Having a writing strategy means making sure you have both external drivers – such as scoring points in research assessment or climbing the promotion ladder – and internal drivers – which means working out why writing for academic journals matters to you. This will help you maintain the motivation you'll need to write and publish over the long term. Since the time between submission and publication can be up to two years though in some fields it's much less you need to be clear about your motivation.

2 analyse writing in journals in your field take a couple of journals in your field that you will target now or soon. The first sentence usually gives the rationale for the research, and the last asserts a 'contribution to knowledge'. But the word 'contribution' may not be there – it's associated with the doctorate. Can you see an emerging taxonomy of writing genres in this journal? can you define the different types of paper, different structures and decide which one will work best in your paper? select two types of paper: one that's the type of paper you can use as a model for yours, and one that you can cite in your paper, thereby joining the research conversation that is ongoing in that journal. 3 do an outline and just write which type of writer are you: do you always do an outline before you write, or do you just dive in and start writing? or do you do a bit of both? both outlining and just writing are useful, and it is therefore a good idea to use both.

However, make your outline very detailed: outline the main sections and calibrate these with your target journal. What types of headings are normally used there? how long are the sections usually? set word limits for your sections, sub sections and, if need be, for sub sub sections. This involves deciding about content that you want to include, so it may take time, and feedback would help at this stage. When you sit down to write, what exactly are you doing:using writing to develop your ideas or writing to document your work? are you using your outline as an agenda for writing sections of your article? define your writing task by thinking about verbs – they define purpose: to summarise, overview, critique, define, introduce, conclude etc.

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4 get feedback from start to finish even at the earliest stages, discuss your idea for a paper with four or five people, get feedback on your draft abstract. 5 set specific writing goals and sub goals making your writing goals specific means defining the content, verb and word length for the section. This means not having a writing goal like, 'i plan to have this article written by the end of the year' but 'my next writing goal is to summarise and critique twelve articles for the literature review section in 800 words on tuesday between 9am and 10.30'.

Some people see this as too mechanical for academic writing, but it is a way of forcing yourself to make decisions about content, sequence and proportion for your article. While most people see writing as a solitary activity, communal writing – writing with others who are writing – can help to develop confidence, fluency and focus. Doing your academic writing in groups or at writing retreats are ways of working on your own writing, but – if you unplug from email, internet and all other devices – also developing the concentration needed for regular, high level academic writing. At some point – ideally at regular intervals – you can get a lot more done if you just focus on writing. Most people do several things at once, but this won't always work for regular journal article writing. At some point, it pays to privilege writing over all other tasks, for a defined period, such as 90 minutes, which is long enough to get something done on your paper, but not so long that it's impossible to find the time.

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Goals that work need to be specific, and you need to monitor the extent to which you achieve them. 8 analyse reviewers' feedback on your submission what exactly are they asking you to do? work out whether they want you to add or cut something. When you resubmit your article include this in your report to the journal, specifying how you have responded to the reviewers' feedback. If your article was rejected, it is still useful to analyse feedback, work out why and revise it for somewhere else. Most feedback will help you improve your paper and, perhaps, your journal article writing, but sometimes it may seem overheated, personalised or even vindictive. You may find that other people – even eminent researchers – still get rejections and negative reviews any non rejection is a cause for celebration. 9 be persistent, thick skinned and resilient these are qualities that you may develop over time – or you may already have them.

It may be easier to develop them in discussion with others who are writing for journals. And there are health risks in sitting for long periods, so try not to sit writing for more than an hour at a time. Remind yourself that writing for academic journals is what you want to do – that your writing will make a difference in some way. these points are taken from the 3rd edition of writing for academic journals . rowena murray is professor in education and director of research at the university of the west of scotland – follow it on twitter @uniwestscotland this content is brought to you by guardian professional . Looking for your next university role? browse guardian jobs for thousands of the latest academic, administrative and research posts a few years ago, when i was a graduate student in english, i presented a paper at my departments american literature colloquium. Kuhn had coined the term paradigm shift, and i described how this phrase had been used and abused, much to kuhns dismay, by postmodern insurrectionists and nonsensical self help gurus. Professors didnt sit down and decide to make academic writing this way, any more than journalists sat down and decided to invent listicles.

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But every now and then, someone from outside the system swoops in to blame professors for the writing style that theyve inherited. This week, it was nicholas kristof, who set off a rancorous debate about academic writing with a column, in the times. Called professors, we need you! the academic world, kristof argued, is in thrall to a culture of exclusivity that glorifies arcane unintelligibility while disdaining impact and audience as a result, there are fewer public intellectuals on american university campuses today than a generation ago. Sprung up, as if to refute kristofs claim that professors dont use enough social media. Professors pointed out that the brainiest part of the blogosphere is overflowing with contributions from academics that, as teachers, professors already have an important audience in their students and that the times itself frequently benefits from professorial ingenuity, which the paper often reports as news. A number of the stories in the sunday review section, in which kristofs article appeared, were written by professors.

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To a degree, some of the responses, though convincingly argued, inadvertently bolstered kristofs case because of the style in which they were written: fractious, humorless, self serious, and defensively nerdy. They showed that there was something outdated, and perhaps solipsistic, in kristofs yearning for a new crop of sixties style public intellectuals. His column ended on a wistful note: i write this in sorrow, for i considered an academic career. The problem with academia isnt that professors are, as kristof wrote, marginalizing themselves. Its that the system that produces and consumes academic knowledge is changing, and, in the process, making academic work more marginal. It may be that being a journalist makes it unusually hard for kristof to see whats going on in academia. Thats because journalism, which is in the midst of its own transformation, is moving in a populist direction.

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There are more writers than ever before, writing for more outlets, including on their own blogs, web sites, and twitter streams. New and clever forms of content are springing up all the timegifs, videos, interactives, and so on. Dissenters may publish op eds encouraging journalists to abandon their culture of populism and write fewer listicles, but changes in the culture of journalism are, at best, only a part of the story. Just as important, if not more so, are economic and technological developments having to do with subscription models, revenue streams, apps, and devices. In academia, by contrast, all the forces are pushing things the other way, toward insularity. As in journalism, good jobs are scarce but, unlike in journalism, professors are their own audience.

This means that, since the liberal arts job market peaked, in the mid seventies, the audience for academic work has been shrinking. Increasingly, to build a successful academic career you must serially impress very small groups of people departmental colleagues, journal and book editors, tenure committees. But when it comes to their academic writing, and to the research that underpins itto the main activities, in other words, of academic lifethey have no choice but to aim for very small targets. Writing a first book, you may have in mind particular professors on a tenure committee miss that mark and you may not have a job. Academic writing and research may be knotty and strange, remote and insular, technical and specialized, forbidding and clannishbut thats because academia has become that way, too. Todays academic work, excellent though it may be, is the product of a shrinking system. The most important part of kristofs argument was, it seemed to me, buried in the blog post that he wrote to accompany his column.

When i was a kid, he wrote, the kennedy administration had its brain trust of harvard faculty members, and university professors were often vital public intellectuals. But the sixties, when the baby boom led to a huge expansion in university enrollments, was also a time when it was easier to be a professor. If academic writing is to become expansive again, academia will probably have to expand first.