Academic Impact: publishing and writing strategies in SSP post-REF

Getting your publishing and writing strategy right from the macro level to the micro level could significantly improve academic impact.

Academic impact – the ‘quality’ of academic publications - remains at the core of the REF and the purpose of research active academics. For the REF it accounts for two thirds of the ‘score’ and is the foundation for the quality of the other impact and environment factors. For research active academics it remains central to the ethic of the profession and is critical to personal development. However, maximising academic impact is with a few exceptions rarely discussed and reflected upon. A lot of how to achieve this remains at the level of ‘tacit professional knowhow’ despite the proliferation of academic writing ‘how to’ books. This tacit knowledge ranges from what to publish and where to publish to styles of titles, abstracts and writing. Furthermore there is no ‘one size fits all’  strategy. Academic impact strategies will depend on specialisms within SSP, different career stages and what kind of researcher and writer you are. Getting your publishing and writing strategy right from the macro level to the micro level could significantly improve academic impact.

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