Why you need to know about academic journals

STUDENT PERSPECTIVES

Why you need to know about academic journals Lucy Clark and Charlotte Hartin

The following article is the script of a speech delivered at the Pymble Research Conference, October 2021 by Lucy Clark and Charlotte Hartin for their presentation on academic journal articles. The original article documenting Lucy and Charlotte’s investigation this topic was published in the College’s research and innovation journal, Illuminate Edition 5, 2020, 64-67.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE ARTICLE ONLINE

About the authors

In 2020, Charlotte and Lucy developed their own original research and, throughout that process, learned the importance of students’ understanding of research and how to enter the world of academics. Lucy is also an artistic gymnast and coach and her interest is in the area of sport and how people can better develop their sporting skills. Charlotte loves digging deeper into research and learning more about topics in depth. She enjoys rowing for Pymble and playing tennis.

The speech

I’m Lucy and this is Charlotte, and we began Pymble’s student-led academic journal club, the Junior Journal Club. In our presentation today, we will address our personal experience, the importance of student academic literacy, and how we have applied this within our own community – creating the Junior Journal Club. We hope our student perspective provides insight into our views of the academic world.

We embarked on this journey with the Sokratis program at Pymble which enabled students to immerse themselves in their chosen ‘passion’ projects. Students were able to develop unique and insightful presentations – which were later shared in a showcase format. We both participated in this program in both Years 8 and 9. In fact, for the Year 9 project, we worked together to formulate our own academic article based around the study of sports psychology.

Our reference list from the project is quite enlightening as one of the first links is “what goes into a scholarly article”. Considering this, at the end of the three months we had co-written a 10,000word paper. After its completion, we were invited into the Pymble Ethics Committee, due to the data collection associated with our paper.

In our classes, we are constantly advised to use academic articles for our research – specifically those found on JSTOR. Yet, due to the sheer length, confusing structure and language utilised, the vast majority of students find them incredibly daunting. We then revert to the powers of Google, which is significantly easier, yet limited in its credibility. With the abundance of information, it is vital to navigate relevance. There is an untapped potential for academic writing within secondary education – if only we were taught to fully understand its use and application within our learning.

This experience and newfound knowledge sparked a passion, as we strove to enable others to understand and recognise the importance of the academic world. Following our Sokratis research project, we had the opportunity to interview Professor Mockler for Pymble’s Illuminate journal. This experience

enabled us to extend our understanding of how the world of academia functions. We then wondered how we could apply and share this newfound knowledge with our peers. Our interview with Professor Mockler was conducted through a series of emails, providing us with insight into the role of an editor. This opportunity furthered our understanding in this field and opened up a new area of interest. We learnt how to refine and review articles and how the acceptance process is conducted. This opportunity taught us to understand the various tiers of journals and the hierarchy which exists within academia.

This experience with Professor Mockler was an eyeopener. It raised several questions regarding how this profound knowledge can be shared amongst our fellow peers. This knowledge was revolutionary, as we finally recognised its expansive applications in our daily studies – ranging from first learning the content, to the day of handing in the assessment.

We have had the opportunity to learn a lot in these last few years. The importance of academic literacy to students is often underestimated. It is essential for the next generation to immerse themselves in credible, and comprehensive information. From our experience, access to academic papers is becoming easier, and increasingly important.

With information at our fingertips, it is both the greatest gift and challenge of this generation. We hope that you will take the time to equip students with the skills that are required to understand and interpret this world.

From personal experience, we believe that the phrase we have heard most when researching is “do not use Wikipedia”. Whilst it is important to be educated in the reliability of sources, and how to find useful research platforms. It is important to educate students on how to understand and navigate research articles. It is no use finding the article, if you have no idea of how to use it.

The biggest takeaway from this presentation is that as a student, learning how to understand academia is extremely valuable. It is simply assumed that all students can read an academic article, as we can all read a book, yet it is a new skill, a new language that requires practice to develop. If a student attempts to read and comprehend every single word of a paper they will be there for hours. Students are not experts. Due to the diversity of the subjects that we take within schools, this elite scholarly world can feel inaccessible. For this reason, we believe that students must improve their academic literacy.

So, as students, what would we find helpful to improve our academic literacy?

1. Introduce students to academia from a younger age – making the field and the process appear less daunting.

2. Integrate it into the everyday classroom by providing academic articles to assist with teaching.

3. Educate students on how to comprehend these articles, by learning how to navigate their structure and identify their importance.

We now obtained this knowledge and wanted to share the importance of academia with students to complement what is being taught in the classroom. The idea for the Junior Journal Club (JJC) occurred during a conversation with Dr Loch regarding our experience with Professor Mockler. Dr Loch’s mentorship and encouragement enabled us to develop a pathway for other students to dive into research.

In the first term of JJC, we had to adapt to an online format. Recently, we were able to invite Dr Hadwen to speak to the members about her experience in academia. In the future, we hope to invite more guests to share their unique experiences. If any of you are interested in sharing, you are more than welcome.

We want to empower students in academia. We want to lay the foundations to enable students to understand these articles. In the early days of the JJC we have explored abstracts, null hypotheses, and the purpose of academia, with the future hope of looking into the process of publication and review, as well as tiers of journals. While much of the knowledge that we hope to teach is not taught within the curriculum, we hope that it can provide passionate students with the ability to extend themselves and get a head start in the academic world.

In a world of information overload, being able to interpret academic research leads to better outcomes, and a better future for students.

What is an academic journal?

A discussion with Associate Professor Nicole Mockler

BY LUCY CLARK AND CHARLOTTE HARTIN, YEAR 10

Year 10 students Lucy Clark and Charlotte Hartin were inspired to find out more about the world of academic journal articles following their Sokratis project investigations in 2020. Lucy and Charlotte interviewed Dr Nicole Mockler through a series of email conversations in 2020 and the beginning of 2021.

WHAT IS A JOURNAL?

An academic journal provides access to reliable research articles. The articles have been curated and selected by the editor, following a peer-review process by fellow academics. This process of selection means that only journal specific articles are published.

Journals are a form of presentation facilitating the discussion of research. There is a tiered system amongst academic journals, due to the hierarchy within the academic world. The highertiered journals are significantly more selective with the articles they publish, creating levels of prestige. Academic journals are vital as they enable researchers to share their opinions, whilst challenging those of others.

Unfortunately, many people struggle to access or interpret scholarly articles. This is due to the elite nature of the academic community. To delve into this world of information and pressing opinions, we must educate people in the skills of analysis, interpretation and application of the research presented and encourage the use of academic journals as valuable resources to our learning development.

Dr Nicole Mockler

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INTRODUCTION

Dr Nicole Mockler is an Associate Professor at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, within the University of Sydney. She is also known for her work as the editor of the journal, The Australian Educational Researcher. Dr Mockler’s interest areas include education policy, pedagogy and continuing professional development for teachers – enabling them to support their students through curriculum development and thorough research to provide reliable information regarding the enhancement of educational strategies. Dr Mockler has worked in education for more than 25 years, beginning as a classroom teacher, providing valuable input as an education consultant, and eventually as a teacher educator and educational researcher.

Lucy Clark and Charlotte Hartin

Q&A

Professor Mockler, why were you interested in becoming involved in academia?

In the last three years before I left teaching, I was in a school leadership role leading teacher professional learning. I became very interested in how good teacher learning could support teachers to best support the learning of their students. I began working part time on my PhD at the University of Sydney and was investigating how teachers’ professional identity is formed and the role of professional learning in that.

After three years of working very, very part time on the PhD, I decided to leave teaching so that I could concentrate on getting it finished. I ended up taking a few more years to complete the PhD after that as I set up an education consultancy focused on helping schools to support teacher learning, and working across independent, Catholic and public schools, as well as with some of the systems such as the Association of Independent Schools, the Department of Education and the Catholic Schools Office of Broken Bay. After finishing my PhD, I decided to move into academia full time, and spent six years as a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle. I moved to take up my current role at the University of Sydney in 2015.

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What is an academic journal?

What does it mean to be the editor of The Australian Educational Researcher Journal?

As Editor-in-Chief of The Australian Educational Researcher, I lead a team of eight Associate Editors, so I don’t act alone, but that said, the final decision over what we publish rests with me. When a paper is submitted to the journal, our Co-ordinating Associate Editor will allocate it to a member of the team to ‘manage’ (as we call it) over its life with the journal. She tries to allocate papers according to our own areas of expertise – the team includes people with many different research interests, including educational psychology, educational sociology, education policy studies, curriculum and pedagogy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education, mathematics education, literacy education and so on – but sometimes we are also called upon to manage papers outside of our areas. She makes sure that she avoids any known conflicts of interest for the editorial team. So, for example, we don’t manage papers submitted by people who work at the same university as we do, or with whom we have research partnerships, but we also keep a keen eye on that individually. What does the submission process look like?

Before submitting their paper, authors prepare an anonymised version of the paper, which includes neither their name, nor anything else that might identify them. All papers submitted to the journal are subject to double blind review, meaning that the reviewers don’t know who the author is (although if the paper is published they eventually find out!) and the authors don’t know who the reviewers are.

The first thing we do upon receipt of a manuscript is to read it closely and make a decision about whether it should go out for review. We make this first decision on the basis of whether we think the paper is a good fit for our readership and the aims of our journal, and whether we think the quality of the research and writing makes the paper a potential candidate for publication. If we decide at that point that the paper should not be sent to reviewers, we write the authors some feedback, to give them an idea of what they might do to improve the paper to get it ready for submitting elsewhere.

66 Illuminate Research and Innovation What does the review process look like?

If we decide that the paper should go for review, then we look for two reviewers who have a good level of expertise in the area of the paper and invite them to review it. If they accept the invitation, we give them four weeks to read the paper, write some constructive feedback to the author and make a recommendation to the Editorial Team. Their recommendation can be ‘Accept’, ‘Request Minor Revisions’, ‘Request Major Revisions’ or ‘Reject’.

In my time as a journal editor, I have never known one paper to be accepted without any revisions, and I could count on one hand the number that are accepted after only minor revisions. The majority of published papers would have been through a round of major revisions and then a further round of minor ones, and sometimes more.

When the reviews come in, the editor managing the paper makes an onbalance decision, based on their own reading of the paper and the comments and recommendations of the reviewers. Sometimes it’s a relatively straightforward matter – for example where both reviewers recommend major revisions and their suggestions for improvement are similar – but sometimes it’s more complex, for example if one reviewer has recommended minor revisions and the other has recommended the paper be rejected. In those difficult cases, especially if the paper isn’t directly in an area where the managing editor or I have great expertise, we will go to a third reviewer to help us make the decision.

“Rejection is never easy and while in the academic world we tend to grow a ‘thick skin’ relatively quickly – there’s generally a lot of rejection to contend with! In my experience, the sting never really goes out of it. ”

What happens if a paper is rejected? How do people deal with rejection?

Rejection is never easy and while in the academic world we tend to grow a ‘thick skin’ relatively quickly – there’s generally a lot of rejection to contend with! In my experience, the sting never really goes out of it. One of the biggest challenges for early career researchers (which is the name we give to people who are within their first five years post-doctorate) is to not let the critique and rejection undermine their confidence in themselves as researchers and academics.

It is really important for early career academics to be well supported as they establish themselves, and good mentoring is a really important part of this. As a journal editor, I can’t prevent people from having their work rejected, but I can ensure that, as far as possible, rejection comes with constructive feedback that both affirms what’s good about the work and provides some tangible and practical advice for how to improve it. That’s one of the things that occupies a lot of time and headspace for me as an editor. I don’t think there’s an academic alive who hasn’t had at least one paper rejected at some point in their career. The trick is to then build on the feedback that comes along with it and not let yourself lose momentum with the work. Putting it ‘in the bin’ is hardly ever the right response, but it can be hard not to sometimes.

Rejection from one journal doesn’t preclude you from reworking the paper and resubmitting it somewhere else – and it’s not always the case that the ‘somewhere else’ is a lesser journal, as sometimes it’s more about the fit between the paper and the journal and the community of readers the journal has. The more experienced we are as academics the better we tend to get at pitching our work to the right journal.

FROM THE AUTHORS

We feel extremely privileged to share this opportunity to learn about Dr Mockler’s work in academia, as well as developing a deeper understanding of the process involved in developing the highest quality academic journals. The opportunity to research this paper and interview Dr Mockler taught us about the submission, review and rejection process. It enabled us to gain further insight into the elite world of academia, and how it is relevant to our everyday experiences. This project has inspired us to begin our ‘Junior Journal Club’, where we are able to explore the world of academia and further develop inquiring minds alongside our peers. We hope to encourage a generation that is well informed and educated regarding academic journals, as they are often inaccessible or difficult to understand for the vast majority of the population.

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