Developing a Publication Strategy and Navigating REF (in the Social Sciences)

As part of Sheffield Hallam University’s participation in the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership, and in conjunction with the Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies, we are delighted to announce a new series of training seminars aiming to provide students with the skills required to move beyond successful PhD completion to building a career in the social sciences through post-doctoral positions, securing research funding and managing larger scale research projects.

These sessions will be open to all doctoral students and staff in the Social Sciences at SHU (ie sociology, politics, psychology, urban studies, education, social policy, health policy, criminology, human geography, business and organisations).

The first lecture/workshop will take place on Wednesday 9 October in Stoddart 7139 between 2-4pm

This session, delivered by Professor Barry Goodchild from the Centre for Regional, Economic and Social Research (CRESR) will:

1. Explain how the REF works in relation to academic publications, stressing the need for high quality outputs of 3* star or better and the typical characteristics of such papers, as stated in the guidance.
2. Go through selected publications where Prof Goodchild acted as either the lead or co-author.
3. Indicate some lessons:

(a)  about the context of the work, the importance of knowing your journals; not worrying about the comments of referees, but responding in detail to every single point raised by the referee; persevere with ideas, if necessary switching journals, use independent internal reviewers, be careful in your choice of writing partners;

(b)  about writing style – for example accept that good quality journals require either theory or some methodological excellence; develop a “voice”, based on a clearly defined personal philosophy of research; provide a simple contribution to knowledge; avoid description.

For enquiries please contact the coordinator of these seminars, Dr Bob Jeffery in the Sociology Subject Group – r.f.jeffery@shu.ac.uk