[null, {"document_url": "http://planningresearch.blogspot.com/2006/10/forsyth-on-writing-and-tenure.html", "unformatted_src": "http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2941/2728/400/forsyth.jpg", "src": "http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2941/2728/400/forsyth.jpg", "formatted_filename": "forsyth"}, null, {"document_url": "http://planningresearch.blogspot.com/2006/10/forsyth-on-writing-and-tenure.html", "unformatted_src": "http://www.tabbyhouse.com/images/book-publishing.jpg", "src": "http://www.tabbyhouse.com/images/book-publishing.jpg", "formatted_filename": "book publishing"}, null, null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "http://planningresearch.blogspot.com/2006/10/forsyth-on-writing-and-tenure.html", "unformatted_src": "//lh4.google.com/image/rdcrane/RfxlaOrjPwI/AAAAAAAAAGs/ib2pLW58NYA/s80/beijing2.jpg", "src": "http://lh4.google.com/image/rdcrane/RfxlaOrjPwI/AAAAAAAAAGs/ib2pLW58NYA/s80/beijing2.jpg", "formatted_filename": "beijing", "alt_text": "My photo", "rendered_width": 60, "rendered_height": 80}, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null]
Forsyth, On Writing and Tenure

 Guest post by UCLA alum Ann Forsyth, the Dayton Hudson Chair of Urban Design and director of the Metropolitan Design Center at the University of Minnesota. Her 2005 UC Press book is Reforming Suburbia: The Planned Communities of Irvine, Columbia, and The Woodlands (blogged on here.) Reproduced from JPER 10, N. 1, pp. 98-105, 1999, and not previously available on the web.*


In 1997 I was invited to talk about writing and tenure at a student-sponsored workshop for doctoral students in planning. After that talk several members of the audience asked me to publish it in a forum, like JPER, that would be fairly accessible to their doctoral colleagues. As I showed it to other doctoral students I received a similar response. After more deliberation than it probably needed, I decided to go through the process of getting it in wider circulation. While it is not the kind of scholarly research or education article that I promote in the main text, there seems to be a great need of at least some doctoral students and new faculty to have an accessible starting place for thinking and talking about issues of writing, scholarly communication, and tenure practicalities. It is in that spirit that I offer it.


For many people approaching today’s tenure track, writing for publication is both a mysterious process and yet essential for their job. This paper demystifies the process of academic writing in the tenure process. For those who have become successful writers these questions, concerns, and tips will seem obvious. Many people have advisors who offer perceptive and up-to-date advice on these matters; others come from, or become part of, academic social circles where such matters are part of commonsense knowledge. However, this information frequently does not reach a significant group of doctoral students and even new faculty.

This paper is structured around three questions.

Overall, I propose that writing is a job and not a mystery. It involves a practical set of activities both in terms of the bigger picture of scholarly communication and contributing to understanding and the short-term goal of tenure.

This article is based on the experience of being on tenure track at a university undergoing substantial changes in faculty expectations. From this experience, I had to figure out how I felt about those expectations and if I could work within them to make a difference in the world--the thing that brought me to planning in the first place. This made me particularly interested in the biographies of scholars, in how they created a place for themselves within their specialty areas and how they had managed to balance research and writing with the other aspects of life. I read lists of publications, resumes, and acknowledgment sections in books--and I talked with a number of scholars--in order to find out how they had charted paths. I also found published biographical pieces although these were mostly from outside planning (e.g. Bernardo 1993). This comment reflects that ‘research.'1

How important is publishing?
How important is publishing? Publishing is very important, but publishing is important for different people in different ways. Publishing is a significant means toward the end of getting tenure. However, there are other ways to show excellence or strength in research and creative work--like getting awards for professional projects--and different schools, although rarely saying so in any printed document, have very different expectations for writing. Middle-ranking schools give tenure with four to eight refereed articles and reasonable performance in other areas. The big schools want twice that many, up to twelve articles or two books along with significant recognition in the field, but have lower teaching expectations with smaller classes, fewer classes, and more chances to teach electives. This allows time to write. In contrast, many teaching-oriented institutions mainly want teaching. Thus, for many people, publication is only one aspect of getting tenure.

Instead, for a substantial proportion of planning academics, publishing is about much more than tenure. For the vast majority of people in smaller programs, and many others, publishing is important in itself in that it is part of the process of building knowledge in the field and reaching out to others doing similar work. Publishing is a communications lifeline; a way of creating the kind of scholarly interactions that most people were seeking when they decided to take jobs in universities in the first place. It is a way of talking with others, contributing to knowledge, and making a difference in the world, something that has implications far beyond the tenure track.

Most planning faculty are the lone person interested in a particular field out of a six- to eight- member faculty, and. In this situation, both publishing and the blind review process provide an important means of meeting those people who you want to interact with. Senior people in the field who might never glance at you at a conference are forced to examine your work while reviewing it. If and when your article is published they will frequently reveal themselves--and this can start really significant interactions and collaborations. Although from time to time a reviewer will be plain nasty, the kind of person you won’t want to meet in person, or will act in a way that you feel is a negative example of “gate keeping,” the benefits of communication do outweigh these costs. This kind of communication can then build into a network of those also trying to shape the part of the field that you care about.

This is not to say that publishing it easy in schools with more modest expectations—in fact it can be very hard to fit publishing in among all the other activities expected of faculty. My point is that publishing is not only done for tenure. To publish merely to get tenure is likely to be a lonely and frustrating task.

How does a scholar develop a publishing strategy?
Although some people including even some very successful publishers do so without a strategy, for many people it is helpful to have an overall plan for publications. One way to make that plan is to base it on research into people you admire and who are in your sub-field of planning. These are the people who you think have shaped or reshaped important areas in planning, the kinds of people you could aspire to emulate in the long-term. Of course what you consider to be “reshaping” and “important” will be a matter that is quite subjective--and it is meant to be.

It is possible to find out a lot about people’s publications and awards from electronic databases and the WWW. All electronic databases are incomplete, and many do not separate refereed and other publications, however Uncover--the database of journal tables of contents--is useful for general publications. In many fields this will need to be supplemented with other sources of information such as the Avery Index for design. Many schools either place faculty resumes on the WWW or have lists of publications: for example, MIT and Berkeley have such lists, with Berkeley’s seeming to be the most complete (Berkeley 1998; MIT 1998). (However, don’t throw yourself into a panic by expecting to be Manuel Castells.2)

Although there are a number of approaches to this kind of analysis, the following strategy can yield a realistic approach tailored to your specialty within planning. The following five items are important to consider: quantity, quality, pacing, focus, and balance.

First, starting with those people you admire as scholars and researchers, look at the volume or quantity they produce. Volume is important in tenure decisions however, much more crucially, research on creativity shows that many people who produce important work produce a lot of other stuff along the way. They are “productive every day”, or in some regular cycle like a week, and some of these products turn out to be good (see Gardner 1993; Simonton 1987, 75). But how much is a lot? How much of this gets published and how much is, thankfully, filed? It is comforting to know that in planning even the highest producers have limits, with some variation by specialty. Many of those known as writers tend to produce around two refereed articles per year, or write a significant book every three to five years along with a lesser number of articles. Those few that produce more do so for brief spurts, or are in areas like transportation where there are many short papers and much co-authorship (or they are just unusual). Some people known as writers take longer between publications, particularly if they are established, and rely on achieving high quality. This slower strategy can work well in the longer-term. Examining the work of those you admire can help you find your own perspective on quantity.

Second, look at the quality or character of articles and books. How do people you admire craft their very best articles and books including such issues as their relation to previous research, the amount of data, and the character of analysis? What does it take to make a difference in your part of the field--is it about new data sources, new analytical methods, new theoretical approaches? How do they relate to the existing literature? These issues are issues of the craft of scholarly research, and of audience.3 As planning is such a small field most prolific writers also relate to at least one outside discipline or area--from political science to remote sensing--both to find an additional audience, and to draw work from these related fields into planning. How do the scholars you admire do this?<4

In terms of communication pacing is also important. Experienced writers try for an even flow although only a few can manage it in the short-term. Sometimes you may have three things under review and sometimes none, but over a year try to get one, two, or (even) three manuscripts out. This is not always easy. New faculty will have a hard time getting papers out if they jump straight from a fast-paced PhD into a smaller program without any articles on line for publication, and start teaching four or five introductory courses while running a couple of programs and raising grants. Some departments nurture their new faculty, giving generous leave, and providing mentors and other support; some doctoral advisors link their protégés to grants and writing projects in their early years. However, this kind of faculty development is not at all universal and many new faculty struggle without mentors and with high teaching and administrative loads and so organization and pacing early on is crucial (see also Smith 1997).

This is exacerbated by the situation that articles can easily take six months to be reviewed and--as most articles have to be “revised and resubmitted”-- review can be much longer at nine or even twelve months. It can then take between six months to two more years for the article to be actually published. This of course has practical implications: the tenure track has a limited time--mostly six years which means that in fact your file goes in at the end of year five. However, more crucially, actually publishing articles, or at least being able to distribute manuscripts that have been accepted for publication, is an essential step toward starting scholarly interactions in the fields that you care about.

There are many ways to achieve this flow. Make timelines and lists; give yourself deadlines; get support. In particular, the ACSP Faculty Women’s Interest Group manual on “How (Not) to Get Ahead in Academia” has very many fabulous tips from pasting lists of this year’s articles on your refrigerator or over your computer to strategies for publishing “interim” articles (Irrepressible Women Planners 1989, 27-40). There is a small industry in books and articles on writing strategies and they are often quite useful (see Boice 1997; Goldberg 1986). All of them emphasize just getting down to write: as Sue Ruddick points out in the introduction to her first book “the only way to break a writer’s block is to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair” (Ruddick 1996, x).

The fourth issue is more subjective but increasingly important as the sheer volume of scholarly production increases. It involves making your overall focus clear, and being seen to be answering important questions, without sounding repetitious, flimsy, or narrow. On one hand you do not want to write completely different kinds of articles in seven different sub-areas of planning and be seen as too superficial (Irrepressible Women Planners 1989, 31). However, you also do not want to be like some people who seem to produce essentially the same article 12 times. And finally, while less of a problem, it is important to not be so narrowly focused that no one else can get interested in your work. So you want coherence within a small number of areas--while having each piece be unique and sophisticated. It takes a few years for this to get built up--and it is worth examining how people you admire have done this. Importantly, people seem to take quite different amounts of time to hit their stride in terms of focus--a fortunate few have it straight out of the doctorate but for others it can very easily take a decade to develop a coherent area, particularly if they are in an unusual part of the field.

Finally, is the issue of balance. What exact aspects of research and creative work brought you to an academic position in planning? For example, do you want to continue practice? If so, how can you develop an excellent and innovative practice and get credit for it? For those in colleges that incorporate architects and landscape architects, proving excellence through gaining awards is a well established process. Many design programs have established criteria for incorporating awards into the tenure process, for example judging that an award equals a refereed article of a certain caliber. However, that said, those academics that have achieved national prominence generally do some amount of publication and high-profile presentations on their work. A similar kind of balance can be achieved with teaching--using it as a base for publications in order to have interactions with others who will use those publications to find out about your work.

Most academics also want to, or must, balance writing with a life that is outside their resume, and this is increasingly difficult now that most academics do not have wives-to-do-all-that. Children, elderly parents, spouses, commitments to religious practices, work with activist and service groups, illnesses, divorces, and ones creative or artistic life all make claims. This can involve difficult tradeoffs. Recently some authors have pointed out that employed academics are experiencing overwork (Wills 1996). Wills cites a British weekly diary-style study of a random sample of “over a thousand” academics showing average academics working 53.5 hours per week, with professors working 59 hours per week and, within that group, women professors working 64.5 hours (Wilson 1996 in Wills 1996, 295). Wills’ own survey of 130 academics at the University of Southampton found 89 percent of respondents thought their workload had increased in the last five years (1996, 296).

However, it is important to remember that academic jobs usually involve research and creative work (where writing is mostly done), teaching, and service and it does not necessarily have to be research that is cut down or forced into the time when you are also looking after a sick child. In fact in Wills’ study of workloads administration was the most important source of increased hours, with faculty spending around 17 hours per week on administration during the semester. This poses some difficult dilemmas--as administration is work that needs to be done--but it does point out that there are areas apart from writing where hours could be cut and that at least in some places the academic time crunch comes not from research but from other expectations.

What are some potential pitfalls for new scholars?
Given these issues about writing and publishing, what can go wrong in a practical sense? The first part of this article has focused on publication as a means of scholarly communication and making a difference in the field. The following ten tips try to help you avoid potential pitfalls in terms of tenure so you can keep your focus on this bigger goal of communication and innovation in the field.

It is important, however, to see them as tips and not as a recipe for success. They are lessons that can show how quite a lot of the academic world works, but they are not hard and fast rules. (For a more general overview of academic life beyond writing see Irrepressible Women Planners 1989; Smith 1997). However, given that many institutions like to keep their expectations somewhat vague, and criteria at other institutions keep changing, they are at least a start toward understanding the basic system.

Finally, none of this advice is true in all times in all places. But it is true in many places and it is quite surprising how infrequently it is passed on to students and even new faculty. Of course, most people make a lot of mistakes and they still survive. However, knowing these basic points can help you keep your eye on the big picture--scholarly communication, innovative work, answering important questions--while keeping the practical requirements of the contemporary tenure track under control, and even keeping a sense of humor!

Berkeley faculty publications. 1998. http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/city_planning/faculty/facweb1.html and http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/city_planning/faculty/facweb2.html. Accessed June.

Bernardo, Felix. 1993. Scholarly Publication: A Career Retrospective. Marriage and Family Review 18, 1-2: 59-74.

Boice, Robert. 1997. Strategies for Enhancing Scholarly Productivity. In Writing and Publishing for Academic Authors. Second Edition. Joseph Moxley and Todd Taylor eds. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 19-34.

Bondi, Liz. 1998. On Referees and Anonymity: A Comment on Symanski and Pickard. Progress in Human Geography 22, 2: 293-298.

Diamond, Robert. 1994. Serving on Promotion and Tenure Committees. Boston: Anker Publishing.

Gardner, Howard. 1993. Creating Minds. New York: BasicBooks.

Goldberg, Natalie. 1986. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambhala.

Howerly, Carla. 1997. Conference Held on Future of Scholarly Monograph. Footnotes [American Sociological Association] 25, 9: 3.

Irrepressible Women Planners. 1989. How (Not) to Get Ahead in Academia: A Guide for Women Planners. Unpublished.

MIT faculty publications. 1998. http://libraries.mit.edu/rotch/plan/faculty.html. Accessed June.

Moxley, Joseph. 1997. If Not Now, When? In Writing and Publishing for Academic Authors. Second Edition. Joseph Moxley and Todd Taylor eds. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 3-18.

Orlans, Harold. 1996. Will the Public Vote on Tenure? Change 28, 2: 6.

Pascal, Naomi. 1997. University Presses: In and Out of the Ivory Tower. In Writing and Publishing for Academic Authors. Second Edition. Joseph Moxley and Todd Taylor eds. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 141-150.

Ruddick, Susan. 1996. Young and Homeless in Hollywood. New York: Routledge.

Simonton, Dean. 1987. Genius: The Lessons of Historiometry. In Frontiers of Creativity Research. Scott Isaksen ed. Buffalo: Bearly, pp. 66-87.

Smith, Edwyna. 1997. The Tenure Labyrinth. Black Issues in Higher Education 14, 17: 120.

Stevens, Garry. 1990. An Alliance Confirmed: Planning Literature and the Social Sciences. Journal of the American Planning Association 56, 3: 341-349.

Wheeler, James. 1997. Scholarly Trade Volumes and Flows in Urban Geography. Urban Geography 18, 5: 377-381.

Wills, Jane. 1996. Laboring for Love? A Comment on Academics and Their Hours of Work. Antipode 28, 3: 292-303.

Wilson, T. 1996. Lessen the Load. AUT Bulletin, January: 6-7.

Note to 2006 web edition: This is close to the final copy edited version of the original article but it likely to have some small differences. The original drafts are from 1997. I received tenure in 1999.

However, you can check Castells’ publications at http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/city_planning/faculty/facweb1.html#castells.

There are, of course, more generic ways of assessing scholarly quality. For example a Syracuse University group came up with a six part set of “criteria for scholarly quality” involving: work “requiring a high level of discipline-related expertise”; innovation; potential for replication or elaboration; documentation; peer review; and significance or impact (Diamond 1994, 17 in Moxley 1997, 5).

Doctoral students thinking about this can read work on the craft of research. In addition such students could to get hold of review checklists from different journals to see how scholarly articles are judged--however it is important to keep in mind that these checklists are about articles meeting a certain standard, and you will need to think about additional issues.

Book reviews are similarly not articles, but show an engagement with the field.

For a review of some of these issues from an editor’s perspective see Bondi 1998.

There is an interim kind of book--the text book--designed for classroom use and not as a contribution to knowledge. In planning pure text books are comparatively rare.

My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this comment. Posted by randall crane at Sunday, October 22, 2006 
Another great reflection on academic writing early in one's career, when you so green it hurts and have little evidence you will get the hang of things, is in this 1984/1999 and as yet unpublished essay by Cornell's John Forester. I particularly like his emphases on plugging away, without a compass if need be, and the dangers of distractions, even what may seem to be useful ones:

