Course Writing for Journals in the Humanities

Course description

This series of workshops aims to improve PhD students’ ability to write articles targeted at specific academic journals. During the course, we discuss various explicit and implicit norms of academic writing for journals, including how to select a relevant journal, how to formulate a strong argument, how to write an effective abstract and introduction, and how to respond to peer-reviews. Drawing on these discussions, we will also discuss the participants’ own ongoing article drafts throughout the course.

Aim

• Taking its point of departure in participants’ own planned articles, the workshops aim to improve the participants' journal writing skills and their strategic understanding of the audience and gatekeepers of their target journals.

Target group/Participants

• The target group is PhD students in the humanities.

Language 

• English

ECTS-credits

• 3

Lecturers

• Tore Rye Andersen

Tentative program

A more detailed program and secondary literature will be circulated at a later point

10/9: Introduction
In the first workshop, drawing on selected secondary texts we discuss a number of basic aspects of the academic publishing landscape in general and the academic journal article in particular. Moreover, we address how you can identify and select the most relevant journals within your field. Finally, based on your preliminary article descriptions, we will have an initial discussion of the articles you want to work on during the course.

24/9: Choice of journal and outline
In the second workshop, we begin by discussing your suggestions for relevant journals as well as your preliminary article outlines, and we discuss whether the planned article and the selected journals seem to be a good match. In addition, we discuss how to write the best possible abstract for your article.

8/10: Abstract and forms of argumentation
In the third workshop, we discuss your abstracts via peer feedback and look forward to the work of writing an introduction that captures the reader’s interest and clearly presents the aim and structure of the article. In addition, we discuss different forms of argumentation.

29/10: Introduction, structure, writing habits and writing style
In the fourth workshop, we discuss your introductions via peer feedback with a particular focus on the introduction’s forms of appeal, clarity, coherence and presentation. Moreover, we look forward to your work writing the rest of the article, touching upon topics such as structure, writing habits and writing style.

12/11: Completion, submission, revision and publication
In the final workshop, we focus on the final steps of the article writing process, including finalization of the article, formatting for the individual journal and the process of submitting/uploading the article. In addition, we dicuss how to write a good cover letter that captures the interest of journal editors. Finally, we discuss the process after submitting an article, including how to handle rejections and relate to peer reviews, and what to be aware of when revising and resubmitting your article.

Venue

• All dates: Langelandsgade 141 , 8000 Aarhus C. Building 1586, room 114

Application deadline

• 30 June 2025

Course dates:

• 10 September 2025 13:00 - 16:00
• 24 September 2025 13:00 - 16:00
• 08 October 2025 13:00 - 16:00
• 29 October 2025 13:00 - 16:00
• 12 November 2025 13:00 - 16:00