- Writing for Publication: Transitions and Tools That Support Scholars' Success by Mary Renck Jalongo and Olivia N. Saracho
Springer Texts in Education. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2016. Pp. xviii, 315. Paper: isbn-13 978-3-319-31648-2, us$99.99, uk£69.99; eBook: isbn-13 978-3-319-31650-5, us$79.99, uk£55.99.
If you believe, as I do, that books on writing should be held accountable to the tenets they themselves put forth, you will likely be disappointed by Mary Renck Jalongo and Olivia Saracho's Writing for Publication: Transitions and Tools That Support Scholars' Success. An entry in the Springer Texts in Education series, this book might best be used in the classroom, as part of a graduate course for students or practitioners in the so-called helping professions of education, social work, nursing, [End Page 494] counselling, psychology, and other fields that follow American Psychological Association (APA) customs with respect to research conceptualization and presentation.1 Although much of the content is sound and in concord with many of my own perspectives, the book risks misinterpretation if read on its own by a tyro outside the 'helping' professions. And although purporting in the introduction not to have fallen into this trap, the co-authors present both material that is specific in scope and material that is more generally applicable to writers across disciplines; novice writers for publication are unlikely to recognize the difference.2
Jalongo, professor emerita at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Saracho, professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland at College Park, are both widely published in the areas of teacher education and early childhood education. Shared background, disciplinary perspectives, and depth of experience in pedagogy thus underscore the co-authors' astute organizational approach: their first three chapters focus on foundational matters essential to understanding writing for publication (including psychological barriers); the middle six chapters, on transitioning from class papers to conference presentations to journal articles; the final four chapters, on such topics as authoring books, crafting scholarly agendas and trajectories, reviewing manuscripts, and writing collaboratively. The developmental arc is apparent, and the organization reflects the premise that writers grow and 'transition' from novice contributors to expert scholars as experience accrues.3 The thirteen chapters average a substantial twenty-three pages and were designed to correspond to the length in weeks of a 'typical semester' (xvii). Presented (and priced) like a textbook, that Writing for Publication lacks an index4 is a flaw that favours reception of the (still expensive) eBook version: at least eBooks have searchable text.
Intended to serve as 'a "paper mentor" that guides scholars in improving their writing' (xiii), Writing for Publication in fact reads much more like a textbook than a how-to guide, perhaps due to the co-authors' decision to ground the presentation in empirical evidence. Overcitation results, frequently bogging down the message. For example, the obvious claim that 'metaphors are a tool for capturing the essence of experience' (5) is followed by two (superfluous) citations. Readers of how-to books—if this one is intended to be used in such a manner—already have a goal and thus want to know what to do to get there; they will trust the expertise [End Page 495] of the authors and will likely be uninterested in tracking down references to works unrelated to accomplishing the task at hand. The profuse citations send messages of erudition ('See how widely read we are!'), of slavish adherence to APA style, and of unfounded fear of plagiarizing—all to the detriment of readability.
Three chapters in the middle section each seem to attempt too much by combining explanations of methodologies that map onto three common social-scientific research paradigms—quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods—with descriptions of how to organize and write effective journal articles reporting such research. These are among the densest chapters. (Briefer overviews of the approaches would have sufficed, since plenty of engaging methodological texts exist.)5 The first of the trio, titled 'From...