a continuous and natural flow of information and ideas.

3. Last paragraph:  Describe the purposes and research questions/hypotheses.  Frame the objectives in the state of the art, the novelty of the issues under study and the possible achievements for the area, resulting from these questions and their solution.  Do not «promise» goals or conclusions that the data do not support; many articles are rejected because the contribute «proposals» to the advancement of knowledge and the novelty of the results are not fulfilled (e.g., Sternberg & Sternberg, 2017). Common errors  Do not review the topic.  Do not identify important papers.  Do not define the problem.  Do not justify the study.  Does not describe the purpose and objective of the study.  Does not mention the importance and originality of the study.  Contains material unrelated to the study.  It is not interesting.

6.5. Study Purposes It is the intention of what is intended to be achieved. Purpose: Intentions, written in broad strokes, about what you want to achieve at the end of the study. Purposes define measurable results to achieve.

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Purposes should be SMART: S=Specific (specify what to do); M=Measurable (what will be found when reached the goal); A=Achievable (that is achievable); R=Realistic (in which the necessary resources such as time, money, skills, etc.) are questioned; T=Time constrained (where the time required to complete each step is determined). Use positive and strong phrases with strong verbs (e.g., collect, construct, classify, develop, devise, measure, produce, revise, select, synthesize, etc.). There is no limiting number of purposes. It is preferable to present a single purpose, but one that is strong, supported by two other subsidiaries. They should appear in the last paragraph of the introduction, but they can also be individualized. They should be clear and concise. They must present a research question. Possibly present hypotheses. Define the problem, design, and study population.

Common errors  Weak verbs (e.g., appreciate, consider, enquire, learn, know, understand, be aware of, listen, perceive, etc.).  Ambiguous purposes.  Over-ambitious and incomplete purposes.  Purposes unsuitable for drawing.  Present many purposes.

6.6. Methods Purpose: This section should describe all procedures, experiments, and manipulations, with the necessary detail to allow the reproduction of the study, the same procedures, and experiments, without the advice of the

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original author. In psychology, it is usual that the section of methods is subdivided into paragraphs or subsections. 1. Individuals or participants:  Identify and describe the sample used in the study.  The number of sample/participant elements, not forgetting the selection/recruitment process, inclusion and exclusion criteria, sampling and sample size calculation.  Setting/context/dates.  Include relevant details to the study (e.g., gender distribution, mean age, races, residence, average weight, etc.).  Definition of variables.  Human participants: type of incentive or remuneration to motivate participation in the study; the anonymity of the answers was guaranteed; informed consent for the disclosure of names and/or results.  Ensure compliance with ethics committee standards. 2. Instruments or equipment:  Describe the equipment, or apparatus used, identifying the model and manufacturer, including the manufacturer’s city.  Refer and describe (although succinctly) the materials used (e.g., software, photo cards, etc.), their authorship, edition, and version.  Briefly describe the scales or evaluation instruments or measures used, referring authorship, adaptation, publication, psychometric qualities, as well as all relevant information that allows access to the instruments used. 3. Procedures:  Summarize each step of the data collection and analysis procedures.

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Indicate the type of test, instrument or measurement (psychometric) used in the data collection, describing, if applicable, the instructions that the participants received. Describe the data analysis methodology(s) used, as well as the software used in the calculations, indicating the version and the manufacturer. Refer to the assumptions of the methods (statistical tests) and their validation or not. If not, please refer to the alternative methodologies used. Definition of end-points.

Common errors  SPSS or Excel (specify the statistical test applied, not the tool).  Some methods reported are not used.  Some methods are missing, thus not allowing the duplication of the study.  Reports statistical methods incorrectly or poorly.  Described methods do not report to results.  Include the questionnaires, interview transcripts, etc., here - put these in the appendices.  Include a description of procedures and experimental design.  Present results.

6.7. Results Purpose: To present the results of the study, everything that was discovered. The data are never presented in the raw, but summarized in tables, graphs or composite figures, and described in the text. 

Briefly describe the main results of the study, starting from a general description to a detailed description.

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 

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Present the results from a logical sequence, following the purposes and the methods. In the results of the statistical tests, start by presenting the appropriate descriptive statistics (%, M, SD, etc., referencing the tables and/or figures used) before corresponding inferential statistics. Respect the journal’s rules regarding the presentation of statistics (degrees of freedom, MSE, p-values, p-reps, size of effect, etc.). Always describe the results and their practical interpretations – do not leave this task to the referee who usually does not have much time for reviews! Consider and discuss possible alternatives for the interpretation of the data and models analyzed – honesty regarding results is appreciated; other alternatives to the interpretation of the data, proposed by the referee, is one of the sources of rejection. The information must be objective, accurate and unambiguous. The results are presented in words (that tell the story), in tables (that count the data) and in figures (that illustrate).

Common errors  Wasting words (“As you can see...”).  Speak, give an opinion.  Irrelevant information (“Now...”).  Present statistical tests without giving the values.  Do not explain where the difference lies.  Choice of less appropriate statistical methodology and/or inappropriate description of results and statistical significance/ practical significance is a source of rejection.  Include discussion, argument or conclusions.  Reports data incompletely.  Contains results from another study.  Information repeats what is shown in tables and figures.  Includes discussion or methods.

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6.7.1. Illustrations   

Figures, pictures, images, flowcharts, etc. They must be intelligible individually. They must be minimally indispensable.

6.7.2. Tables     

They must be simple. They must have a title (do not repeat headings). Headers are the first row of columns. Table’s body contains data (alpha-numeric or values). In notes, below the table, the tests and the statistical significance are presented.

Common errors  Unnecessary information.  Unreal precision.  Units in each cell.  Repeat the text.

6.7.3. Figures   

Its quality should allow typographic reproduction. Must be submitted in the requested format (and usually out of the text). They have a legend (title, description, explanation of symbols and abbreviations, statistical information) that is presented below the figure.

Common errors  Images without quality.  Excessive color (low contrast).

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Do not have the copyright of the figures.

6.8. Discussion Purpose: Evaluation and interpretation of the results according to the research questions and references to other similar works. The discussion uses a discursive and evaluative writing approach and makes interpretations and judgments.   

  

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Begin by describing the main conclusions and results without resorting to statistical details. Discuss possible implications of results according to the practice and/or intervention, etc. Compare with results achieved by other researchers/authors that were cited in the introduction and emphasize the consequences that the work may have on pre-established theories and/or professional practice. Decide whether the assumptions are verified, disproved or if a decision regarding the assumptions cannot be confidently asserted. Make an appreciation of methods (discuss validity): limitations, biases, strengths. Never say “The study is inconclusive!” The referee will ask: “If it is inconclusive, why was I wasting my time reviewing this?” (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2017). Discuss the results by explaining the mechanisms and processes at the origin of the results. Discuss how the results and conclusions of the study are related or not to other studies and results. To base opinions and conclusions on the work of other authors, if possible.

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State and discuss possible limitations of the work, its implications on the results achieved and how to improve this type of study/research in future work. Compare with the literature: cite the main references, identical and disparate references, criticism of previous literature, and advantages of work. Discuss and enunciate possible applications or future work that may have as a starting point in the current study. What questions remain unanswered? What new hypotheses do you need to test? What kind of work can shed light on these issues? Finish with a paragraph summary of the study’s key findings and implications for practice and theory of the study domain. This paragraph is the business card that is left to the reader/referee and it will probably be around here that reader/referee will remember the article.

Common errors  Repeat results without interpreting them.  Repeat the introduction.  Present a list of citations.  Present inappropriate citations.  Present a list of selective citations of similar results.  Avoid overdoing the importance of work.  It is biased and omits findings from other studies.  Does not explain key results.  Does not describe the limitations of the study.  Does not characterize speculation as such.  Includes information unrelated to the study.  Includes outdated references or misrepresents them.  It is too expansive and lacks a logical flow.

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6.9. Conclusions Purpose: The conclusion should reach your point. The conclusion uses an evaluative and possibly argumentative approach.  The conclusions are contained in the last paragraph of the discussion or presented individually.  Provide a brief summary (answer the purpose, meaning of results).  Demonstrate whether purposes have been achieved, whether they have been achieved beyond them or, on the contrary, have not been achieved.  They show whether or not the hypotheses have been proven.  Are limited to the scope of the study. Common errors  Forget the results.  Express convictions a priori.  Inappropriate inferences or statements not supported by the study.  Just restates the content from other sections of the manuscript.  Does not clearly report the findings to the purpose of the study.  Contains unnecessary information.

6.10. Acknowledgments Purpose: To thank everyone who helped create the final form of the manuscript. The acknowledgments boil down to a paragraph. They include: who authorized the release of clinical records, the use of certain equipment, who guided, collaborated or interviewed, as well as the external entities that provided assistance.  

All those who do not meet the criteria for authorship are included. Effective collaboration is needed.

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Authorization to identify names is mandatory, i.e., everyone should know that they will appear in acknowledgments.

Common errors  Omit people or entities important for the development of research.  Exaggerate the mentions, listing all the contributions to the work, including the least relevant ones.

6.11. References Purpose: To present the list of references cited in the paper. The list of references demonstrates the depth of the work. It recognizes the sources of information cited, protecting its author from an accusation of plagiarism – in which the ideas of others are made (Lopes, 2013).   

  

Always quote the original source. Incorporate in the text the ideas of others with your words, never copy paste. If it is necessary to choose between several hypotheses of citation, the one with the highest level of evidence, which is open access, should be favored by the year of publication and published in the journal in which it is intended to be published. The formatting of the references must be made according to the journal where it is intended to be published. Most commonly used reference styles: Vancouver, APA, Harvard, and Chicago. It is suggested to use reference management software (e.g., Mendeley, Zotero, EndNote, RefWorks, etc.) in order to reduce formatting errors. Still, make a final reading.

Common errors  Quote without reading the article.

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Mix references. Badly formatted references. Do not review the work of reference management software.

6.12. Conflict of Interest Purpose: Transparency of the submission process and publication. There is a conflict of interest when an author (or his institution) has personal, professional or financial relationships that can influence their decisions, work or manuscript. Not all of these relationships represent real conflicts of interest. On the other hand, the potential for conflict of interest may exist whether or not the author believes that this relationship affects his scientific judgment. The existence of conflicts of interest and/or external financing is not a criterion for accepting or rejecting manuscripts.  

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The potential for conflict of interest may reside with authors, reviewers or publishers. In order to maintain transparency in the editorial process, all those involved in the publication of articles (authors, reviewers, and editors) are invited to declare potential conflicts of interest. If the work has been financed in whole or in part by one or more persons or entities, that information must be published together with the article.

6.13. Financing Purpose: Transparency of the submission process and publication.  

Mention if the work was funded in whole or in part by persons or entities other than authors. Describe the financing, if applicable.

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Include research grants and sponsorships.

7. BEFORE SUBMITTING The article is written and ready to submit. But first, check it well (this usually prevents a re-submission). Forget for an hour that you are the author and play the role of the reviewer, the one who knows nothing about your work, ideas, results, etc.    

Are the data clearly described? Are the ideas concise and clear? Are the figures and tables all necessary and contain relevant information? Are conclusions drawn from the data?

If possible, ask someone of confidence and unfamiliar with the work to do a review, taking into account these same criteria of judgment. Also ask for comments, guidance, and an honest review. Finally, a final review is important in order to:  



 

Verify if the paper is well formatted accordingly to the journal guidelines. Verify if the paper is appropriate for the journal readership. The paper may be quite interesting and methodologically sound, but has no relevance for the international readership; in such case, submit to a national journal. Check for spelling errors and/or grammatical errors. Ask a native speaker to review your use of the English language before submitting your work. Review the manuscript and the numbers. Write a convincing cover letter (see sample cover letter) including the title of the paper and the request for publication; the significance

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 

of the main findings for the discipline; the relevance to the journal readers; the information required by the journal; and additional issues related to the document. Send manuscript and pictures in the requested formats. Complete checklists and attachments.

Sample cover letter [Your Name] [Your Affiliation] [Your Address] [Date] Dear [Editor name], We wish to submit an original research article entitled “[title of article]” for consideration by [journal name]. We confirm that this work is original and has not been published elsewhere, nor is it currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. In this paper, I/we report on / show that _______. This is significant because __________. We believe that this manuscript is appropriate for publication by [journal name] because it… [specific reference to the journal’s aims & scope]. __________. [Please explain in your own words the significance and novelty of the work, the problem that is being addressed, and why the manuscript belongs in this journal. Do not simply insert your abstract into your cover letter! Briefly describe the research you are reporting in your paper, why it is important, and why you think the readership of the journal would be interested in it.] We have no conflicts of interest to disclose. If you feel that the manuscript is appropriate for your journal, we suggest the following reviewers: [List reviewers and contact info, if requested by the journal] Please address all correspondence concerning this manuscript to me at [email address]. Thank you for your consideration of this manuscript.

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Sincerely, [Your name]

Common errors  Failure to comply with standards.  Do not follow all steps of the journal’s online submission system.  Do not file all relevant data from the original submission.  Do not monitor the journal’s editorial processing from time to time.

8. AND IF THE ARTICLE IS REJECTED? Do not give up! Humility is a fundamental characteristic of doing scientific research. And persistence, too. According to Schneider (1995), “it takes persistence to turn ideas and/or data into a potentially publishable manuscript (…); the second kind of persistence is the kind stimulated by a review process that focuses on negative feedback. Negative feedback must be desired and accepted and used as a stimulus to produce a better and more publishable paper” (p. 217). Finally, he states: “The third kind of persistence required concerns the rejected manuscript. (…) When commitment is to the ideas in the paper, then the paper can be defended where it was rejected and/or, in the light of feedback, it can be changed to be made acceptable. Low commitment to the ideas in a paper will yield low persistence in pursuit of publication” (p. 217). The author must understand that some editors and referees are genetically prepared to classify originals as the worst works on earth. Also, some opinions have to be analyzed with a certain detachment and some reservations (e.g., the authors are just trying to maximize their publications record; these data should have been included in the previous paper, etc.). But when criticism is unanimous in more than one referee it is because they must be relevant and valid. You should acknowledge and discuss the benefits of using, for instance, another methodological proposal.

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Nowadays, given the high rate of scientific production, it is rare and difficult for an article to be accepted at the first without any kind of revision. Some journals have rejection rates of the order of 85% (e.g., Lancet, Nature, Psychological Methods, among others). Therefore, the authors should not aim very high in the first studies, unless they are convinced of the strength of their work (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2016). When an article is rejected in its current state: 



The editor can encourage a re-submission, in which case a letter is needed stating all the changes made in response to the referees or not; and, in this case, justifying why. The publisher precludes the possibility of re-submission. In this case, authors can, and should, take advantage of referees’ and editor’s opinions and submit to another journal.

In conclusion, if the author receives a request for review, it means that he will have good chances of publication. He should follow all the indications of the referees and improves parts of the article that are not so clear. Even if the comments are very critical or even if they put much of the study into question, they should not be understood as personal. In the answer, all changes should be noted. Publishers should always be taken into account as they ensure that the journal’s editorial criteria are being followed. Common errors  Being offended by referees’ comments and not trying to match what is requested.  Do not comply with the indications of the referees.  Omit or add text intentionally without mentioning it to referees.

9. … AND TO PUBLISH? It is a process where you also need some/a lot of LUCK:  With the editor.

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With the referees.

The author must assume his responsibilities for the preparation of the manuscript for submission (APA, 2010), remaining faithful to his original ideas, but always having to meet the requirements of each journal. In fact, instructions to authors vary greatly and aspects such as citation style or the formatting of margins are not of the least importance. The format, size, and quality of the presentation are therefore issues to check carefully. At the same time, if authors publish in a non-native language, it is recommended that they use language assistants (installed on the computer itself) and translators and proofreaders fluent in the language in question. Another important aspect: publishing a scientific article is a very personal challenge, requiring a particularly skillful way of managing emotions and compensation. In the words of Schneider (1995), “delay of gratification is very long, you lay yourself open before your peers, you ‘fail’ as often as you succeed, you have to play at least somewhat by other people’s rules and the payback is nebulous. Most people never publish because these horrors and uncertainties” (p. 225). Finally, it is important to ensure, if any, that legal, conflict of interest or ethical constraints are met. Honest and authentic submission is the first step towards peer recognition, but mainly to nurture trust in science, to which all contributions within these parameters are valid. Our biggest compensation? The possibility to see our contribution published and ready to be discussed by the scientific community. In Thompson and Kamler (2013) words, “the euphoria of being published is worth celebrating. The elated scholar must take a moment to savour the moment and the marker of success. (…) The words and the self are out there in the community. The scholar is now part of the conversation” (p. 144).

CONCLUSION This chapter tried to present a clear and simple script, filled with practical tips to build a scientific article, with the aim of publishing it. Based

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on a dialogical reflection, strategies were presented that allow the scientific work to be supported and prepared in this way. These include the choice of the publication, the improvement of the chances of acceptance, the options in the writing style and its organization. Also consider some aspects to consider before submission, as well as what to do if the article is rejected. We believe that this course will definitely help the new authors to find fundamental support for their practice of scientific writing.

REFERENCES American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th Ed.). Washington: Author. Cali, K., & Bowen, K. (2017). The five features of effective writing. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC School of Education. Retrieved from https://web. archive.org/ web/ 20170523042255/ http:// www. learnnc. org: 80/ lp/ editions/few/. Cals, J. W., & Kotz, D. (2013). Effective writing and publishing scientific papers, part II: Title and abstract. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 66, 585. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2013.01.005. Gastel, B., & Day, R. A. (2016). How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper. ABC-CLIO. Kotz, D., Cals, J. W., Tugwell, P., & Knottnerus, J. A. (2013). Introducing a new series on effective writing and publishing of scientific papers. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 66, 359-360. doi: 10.1016/j. jclinepi.2013.01.001. Lillis, T. & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English. London: Routledge. Lopes, A. C. (2013). Como fazer citações e referências para apresentação de trabalhos científicos? Aplicação prática da norma APA (2010, 6ª ed.) [How to make citations and references for the presentation of scientific papers? Practical application of the APA standard (2010, 6th Ed.)]. Lisboa: Edições ISPA.

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Miguéis, A., Neves, B., Silva, A. L., Trindade, A., & Bernardes, J. A. (2013). A importância das palavras-chave dos artigos científicos da área das Ciências Farmacêuticas, depositados no Estudo Geral: estudo comparativo com os termos atribuídos na MEDLINE [The importance of keywords in scientific articles in pharmaceutical sciences, submitted in Estudo Geral: A comparative study of terms assigned in MEDLINE]. InCID: Revista de Ciência da Informação e Documentação, 4(2), 112125. Rosenfeldt, F. L., Dowling, J. T., Pepe, S., & Fullerton, M. J. (2000). How to write a paper for publication. Heart Lung & Circulation, 9(2), 82-87. Sanders, T. J., & Schilperoord, J. (2008). Text structure as a window on the cognition of writing: How text analysis provides insights in writing products and writing processes. In C. A. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of Writing Research (pp. 286-402). New York: The Guilford Press. Schneider, B. (1995). Some propositions about getting research published. In L. L. Cummings, & P. J. Frost (Eds.), Publishing in the Organizational Sciences (pp. 216-226). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sternberg, R. J., & Sternberg, K. (2016). The psychologist’s companion (6th ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, P., & Kamler, B. (2013). Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals: Strategies for Getting Published. London: Routledge. Yahaya, H. (2016). Tips for Writing your Research Proposal. Dr. Hafizal Yahaya [blog]. Retrieved from https://people.utm.my/hafizal-yahaya/ tips-for-writing-your-research-proposal/.

In: Improving the Academic Writing … ISBN: 978-1-53615-671-3 Editors: Tatiana Sanches et al. © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 7

PUBLISHING WITHIN OPEN SCIENCE CHALLENGES Maria da Luz Antunes1,2,*, Tatiana Sanches2,3, Carlos Lopes2,4 and Julio Alonso-Arévalo5 1

Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal 2 APPsyCI – Applied Psychology Research Center Capabilities & Inclusion. ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisboa, Portugal 3 Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal 4 ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisboa, Portugal 5 Facultad de Traducción y Documentación, Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

ABSTRACT This chapter relates the diffusion of scientific knowledge, materialized in its writing, publication, and circulation, with the Open Science. Open Science is, by its nature, a platform for dialogue, fostering more exchanges and stimulating researchers to adapt their publishing and dissemination *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

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Keywords: open science, academic writing, open access, open data, open peer review, predatory journals

1. INTRODUCTION The researcher’s commitment to the scientific community is realized through continued involvement in new contributions and discoveries, fostering dialogue among members of the community, in a context where ideas are presented, discussed and can be revised, criticized, refuted or adopted, always from writing. Academic writing is a remarkable individual construction, but of a collective nature, insofar as it is based on dialogue between researchers, especially through scientific publication. Currently, the Open Science context enhances this dialogue, since it allows for exponential access both to the consultation of publications and open data (used for search and research), and to the publication of its research results in multiple formats and supports. In fact, the scope of Open Science translates into a collaborative, transparent process of dissemination, creation, and transfer of knowledge, access to research and based on Open Access principles (Lopes, Antunes, & Sanches, 2018). In this chapter, we will speak of research in a broader sense, in which partnerships, publications, and social and scientific impacts will be contextualized on behalf of science. We believe that the different agents of the research process provided with a set of information literacy skills, in print or digital information environments, and based on their own critical and reflexive thinking, acquire the ability to transform information into new knowledge, particularly throughout academic writing. By presenting the ideas that relate

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the academic writing process with Open Science and information literacy, we intend to spread some light on this subject.

2. SCHOLARSHIP AS CONVERSATION The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) adopted the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in January 2016. This document opens the way for information professionals, teachers and other institutional partners to reformulate content, training courses, curricula and credits to be awarded in higher education; to link information literacy to successful student initiatives; to collaborate in pedagogical research and involve the students in it; to develop and expand the discussion about the teaching-learning process and, in all of the subjects, reflects on the current process of creation and use of information. In the academic and scientific community, the production of results is understood as a commitment to the community, ie, the academy is permanently involved in new contributions and discoveries that only make sense since, in the academic context, there is a space for dialogue where ideas are formulated, debated and argued. The ACRL, with its Framework, has demonstrated the importance of combining information needs and search strategies to identify appropriate research tools, as well as demonstrating through search that it values persistence, adaptability, and flexibility (ACRL, 2016). These assumptions have been discussed and are recognized as a frame expressed by the Framework: Scholarship as Conversation. This frame represents the platform of dialogue where a reform of the academic evaluation system can be promoted, encouraging the researcher to change its practices of publication and dissemination, leading to the reduction of costs and the valuation of academic content to the detriment of quantity and factors of impact. In Scholarship as Conversation are listed some examples of knowledge practices that the researcher must develop, namely:

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Ability to identify the contribution of academic materials to the enrichment of academic disciplines. Ability to cite sources in the writing of new information. Ability to contribute to the writing of new information as a first person author. Ability to understand the chaining of citations in order to assess the impact of work and find more information about this subject. Ability to understand and analyze a peer-reviewed scientific paper and identify and understand all parts of the article. Ability to identify the contributions of academic and scientific communication to the systematization of disciplinary change over time.

The frame also contains a set of dispositions to be highlighted in this process, namely:   

To recognize that academic communication takes place on several levels. To value the contents emanated from the user. To understand that the responsibility of academic creation is associated with the contributions of other channels and other types of participation in science.

The researcher, therefore, expresses his receptivity to seek other perspectives and not to limit himself to those he has become used to and which give him security. These perspectives do not necessarily have to be in his scientific area; can be in other disciplines and, if they allow it, give value to his scientific area and develop new platforms for academic and scientific dialogue.

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3. EMBEDDING ACADEMIC WRITING INTO OPEN SCIENCE Open Science is a new approach to the scientific process based on cooperative work and is a new way of spreading knowledge using technologies and new collaborative tools. It is a systemic change when comparing the way science and research were carried out in recent decades. The aim is to change the practice of research results publishing in scientific publications for the sharing and use of all available knowledge of the research process. In this way, Open Science has an important impact throughout the scientific cycle, from the beginning of research until its publication, but also in the way this cycle is organized (see Figure 1). Issues such as alternative systems for establishing and consolidating scientific reputation, changes in the way the quality and impact of research are assessed, increased use of scientific blogs, open peer review, open access to data and publications, and the economic impact of the opening of scientific data, are some of the premises of Open Science.

3.1. Open Science Principles Open Science involves, in essence, two fundamental dimensions: (a) Opening and sharing of research results from publications to research data; (b) Openness in the research methods and tools themselves, making processes open and collaborative from the outset and seeking, when appropriate, the involvement of other actors, in addition to the scientific community, in the collection and analysis of research data, in what is called Citizen Science (Rodrigues, Swan, & Baptista, 2013). Open Science presents benefits and advantages to science and society in the face of the openness of research processes and the speed of results

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dissemination in conditions that can be reused not only by the scientific community but by the society as a whole. Open Science is therefore transparent and accessible and knowledge is shared and developed through collaborative networks. It is based on principles such as rigor, responsibility, reproducibility, but also inclusion, fairness, equity and sharing in research (e.g., FOSTER, 2017). Ultimately, it seeks to change the way research is done, who is involved, and how it is valued.

Figure 1. Open Science rationale (FOSTER, 2018).

Figure 2. Promoting openness at different stages of the research process (FOSTER, 2014, p. 8).

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Open Science thus represents the linkage of the academic and research environment to a broader public, represents the transparency of research processes and open access to scientific data and publications. Open Science follows the presuppositions of making research and its data accessible to the society as a whole; and its concept is associated with the definition of science, described as the retrieval, analysis, publication, critique, and reuse of data (MCTES, 2016) (see Figure 2).

3.2. Open Scientific Data The Open Science principle has undergone changes and adaptations to the extent of the policies implemented by each country, technological advances, but also economic pressures from public and private interests. Open access to scientific data is, therefore, less developed than open access to scientific publications. The fact that scientific communication is considered to be based on an economic basis has in recent years generated criticism of the fragility of the Information and Knowledge Society. The creation of a European Open Science Cloud, under the aegis of the strategy defined by the European Commission for the Digital Single Market, is fundamental for the European Commission to support the transition to Open Science: “The aim is to make relevant research data findable, accessible, interoperable and re-useable (‘FAIR’) to all European researchers. The Cloud will bring together existing and emerging data infrastructures to create a virtual environment for all European researchers to store, manage, analyse and re-use data” (Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, 2016, p. 45). But open data and FAIR data are two different concepts. Generally, the researcher does not know how to distinguish the differences very well, so it is important to clarify that FAIR data do not imply that they are open, but that they are shared under constraints. Although the philosophy of Open Science is well within the scientific community, it can not be guaranteed that all scientific data must be open in all circumstances. There are reasons that must necessarily be considered for restricting access to scientific data in

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some circumstances. The most obvious examples include data that contain personal information, data that has not been given consent to its disclosure, confidential business information, but also where there are public reasons for restricting data (e.g., national security, biosafety, and cyber-security issues). Scientific data can then be FAIR or open, they may also have both or none of the characteristics. For the scientific community the greatest benefit is that the data are FAIR and open; the less restrictions on access to data the wider the reuse. In the context of Open Science and in order to maximize the benefits of making FAIR data a reality, FAIR principles should be implemented in conjunction with the policy that scientific data should be opened by default (European Commission, 2018). However, because of the lack of knowledge of the researcher, but also because of the novelty of the subject, the FAIR data are not a practice for the generality of the scientific community. It is important to understand the diversity of scientific disciplines, the obstacles, but also the lessons learned from successful cases. Long before the FAIR principles were drawn, astronomy already used this practice. Particle physics has long shared its data and especially within the large consortiums associated with its experiments. The social sciences also have a long history of shared data repositories within researchers in their field. For the scientific areas that successfully implemented the FAIR principles, the data eventually became a research infrastructure widely used by researchers in their daily work. One of the examples is the health sciences with agreements between institutions such as NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) and ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) with EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute), but also ELIXIR (European Research Infrastructure for Life Science Information). Making the implementation and dissemination of FAIR data a reality requires, therefore, a major change in the practice of many research communities, institutions, but also funders and funding models. Some disciplines have already made great strides in the sharing and re-use of scientific data and it is with them that we must learn the way forward (e.g., Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/).

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Data storage, preservation, and dissemination can be worked on at a more generic, interdisciplinary, disciplinary or more disciplinary and subdisciplinary level. Successful implementation of FAIR principles in scientific data generally requires significant disciplinary resources for the development of a data-sharing framework (i.e., principles and practices, procedures, community-agreed data formats, metadata standards, tools, data infrastructures, etc.). Issues associated with management costs, long-term curation, and publication of data should be included in all Data Management Platform (DMP) models. As an example, it will be possible to identify the costs of existing and completed projects and to develop similar guidelines. Whether it is the funders, the institutions or the data curation services, everyone should collaborate in this retrospective analysis.

3.3. Open Access to Scientific Journals Being the open access to knowledge considered as one of the most important facts of our time associated with scientific communication, being able to access scientific journals without restrictions represents a great challenge for the scientific community since open access to articles significantly favors the production of more knowledge. To publicize the results of your research, as a routine, the researcher attempts publication in a journal, conference proceedings, or a book. Access to these publications has for decades been conditioned by the payment (institutional or individual) of annual subscriptions or acquisitions. At the beginning of the 21st century, a new movement, known as ‘Open Access’, was created to make access to research results unrestricted to all. Two intervention strategies were established (FOSTER, 2018): 

Providing tools and assistance to academic researchers to deposit their articles with peer review in open electronic repositories – selfarchiving.

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Development of a new generation of journals that use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open access to all articles they publish – open access journals.

At the same time, new methods of dissemination have been stimulated, already used in scientific areas such as physics: publication in preprints format for a faster disclosure in institutional repositories and in preprints servers.

3.4. Predatory Journals Nowadays, the researcher is daily attacked with emails invited him to submit his works in journals, most with unknown but sound titles, which evoke high international prestige and promises of an inviting impact factor and quick publication. Pressured by the imperative to publish, the researcher hesitates and often accedes without carefully reading what he signs, without reading the journal’s website and forgetting that with the current technological development, it is very easy to simulate a credible image on the Internet. This phenomenon is named: predatory journals. And bad experiences are unfortunately many but have been reported. Some of the knowledge that the researcher must assimilate and train are described below. What are the characteristics of predatory journals? (Hansoti, Langdorf, & Murphy, 2016). 

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Guarantees publication acceptance, promising a fast and easy publishing process with little or no peer review or quality control, including fake research and nonsensical papers. Hidden article processing charges (APC) and demands payment after papers are accepted, even from those most unable to pay. Warning signs include grammar errors, poor quality science, and poorly maintained websites with prominent misspellings and grammatical errors.

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Resembles the name or website style of more well-established scientific journals, e.g., Spring Journals. Uses spam emails to aggressively campaign for academics to submit articles or serve on editorial boards. Officers use email addresses that end in gmail.com, yahoo.com, or some other free email supplier. Often adds names of real researchers to their editorial boards for credibility without consent (Sorokowski, Kulczycki, Sorokowska, & Pisanski, 2017). Makes misleading or false claims about their journals on issues such as impact factors or indexing. Some journals refuse to retract articles at author request when true nature is discovered. Some charge a withdrawal fee for article removal. Provides false publishing locations claiming to be based, e.g., in London when they are really based in South Asia.

Which are the dangers of predatory journals? (Hansoti, Langdorf, & Murphy, 2016).     

Motivated by financial gain. Leads to unsafe clinical practices, corrupting the sharing of knowledge in science and medicine (Shamseer et al., 2017). Rewards the conduct of unethical/unscientific conduct (plagiarism, falsified data, and image manipulation). Often confused with and has given a bad reputation to legitimate opean access journals. Main victims are primarily institutions and researchers in low and middle-income countries.

When reviewing the journal website, does the journal/publisher:

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Clearly identify an editor-in-chief and an editorial board with their academic affiliations and appropriate credentials for the journal scope and topic? Provide specific and detailed instructions and guidelines for authors? Are the policies and practices fully stated? Offer reasonable author feed clearly stated up front? Offer discounts or waivers for junior authors or authors from low and middle-income countries LMICs? (Hansoti, Langdorf, & Murphy, 2016)Ask the corresponding author for suggested reviewers? This would like to be a red flag. Have a legitimate impact factor? Verify the impact factor in Journal Citation Reports and Scientific Journal Rankings. Have excessive advertising on the website? Have no membership or industry association? Is the journal/publisher a member of Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), or Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM)? List a legitimate ISSN number on the website? Verify the ISSN in Ulrich’s Periodical Directory. Contain a record in the NLM Catalog: journals referenced in the NCBI databases, or Scopus, or Web of Science?

Some useful resources: 

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Identify misleading metrics companies and provide criteria for determining misleading metrics (http://beallslist.weebly.com/ misleading-metrics.html). Review the ‘Criteria for determining predatory open access publishers’, by Jeffrey Bell (http://beallslist.weebly.com/ uploads/3/0/9/5/30958339/criteria-2015.pdf). Review the ‘Identifying predatory or pseudo-journals’ from WAME (World Association of Medical Editors) (http://wame.org/ identifying-predatory-or-pseudo-journals).

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Choose the right journal for your research – Think, check, submit initiative (https://thinkchecksubmit.org/).

Work collaboratively to promote open access, because the process of getting a young journal recognized and included in various indexing services is both lengthy and complex. It can easily be misidentified as predatory.     

Develop guidelines for choosing reliable open access journals in which to publish. Instead of maintaining a blacklist of questionable publishers, create a ‘green list’ of reputable journals in various disciplines. The absence of a journal from the ‘green list’ does not necessarily indicate that it is a predatory publication (Singer, 2017). Less controversy, not likely to result in litigation, and are simple to maintain. Create a list of available platinum open access journals.

The pressure to publish is, as it turns out, a bait for these predatory journals. But the researcher should assume a demanding and informed role, for the sake of the reliability of its scientific production which, published in these journals, is quickly questioned.

3.5. Collaborative Platforms and Digital Identity Facing the interactivity in scientific communication, the communication process of science was then transformed and adapted. Also recently, social networks for researchers have contributed to systematizing another way of communicating science. Collaborative platforms for sharing, document editing, blogging, researcher profiles, social tagging, bookmarking, impact factor analysis, including the social impact on the scientific community (altmetrics) represent a categorized structure of the research life cycle (Lopes, Antunes, & Sanches, 2018). The Nicholas and Rowlands study (2011) states that this new approach to science and research allows

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identifying new research opportunities, locating new partners, facilitating literature review, data collection and analysis, disseminating results, and management of data. Scientific reputation is essential for the researcher, contributes to his progress, recognition, for obtaining grants and scholarships for academic research. It is mainly based on quantitative indicators such as the H index, the number of citations, the number of articles and other indicators. The web allows, almost gratuitously, to work together, disseminate research and reach researchers from around the world. Nothing is easier than searching the web. It is commonly accepted that the web is currently the right environment for research and that good content, combined with appropriate dissemination efforts, will make an investigation potentially visible, feedback that will generate the ability of the researcher to take control of his reputation and the dissemination of his work. Digital reputation can be empowered and managed, so it is important that the researcher knows the different channels and competences to manage his visibility and positioning (Alonso-Arévalo, Lopes, & Antunes, 2016). In this context, the researcher can find allies in libraries and librarians. The signature is a unique identity element for the researcher. However, often the name of a researcher appears in numerous ways that produce a significant effect on the impact of the publications. It is, therefore, necessary to establish a unique form of identity. In the last years, several systems have appeared that try to solve this situation through the creation of a global authors identification system. This is the case of the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID), an open, nonprofit, community project that provides a system for unambiguous identification of researchers and a clear method for linking research activities and the production of these identifiers. ORCID has a unique ability to reach all areas and fields of research, to cross borders and to cooperate with other identification systems. It provides a permanent digital identifier that distinguishes one researcher from all the others, ensuring that the work of a researcher is recognized as his, with the possibility of being linked to other identifiers such as Scopus, ResearcherID, IraLIS, RePEc or LinkedIn. It is also linked to the scientific production of researchers, facilitating the recognition of their publications, identifying

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collaborators and reviewers, and finally promoting the process of scientific discovery. In addition, the researcher may include his ORCID identifier on his website, submitting publications, applying for funding, and any research work to ensure recognition of his work. There are, on the other hand, social reference managers who add to the traditional role of referral managers the capabilities of social networks (see Mendeley). The most important part of a social reference manager is not the referral manager itself, but the research community that uses the tool for sharing research, recommending articles to others, and working collaboratively. Groups are one of the most useful characteristics of a social manager in that they draw on the resources of the wisdom of the ‘multitude’ to promote the interests of the individual researcher. This possibility makes reference managers tools oriented to the reinforcement of digital identity, for visibility, cooperation and for the discovery of scientific information. These are some of the tools to be considered in the digital environment and that support the researcher establishing his digital identity and improving the research results – the scientific social networks. In this context some are highlighted, in which it is advisable for the researcher to mark his presence since it will improve his visibility and his digital identity: 

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Academia (http://academia.edu/). The researcher is alerted whenever someone accesses a document of his own on Google (what search term was used, who accessed it, and where it came from). Statistics on access and use of documents are therefore obtained. It also sends a weekly alert for activities such as downloads, profile views, or provenance. Very important: references can be included in RIS (Research Information Systems) format, the most used by reference managers, which facilitates a rapid elaboration of the profile. ResearchGate (http://www.researchgate.net/). A social network of researchers and a collaboration tool for researchers from all scientific subjects. The platform offers the semantic search of scientific journal articles that navigate the internal and external research resources of the major databases, including PubMed,

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CiteSeer, arXiv, to locate the best results in research papers; it also provides discussion tools among researchers such as forums and the creation of expert groups. OrcID (www.orcid.org). Provides a permanent digital identifier that identifies the researcher in the process of submitting scientific papers or applications for research funding; also supports automatic links between the profile of the researcher and his research work, in order to ensure scientific recognition. ResearcherID (http://www.researcherid.com). An identification system for scientific authors created in 2008 by Thomson Reuters. This unique identifier aims to solve the problem of the identification of authors often evidenced in the scientific literature (i.e., authors with the same name and the same initials, result in orthographic variations of the same authors and in different authors with the same spelling). SSRN (Social Science Research Network, http://www.ssrn.com/ en/). A social network dedicated to the quickly worldwide dissemination of social science research. It consists of a set of networks of investigation specialized in diverse branches (e.g., accounting, economy, political sciences and information systems). Each of these networks in the SSRN encourages the early dissemination of research results through the publication of abstracts. Users can also subscribe to mailing lists that cover a wide range of subjects. There are numerous publishers who collaborate with the platform, providing articles for distribution through eLibrary SSRN and references for publication in SSRN e-journals. Each author can publish his own profile, including full affiliation and contact information, updated list of abstracts, and full-text documents available in the SSRN database. It allows searching for documents as well as view the popularity indexes of articles, authors and institutions, depending on the number of downloads or citations. The system allows the inclusion of notes or comments in each record.

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In conclusion, the application of social web technologies to the scientific process allows researchers to relate fluidly and data to be shared in open access. The potential offered by participatory technologies facilitates authors to share information, optimize and maximize results, promote scientific discovery and research visibility through databases, platforms, and services to support the research process.

3.6. Open Peer Review Peer review is the main quality control tool for publications in most areas of knowledge. In evaluating the quality of the research, the peer review also ends up identifying which results should be published, including which authors and which research should in the future receive funding (Bornmann, 2011). The current model of peer review presents some problems, particularly as regards the reliability and inconsistency of the process itself, as it generally does not detect fraud or plagiarism (Ross-Hellaeur, 2018); the fact that it is a closed and selective process (where the editors are selecting the reviewers); the sometimes delay of months in the evaluation process and therefore its high cost; the lack of transparency of the procedure; the social bias of publication, which analyzes the linguistic version and the institutional affiliation of the authors; the lack of incentives, because it is often a process carried out without pay and even without recognition. The main criticisms relate to the traditional peer review model, which is characterized by the single-blind review (where the reviewer knows who the author is) and double-blind (in which the work is judged by its merit, reviewer and author do not know the role of each one, although the reviewer can recognize the author for the subject analyzed). With Open Science, open peer review is gaining ground in the scientific community because it relies on the identification of authors and reviewers, including institutional affiliations and academic qualifications, open opinions, the possibility to access the manuscript final before the reviewer comments, the collaborative process among reviewers, but also in open

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participation and decoupled review, ensuring a permanent interaction between both sides of the process. The advantages of an open peer review seem, however, to weigh positively on authors, reviewers, and readers, namely:           

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Transparency and responsibility among reviewers. Ease of recognizing prejudices and conflicts of interest. High-quality review, precisely by the exposure factor. The opinion may be, in itself, a research result. Clearly decreases the number of issues in editorial selection. Creates opportunities for early-stage researchers in which skills are shown and reputation built. Fastest editorial process for permanent openness to potential reviewers. Faster sharing of preprints. Authors can get faster feedback from their research. Ability to receive comments to the final version of the publication (and, incorporating them, improve the original for a second version). Encourage interaction and discussion (in which conflicts between authors and reviewers are resolved, without publication being rejected and without the mediation of the publisher). Use of open platforms (where the review is done transparently and the publishing process is accelerated). Increased visibility of research by authors and reviewers, but also by editors.

The open peer review thus rests on two important pillars of the scientific publication process: communication and science assessment, offering a greater exposure of authors and reviewers. But it is also less permeable to prejudice or to actions that are not proper. Reviewers, on the one hand, can get credit for their work; the authors, on the other hand, may be subject to some animosity among themselves and to some repercussions regarding job opportunities, promotions, and future funding.

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3.7. Research Impact: Metrics and Assessment The European Commission (2019) has defined key functions that follow scientific publications since the seventeenth century: “registration (attribution), certification (peer review), dissemination (distribution, access), preservation (scholarly memory and permanent archiving)” (pp. 56). But assessment is another, more recent function, also associated with academic publishing. Questioned, however, has been the unit of measure used for this assessment: the impact factor defined by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The academic progression of the researcher depends to a large extent on metrics related to scientific publications. These metrics are mainly indexes that measure scientific productivity and articles citation, such as the H index, the Journal Impact Factor, CiteScore, among others. The researcher who devotes time, effort and experience to activities associated with data curation is not consequently rewarded by traditional career progression metrics. Data and other research resources (e.g., workflows and protocols) should, therefore, be encouraged to assist in visualizing and recognizing different contributions in science, in addition to authoring an article. Researchers are at the center of this ecosystem: they search for information, but they also invest in their status as researchers, because their performance evaluation (and the institutional reward system) and the future allocation of research funding depend on it. However, a system that revolves around impact factors necessarily stimulates researchers’ competition with each other – even if some will develop partnerships with each other. Choosing a magazine to publish represents an exhausting exercise for the researcher, so he should find answers to the following questions:   

Does the journal have an impact factor? If yes, is it greater than 5? If not, does he have at least CiteScore? Does the magazine have quartile? If yes, quartile 1 or 2? Quartiles 3 and 4 are relegated to crisis situations. Is the journal indexed in the Web of Science? In Scopus? In PubMed?

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Since when is it indexed in these databases? How many articles are indexed? How much does it cost to publish in open access? And if the value is too high... And in others, how much does it cost to publish? What is the value of APCs considered reasonably average? How and when should APCs be paid? What if, after the review and the article is in the editing process, I do not want to pay?

In addition to traditional metrics, and following recent trends, alternative metrics have some advantages (FOSTER, 2018), namely:   

They identify more quickly than citations. Measure the impact of results from other research (e.g., datasets, codes, protocols, blog posts, tweets, etc.). Provide different impact measures per item or item.

For early-stage researchers, the reach and speed of information on alternative metrics appears to be particularly advantageous because their output is recent and their impact is still not reflected in the citations received. They also assume their importance in identifying important and emerging research areas, as well as in creating potential collaborative networks of researchers. In this context, universities and research centers should seek to stimulate research and the dissemination of knowledge to society, as a part of their mission as the driving force for education and science. The major problem is that universities and research centers are not self-sustaining, they have to be funded (either with public or private funds) and the allocation of these funds is associated with their evaluation and position in international rankings.

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4. SHARING RESEARCH RESULTS AND OPEN SCIENCE CHALLENGES The concept of Open Science is already clear to the researcher, is particularly used in the promotion of scientific results to a greater and open public access. Other concepts are also identified in Open Science, such as policies, results evaluation, access to data and scientific publications. The awareness of researchers’ social networks has also been perceived and valued, including the trend of alternative metrics. At the same time, it should be emphasized that in 2010 the American Psychological Association stated that “research is complete only when the results are shared with the scientific community” (APA, p. 9). In fact, academic writing finds its purpose and desideratum in this assumption, expressed on the first page of the first chapter of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The sharing of research results, particularly through publication in scientific journals is what gives the researcher the space for dialogue with his community. Validity comes from the scientific method, but also from the self-regulation strategies of the scientific community, such as peer review, dissemination of information on carefully selected publication platforms, external audits that fund research, among other examples. Collaboration and cooperation, on the other hand, seem to be the best ways for the researcher to balance the competition with his peers and, for this, it is necessary to find the way to act more effectively, collaboratively and collectively. Collaboration is also evident in open peer review processes. According to Correia (2018), these are some reasons to use open peer review:    

Transparency – reviewers responsibility. Speed – more reviewers, more availability. Reliability – more opportunities to identify flaws or inconsistencies. Consistency – diversity of opinions of different reviewers and reduction of rejection hypotheses.

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Context – open comments allow the contextualization of the publication. Motivation – the reviewer’s opportunity for credibility.

Open Science can foster a reform of the academic evaluation system, encouraging the researcher to change his practices of publication and dissemination, leading to the reduction of costs and the valuation of academic content to the detriment of quantity and impact factors. Therefore, when thinking about outreach and assessment, it should also be considered an answer to face these challenges:   

Open data sharing. Sharing and dialog based on validated results. The re-use of scientific information obtained in open channels (such as institutional repositories, databases, and open publications).

Transparency in Open Science makes it responsive to societal challenges and facilitates innovation and the appropriation of new knowledge for the development of new products and services, i.e., maximizing the economic and social return on public investment in research and science (Rodrigues, Swan, & Baptista, 2013). In this context, the technological feature requires a systemic approach, technological infrastructures, and multivariate statistical techniques in order to avoid undue correlations. The researcher is asked not so much knowledge, but knowledge as to handle large sets of data. In the context of the European Open Science Cloud, the European Commission presented a set of recommendations to ensure the implementation of the FAIR principles to scientific data, which presents significant changes in the research culture and the provision of infrastructures (European Commission, 2018). This initiative, because of its importance, requires global agreements to ensure the interoperability and reuse of data. Some of the recommendations are listed below:

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Implementation of a model for FAIR digital objects. Development of components of a FAIR ecosystem. Development of interoperability structures for FAIR sharing within the disciplines and for the interdisciplinarity of research. Guarantee of data management via DMPs. Support for semantic technologies. Facilitate the automation process. Development of the assessment framework for FAIR data service certification. To professionalize data science and the functions of data manager and researcher trainer. Implementation of curricular structure and training in the area. Development of metrics for FAIR digital objects. Development of metrics for certification of FAIR data services. Provision of strategic and sustainable financing.

From the point of view of measuring and rewarding research contributions, the overall diversity of results should be considered, including FAIR data, codes, workflows, templates and other digital research objects, as well as their curation and maintenance. In the 21st century, traditional publications and periodicals are far from the only significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge.

CONCLUSION Collaboration and competition between universities and research centers must be seen as an advantage for the production and dissemination of more knowledge, whose preservation and re-use should be ensured. In this collaborative environment, university libraries and publishers play an important role within the academic communication system, as they contribute to this ecosystem by providing platforms and investing in training.

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The paradigm shift forced by Open Science also highlighted the differences in research-specific objects in each domain, methodologies and procedures in the acquisition and management of data, but also behavior towards information, which is reflected in the formats of publication, communication and use of information. But it also gives a sense of responsibility, reliability and reproducibility to science, inhibiting or exposing errors, bad practices or even scientific fraud. In this chapter, we sought to list the characteristics of Open Science, articulating them with the challenges of academic writing, in order to help researchers navigate this ecosystem and to become protagonists through their writing.

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Rodrigues, E., Swan, A. & Baptista, A. (2013). Uma década de acesso aberto na UMinho e no mundo [A decade of open access in UMinho and in the world]. Braga: Universidade do Minho, Serviços de Documentação. Ross-Hellaeur, T. (2018). What is open peer review? A systematic review. F1000 Research, 6, 588. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.11369.2. Singer, A. (2017). Not all young journals are predatory. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, 18(2), 318. doi: 10.5811/westjem.2016.10. 32826. Shamseer, L., Moher, D., Maduekwe, O., Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R. & Shea, B. J. (2017). Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: Can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison. BMC Medicine, 15(1), 28. doi: 10.1186/s12916-017-0785-9. Sorokowski, P., Kulczycki, E., Sorokowska, A. & Pisanski, A. (2017). Predatory journals recruit fake editor. Nature, 543(7646), 481-483. doi: 10.1038/543481a.

ABOUT THE EDITORS Tatiana Sanches Researcher, Head Librarian UIDEF, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal Tatiana Sanches has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Lisbon, a Master’s degree in Education and Reading, from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, and a degree in Modern Languages and Literature (Portuguese Studies). She is also a post-graduate in Documentation Sciences. Researcher in UIDEF, the Unit for Research and Development in Education and Training of the Institute of Education (University of Lisbon) and Post-Doc Researcher in CEISXX (University of Coimbra). She also collaborates with the APPsy Unit, ISPA). Currently, she is Head of the Documentation Division at the Faculty of Psychology and Institute of Education (University of Lisbon). With several national and international publications, she has been working in libraries since 1993 and in university libraries since 2007, her current research interests includes Higher Education, Information Literacy, Academic Writing and Open Science. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4902-2628.

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About the Editors

Maria da Luz Antunes Researcher, Head Librarian Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa (Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa), Lisboa, Portugal Maria da Luz Antunes has a Degree in History and Master in Documentation Sciences – dissertation about the role of the reference librarian as a mediator in the university health libraries. Begin the activity in the Library of the Portugal Bureau (European Commission, 1988). Coordinated the European Documentation Center of the University of Lisbon; also the Libraries of the Institute of General Practice (Portugal Southern), the Institute of Quality in Health, and the Atlantic University. Since 2000, coordinates the Library of the Lisbon School of Health Technology (Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon). Manager of the institutional scientific repository. Editorial referee of two scientific journals: Revista Portuguesa de Medicina Geral e Familiar (since 2014), and Saúde & Tecnologia (since 2008). Council member of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL). She published several papers in national journals, and presented her research at national and international conferences. Research interests: information literacy; Open Science; research innovation; bibliometry; and health literacy, especially among the elderly and those with chronic diseases. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0942-7601.

Carlos Lopes Assistant Professor, Researcher, Head Librarian ISPA – Instituto Universitário, Lisboa, Portugal Carlos Lopes is graduate and Master in Educational Psychology by ISPA - University Institute, Post-graduation in Documentary Sciences and Doctorate (Ph.D.) in Documentation by the University of Salamanca. Assistant Professor at ISPA - Instituto Universitário, the oldest Psychology School in Portugal. His current research interests includes Information

About the Editors

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Literacy (digital resources) and learning process in Higher Education; Health literacy programs. Member of Scielo PORTUGAL (2006-2017). Integrated researcher in Applied Psychology Research Center Capabilities & Inclusion – APPsyCI. He published several papers in national and international journals, book chapters and presented his research at national and international conferences. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6440-4739.

INDEX A abstract, 3, 23, 26, 31, 55, 74, 85, 92, 109, 155, 160, 162, 166, 167, 168, 184, 188, 191 academia, 61, 103, 192, 205 academic library, 32, 37, 39, 43, 52, 54 academic success, xii, 40, 61 academic writing, v, vi, vii, viii, x, xi, xii, 1, 5, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 78, 80, 83, 85, 86, 87, 106, 157, 188, 192, 195, 211, 214, 217 academic writing center, v, ix, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53 accuracy, 19, 106, 109, 164, 170 acknowledgments, 164, 165, 180 ACRL framework, 56, 66, 78, 82, 116, 141 advisor, 60, 63, 64 Agamben, Giorgio, 13, 14, 15, 16, 28 altmetrics, 203 American Psychological Association (APA), 73, 79, 80, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 117, 119, 121, 122, 127, 129,

130, 131, 133, 134, 141, 145, 149, 150, 151, 152, 156, 160, 181, 188, 211, 214 APA guidelines, 110 APA standards, 160 APA style, 110, 115, 130, 152 article processing charges, 200 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), 54, 56, 65, 66, 67, 78, 79, 81, 82, 116, 117, 128, 141, 193, 214 attention, 15, 21, 63, 70, 113, 114, 121, 161 authority, 19, 33, 65, 66, 67, 76, 87, 106, 112 authorship, 113, 114, 134, 138, 148, 164, 174, 180

B bibliographic references, 63, 110, 117, 119, 124, 129, 131, 151, 152 bibliography, 73, 111, 113, 114, 129 Blanchot, Maurice, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28 Boolean operators, 89, 96, 100 Borges, Jorge Luís, v, ix, 16, 20

Index

222 C capacities, 58, 61, 70, 78 capacity building, ix, 56, 68 circulation, xi, 106, 118, 191 citation, x, 49, 59, 74, 80, 91, 101, 109, 110, 111, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 149, 150, 151, 152, 159, 179, 181, 187, 188, 194 202, 204, 206, 209, 210 citation in text, 128 citizen science, 119, 124, 195 collaboration, 34, 47, 52, 53, 54, 126, 147, 161, 180, 205, 211, 213 collaborative platforms, 203 Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), 202 competences, 71, 76, 79, 204 conclusion, 15, 52, 78, 106, 149, 151, 168, 179, 186, 187, 207, 213 conference, 91, 99, 141, 152, 199 conflict of interest, 182, 187 consciousness, 5, 8, 12, 15, 19, 26, 62, 63, 122 consistency, 74, 151, 161, 211 constructivist learning theory, 33 controlled language, 95, 99, 100, 170 controlled vocabulary, 96, 98 copyright, 103, 114, 132, 165, 166, 177, 200 cover letter, 183, 184 Creative Commons, 113, 166 creativity, 61, 62, 67 critical analysis, 77, 87 critical thinking, 49, 77, 123 criticism, 179, 185, 197

D data analysis, 164, 175 data collection, 164, 165, 174, 203 Data Management Platform, 199

database, 92, 94, 101, 143, 206 Deleuze, Gilles, 6, 7, 8, 13, 16, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28 desire to write, 15 developing academic writing centers, 36 digital identity, 203, 205, 214 Digital Object Identifier (DOI), 54, 110, 136, 141, 142, 143, 149, 151 digital reputation, 204 discussion, 12, 14, 48, 76, 114, 115, 141, 164, 166, 168, 176, 178, 180, 193, 206, 208 dissertation, ix, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 71, 76, 81, 110, 139, 140, 144, 145, 150, 218

E editors, x, 92, 135, 168, 182, 185, 207, 208 education, vii, x, xi, xii, 32, 38, 48, 56, 57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66, 72, 79, 81, 82, 116, 117, 118, 131, 135, 138, 140, 146, 147, 193, 210 education services market, 48 educational institutions, 37, 38, 48 emancipation, 5, 8, 10 environmental factors, 48 ethical conduct, 165 ethical standards, 114 ethics, vi, x, xi, 28, 48, 50, 51, 109, 110, 155, 165, 174 European Open Science Cloud, 197, 212 experience of alterity, 21 experience of writing, 27

F FAIR data, 197, 198, 213, 215 fake research, 200 figures, 13, 15, 33, 114, 160, 168, 175, 176, 177, 183 financial, 18, 38, 45, 48, 182, 201

Index financial resources, 38, 45 financing, 164, 182, 213 flexibility, 11, 67, 77, 193 flow, ix, 24, 25, 56, 62, 69, 70, 78, 79, 163, 171, 179 foreign language, 45, 47 Foucault, Michel, 13, 16 funding, 52, 53, 157, 198, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209

G graduate students, ix, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 72, 77 grammar, 161, 162, 200

H happiness of creation, 16 health, 57, 82, 147, 165, 170, 198, 218 higher education, vii, ix, xi, xii, 32, 37, 38, 56, 57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 72, 79, 81, 116, 117, 118, 131, 138, 147, 193, 214 hypothesis, viii, 4, 7, 27, 87, 129

223 information search, 76, 86, 95, 100 information skills, 56, 57, 59, 69, 76, 133, 136, 147 innovation, 44, 61, 141, 147, 197, 212, 215, 218 innovative, 48, 53, 158 interactive, 65, 77 Internet, 78, 91, 102, 114, 140, 142, 200 Inter-University, 52 introduction, v, vii, 4, 28, 32, 50, 51, 56, 86, 110, 115, 123, 156, 166, 170, 171, 173, 178, 179, 192

K keywords, 4, 32, 56, 74, 86, 89, 92, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 110, 156, 167, 169, 170, 189, 192 knowledge, vii, viii, ix, x, xi, xii, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 27, 28, 32, 33, 35, 36, 50, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 66, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 85, 86, 88, 91, 94, 104, 106, 111, 112, 114, 116, 118, 119, 123, 124, 136, 147, 157, 160, 162, 170, 171, 172, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 207, 210, 212, 213

I illustrations, 20, 176 impact factor, xi, 45, 51, 158, 159, 200, 201, 202, 203, 209, 212 indexing, 170, 201, 203 individual meetings, 51 individual sessions, 49 information literacy, v, ix, x, 32, 45, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 72, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87, 100, 109, 110, 116, 117, 118, 120, 123, 131, 132, 133, 136, 137, 146, 147, 148, 192, 193, 214, 215, 217, 218 information retrieval, 77, 91

L language, viii, xii, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 32, 37, 39, 40, 45, 47, 50, 54, 67, 90, 98, 99, 132, 133, 158, 161, 167, 183, 187 language philosophy, 4 learning, vii, viii, xii, 32, 33, 35, 64, 65, 67, 68, 75, 76, 77, 116, 123, 132, 135, 136, 137, 144, 145, 147, 157, 193, 218 learning process, 65, 68, 77, 123, 193, 218 librarians, ix, xii, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 43, 50, 55, 56, 57, 67, 68, 70, 102, 122, 204 library services, 39, 52

Index

224 literacy, ix, x, 32, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 72, 76, 78, 79, 81, 86, 87, 100, 107, 109, 110, 116, 117, 118, 120, 123, 124, 125, 129, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 141, 143, 146, 147, 148, 192, 193, 214, 215, 218, 219 long transcripts, 120 Lyotard, Jean-François, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 28

M Mallarmé, Stéphane, 16, 20 meaning, xii, 6, 7, 9, 14, 20, 22, 24, 27, 33, 36, 54, 61, 81, 144, 162, 180 methodology, vii, 11, 80, 82, 101, 114, 161, 167, 175, 176 methods, x, xii, 36, 54, 66, 67, 71, 72, 74, 77, 82, 85, 86, 112, 115, 120, 166, 168, 170, 173, 175, 176, 178, 185, 195, 200 metrics, 202, 209, 210, 211, 213 modular training, 49, 51 Moldova, ix, 31, 32, 37, 38, 39, 43, 44, 45, 48, 51, 52, 53

N narrative, 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 123 natural language, 95, 96 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 5, 7, 9, 16, 26 Norway, 31, 32, 39, 41, 52

O occasional lectures, 49 open access, 93, 102, 103, 104, 125, 140, 158, 181, 192, 195, 197, 199, 200, 202, 203, 207, 210, 215 Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), 202 open data, 192, 197

open peer review, 192, 195, 207, 208, 211, 214, 215 open platforms, 208 Open Science, vi, xi, 118, 119, 123, 147, 191, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198, 207, 211, 212, 214, 215, 217, 218 optimization of university activities, 48 ORCID, 204 order of references, 146 organize, xi, 37, 43, 57, 76, 89, 91, 156, 157 originality, 91, 159, 172

P paraphrase, 115, 117, 119 peer review, xii, 49, 158, 159, 189, 192, 195, 199, 200, 207, 208, 209, 211, 214, 215 peer tutors, 34 performativity of writing, 16 plagiarism, 32, 45, 51, 74, 76, 110, 112, 113, 114, 144, 151, 181, 201, 207 platform, xi, 65, 77, 104, 143, 191, 193, 205, 206 positive psychology, ix, 56, 57, 62, 63, 64, 69, 70, 71, 76, 78, 79, 80, 127, 138 positive thinking, v, ix, 55, 56 postmodern social theory, v, viii, 4, 5 postmodernity, 10, 11, 28 predatory journal, 159, 192, 200, 201, 203 preparation, 48, 60, 127, 148, 149, 164, 187 preservation, 18, 92, 199, 209, 213 publication manual, 79, 110, 115, 117, 131, 133, 138, 141, 152, 156, 160, 188, 211, 214 publishing, vi, xi, 17, 78, 87, 132, 156, 161, 187, 188, 189, 191, 195, 200, 201, 208, 209, 215 punctuation, 150, 167

Index Q quality, ix, 32, 43, 49, 52, 53, 62, 74, 75, 76, 77, 87, 91, 111, 123, 126, 157, 158, 160, 162, 177, 187, 195, 200, 207, 208, 218 quotation, 100, 101, 118, 119, 120, 121, 132, 150 quoting, vi, x, 45, 51, 109, 110, 115

R reference, x, 16, 20, 28, 53, 59, 62, 65, 78, 80, 86, 91, 92, 98, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, 117, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 135, 136, 138, 141, 143, 144, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 158, 160, 165, 168, 171, 178, 179, 181, 184, 188, 205, 206, 214, 218 referencing, 115, 175 rejected manuscript, 185 rejection, 157, 168, 171, 176, 185, 211 rejection rates, 185 relevance, 45, 67, 74, 75, 87, 88, 96, 101, 105, 106, 160, 171, 183 reliability, 87, 94, 105, 112, 123, 203, 207, 211, 214 Republic of Moldova, ix, 31, 37, 38, 39, 43, 44, 45, 48, 51, 52, 53 research data, 103, 192, 195, 197 research funding, 206, 209 research impact, 209 research proposal, 157, 169, 189 ResearcherID, 204, 206 researchers, x, xi, 9, 11, 44, 49, 51, 58, 67, 81, 92, 103, 107, 110, 118, 124, 125, 133, 153, 178, 191, 192, 197, 198, 199, 201, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 214 ResearchGate, 103, 205 results, ix, xii, 15, 36, 37, 38, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50, 56, 57, 61, 63, 64, 65, 67, 71, 72, 75,

225 77, 78, 87, 91, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 106, 160, 161, 164, 166, 168, 169, 172, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 183, 192, 193, 195, 199, 203, 205, 206,207, 210, 211, 212, 213

S scholarship, 67, 94, 192, 193 school, 10, 36, 39, 43, 60, 72, 81, 82, 143 science, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 47, 51, 52, 53, 54, 77, 86, 90, 93, 103, 119, 124, 126, 141, 144, 147, 155, 156, 157, 162, 187, 192, 194, 195, 197, 200, 201, 203, 206, 208, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215 science communication, 156 scientific, vi, vii, x, xi, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 37, 38, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 62, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 91, 92, 93, 94, 102, 103, 105, 106, 109, 110, 115, 117, 119, 123, 124, 129, 133, 136, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 166, 170, 171, 182, 185, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 214, 218 scientific article, vi, xi, 50, 87, 92, 141, 143, 150, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161, 187, 189 scientific communication, 86, 87 scientific paper, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 80, 110, 151, 152, 160, 188, 194, 206 scientific publication, 94, 142, 157, 161, 166, 192, 195, 197, 208, 209, 211 scientific reputation, 195, 204 scientific research, vii, 45, 47, 51, 87, 119, 124, 157, 185 scientific writing, 81, 86, 109, 133, 153, 161, 170, 188 search strategies, 95, 96, 99, 101, 193

Index

226 search strings, 86 self-assessment, ix, 56, 75, 76, 77, 78, 147 self-plagiarism, 110, 113 sharing, xi, xii, 37, 82, 157, 192, 195, 196, 198, 199, 201, 203, 205, 208, 211, 212, 213 short transcriptions, 121 skills, v, viii, ix, x, 31, 41, 51, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 86, 124, 137, 152, 161, 172, 192, 208 SMART, 172 SSRN, 206 STM, 202 strategies, vi, x, 49, 64, 71, 74, 76, 78, 86, 87, 95, 99, 109, 110, 156, 161, 187, 189, 199, 211 student support, 53 student tutors, 33, 35, 53 study purpose, 172 support materials, 49

T tables, 75, 113, 114, 160, 168, 175, 176, 177, 183 teachers, xii, 10, 33, 45, 47, 48, 49, 87, 133, 143, 171, 193 technical and medical publishers, 202 thesauri, 95, 98, 99, 100, 170 thesis, v, ix, 4, 10, 14, 16, 24, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 139, 140, 144, 145, 150 thought, 5, 9, 15, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 51, 60, 90, 115, 163 trend, 43, 211

tutorials, 32, 35, 51, 75, 90

U universities, 32, 38, 39, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54, 139, 210, 213 university institution, 9, 11 university research, viii, 3, 4 unknown, viii, 3, 7, 11, 12, 15, 111, 131, 138, 200

V validation, xii, 175 valuation, 193, 212

W websites, ix, 31, 36, 39, 93, 100, 105, 141, 200 World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), 202 writer, 18, 19, 20, 60, 163 writing, v, vi, vii, viii, ix, x, xi, xii, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 59, 60, 61, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 82, 85, 86, 90, 107, 109, 110, 113, 115, 117, 135, 136, 149, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164, 166, 169, 178, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 214 writing practices, 5 writing process, 33, 34, 76, 166, 189, 193 writing style, xi, 50, 73, 156, 160, 161, 188