Sangani and Stelma paper
On the theme of getting published, Abdul-Hamid Sangani (ex-PhD see addition to former students list) and myself submitted the following article to Professional Development in Education:
Sangani, A-H. and Stelma, J. (draft). Reflective practice in developing world contexts: a general review of literature and a specific consideration of an Iranian experience. Submitted to: Professional Development in Education.
It was accepted subject to very minor revisions. We have made the revisions and are now waiting for the final outcome.
Yes, the phrase ‘developing world contexts’ is less than ideal. We originally used ‘non-western/northern’ but one reviewer and the editor didn’t like this. Reference was made to what might make the article easier to find through word searches.
Juup
Congratulations!
This is now available here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19415257.2011.587526
Juup
Achilleas,
I think you read a version which was a week or two away from the original submission. The one we submitted may have been somewhat improved.
The ‘genesis’ of the paper was Abdul-Hamid’s dissertation, empirical data and context specific knowledge of the Iranian context, coupled with:
a) the idea that we review and build on only studies published by authors local (somehow) to the developing contexts being researched (thereby avoiding the usual suspects in the reference lists);
b) an attempt to see how Abdul-Hamid’s research contributed to the collective understanding found in this emerging body of studies .
I found this to be a very positive challenge and was therefore willing to invest quite a bit of time in the article as second author. In terms of ‘managing’ collaboration, who does what and how much is always a tricky one; there is probably no simple recipe and this paper was probably no less typical in this regard than any other paper. To me, the more important issue (more important than ‘managing’) is that each person sees what they are doing as worthwhile. We all have to be a bit careful with our time – there just isn’t enough of it going around. I enjoyed spending time on this article.
Finally, I am afraid that the review process for this article was even less representative than the pattern of collaboration. The corrections asked for was a change of title and an additional paragraph to the literature review part of the paper – that is all. One could argue that the hard work was done by the RAW participants (yes the paper got a reading last autumn) and various stages of editing since.
Juup
Congrats, Juup! Correct me if I am wrong, but the draft I read was the one prior to submission, is that correct? I’d be very interested to read the comments and the revisions that they prompted, if you think you could share. Also, I think that this paper had a strange genesis, so it might be interesting for other readers of this blog to learn about how academic collaboration can be managed.
Well done both of you. Another example of PhD-alumnus+Supervisor joint publication, and something that also that connects to my recent comment on yuor RAW posting Juup about the nature of collaboration in research.