Practical Tips for Publishing Scholarly Articles: Writing and Publishing in the Helping Professions (review)

In this small but useful book, Rich Furman, currently associate professor and director of social work at the University of Washington, Tacoma, offers a primer on publishing scholarly articles that is tailored to scholars and practitioners in the human services and ‘helping fields’: fields such as social work, education, nursing, counselling, psychology, public administration, and criminal justice. Furman thus adds his voice to the growing chorus of such how-to books, which are increasingly differentiated – despite similar content – by targeting particular audiences. What can be sacrificed by such specificity, though, with examples customized for familiarity to readers who fall within the target group, is attention to the universal nature of writing for scholarly publishing. Furman carefully avoids this myopia, structuring his book of eight chapters, nine exercises, a conclusion, and six appendices around information and ideas relevant to most academics seeking to publish in scholarly journals.

Although the title might suggest a book of itemized suggestions written in imperative form, each followed by explanation or elaboration, Furman has instead chosen an approach with narrative, demonstrative, and interactive elements.¹ His first three chapters set the stage for developing the right mind-sets, environments, and habits for writing. Furman begins by exploring motivations for writing for publication, adding the oft-overlooked (at least in this type of book) ethical dimension: ‘Professionals have ethical obligations to disseminate their research, experience, and knowledge’ (3). Publishing, therefore, is not merely for hopes of tenure; it is not merely to add lines to one’s curriculum vitae. He encourages readers to perform self-assessments of their writing abilities but misses the chance to emphasize how ‘basic writing skills’ – not covered in his book – are different from the writing skills needed to produce academic journal articles. Agreeing with William Zinsser and Paul Silvia and the many others who have said the same,² Furman confesses that ‘writing is often extremely hard work’ (12). He suggests viewing writer’s block from a ‘biopsychosocial perspective’ (10), one that helps us understand the interactional nature of issues and concerns. He intelligently encourages daily or near-daily writing that involves the practice of writing rituals, and he challenges readers to ‘treat writing as a creative, life-inspiring practice’ (24). (Fitting it is, then, that Furman is also a published poet.) On the importance of disciplined writing, he offers an astute analogy that compares a writing project with a weight-loss goal (25): in short, one should strive for small, daily advances instead of attempting, for example, to write the whole twenty-page article (or lose the whole twenty pounds) in one frenzied binge.

Furman’s fourth chapter, on types of scholarly publications, provides an overview of traditional (e.g., quantitative studies, qualitative studies, case studies, literature reviews, book reviews) and non-traditional (e.g., autoethnographies, artistic presentations) publication types. His descriptions are brief and seem intended to raise awareness of possibilities rather than to explain what goes into writing them. More helpful, perhaps, would have been the inclusion of selected references that would provide more information on the various types of publications. (The book’s appendix on writing resources is both slim and quite general.) His two-sentence description of what to include in a book review (42) is a good start; but a better finish would have been, for example, to direct readers to Linda Simon’s unbeatable offering on the subject.³ As examples, Furman includes sample abstracts – from his own articles – representing several of the publication types. By including the abstract of a then in-press article (35–6), he unintentionally allows inquisitive readers to see the (usually) hidden role of the copy editor by comparing the abstract as ultimately published in the journal with the pre-edited abstract published in the book.⁴

From chapter 5 to the conclusion, Furman offers the bulk of his suggestions that directly pertain to producing...