Case Study: What to think about before you start to write a journal article…

Posted on September 22nd, 2015 by Adam Pelling-Deeves

Taylor & Francis’ Author Services site offers early career researchers advice and tips on preparing articles and choosing journals, as well as guidance on what happens during production and after publication. One element of the site is its #getpublished video series. Each video in this series features a different presenter with experience relevant to the subject that they are discussing. The majority of the series is shot in-house, but because the Author Services team wanted ‘What to think about…’ to be particularly engaging, I was approached to produce this flagship video for them.

The key points to cover were:
• Why publish and what are your aims?
• Who is your audience?
• Be aware of existing literature.
• The importance of language and structure.

I designed a graphic around an alliterative checklist: ‘Aims’, ‘Audience’, ‘Aware’ and ‘Articulate’. As the graphic builds, it breaks the video into four chapters.

Rough Storyboard 1
Chair of the editorial board of the Journal of Southern African Studies, Professor David Simon, was chosen to present the subject in the form of an interview.

To pull Professor Simon’s interview and the Four A’s graphic together, I also proposed a third element: a simple scene depicting a researcher at a desk, considering her article. As Professor Simon talks about ‘Aims’, she looks out of the window across rooftops to clouds on the horizon. As he talks about ‘Audience’, she looks down at the people outside. When he covers ‘Aware’, she glances at the book-shelves behind her before making an online search, and with ‘Articulate’, she looks up to consider her wording before she begins to type. These simple movements dramatise and reinforce the graphic.

Rough Storyboard 2

« »