Publish or be damned Mark II

So having decided to take my own advice, I set about trying to find somewhere that I could flex my reviewing muscles, half-way between the publications aimed at the teaching professions, which I already review for (and which 'don't count' as academic publications, as we learned from Geoffrey Walford below), and the scary world of real academic publishing.

What I found was ESCalate, the Higher Education Academy's subject centre for Education, if that isn't tautologous. That is to say, it's the bit of the HEA concerned with Education Studies at universities, with the purpose of improving teaching and learning in that subject. The exciting thing is that once your registration with ESCalate has been approved (which I assume is someone somewhere going "Yup, definitely someone to do with education. She's okay.") you can volunteer to review any of the books they have available. After which they send you the book and give you a month to submit the review. And there you have it, a almost academic publication. Certainly enough to give me a boost.

So if you're interested in the city academies programme, you might be interested in my review of The Great City Academy Fraud by Francis Beckett. Then perhaps, you might be interested in getting hold of your own book to review...there's some interesting looking new titles!

Reviewing the situation

So, having handed in my own abstract mere hours before the deadline, I'm now in the situation of reviewing other people's abstracts. And given the difficulty I had writing one, it's surprisingly easy to spot the strengths and weaknesses of those of others. In fact, it's a deeply educative experience. It's also surprisingly similar to, for example, looking at job applications or coursework essays. What makes or breaks any of these things is how well they hit the criteria: criteria which should be attainable by anyone.

1) Word count. If it says 200 it means 200. Not fifty. Not four hundred. Submitting anything by email makes it very easy for the recipient to check the length these days. With job applications it's more likely to suggest one or two pages for a letter. Change the margins, change the font, change the spacing. All fine. Don't go onto that next sheet.
2) Spelling. Spell check is easy. A quick read is easy. Do you really want your abstract out there in the world with a mistake directly under your name for everyone to see and hanging round your neck for ever more?
3) It's seems to be amazingly easy not to actually say what you're going to say. Abstracts have to tell prospective audience members exactly what to expect. When giving tips for theses abstracts, which are slightly different but not much, a lecturer pointed out that academic papers are not murder mysteries: you don't have to carefully conceal whodunnit. In fact, in abstracts, you need to give away all your major suprises up front. It might not be romantic, but it is good practice.
4) Explain what you're talking about. Don't assume people will work out your theoretical perspective, your definitions or your acronyms off their own bat.

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that you could do worse than use Goldilocks and the Three Bears as a model for writing abstracts. Not too big and not too small, it has to be just right. Not too hard and not too soft, it has to be just right. And then, if you're lucky, the three bears of conference organisers won't gobble you up (okay, so slight pushing of Goldilocks, but it's late, and I've just reviewed a bunch of abstracts).