Paper Writing Masterclass

Hi! I’m Dr Hanak, and I’m glad to see you here. I know writing papers may be challenging or even scary. Believe me, I was there myself. Let me tell you a short story of how I build my expertise in writing research papers.

From the very beginning of my PhD, I knew that I had to publish my work if I wanted to build an expert profile and achieve impact with my work. At that time, I didn’t have any experience with publishing, didn’t know what the publication process was, or even how to write a research paper.

Yet, as an eager and ambitious researcher, I started exploring the journal pages and guidelines, university resources, discussed at length with more senior colleagues and my supervisory team to build as much understanding of the publication development process as I could. Once I had a pretty good idea of how to write a research paper, I set out a research question that I wanted to tackle and performed my research. To make a long story short, I used all this understanding and knowledge I gathered in the initial 3-4 months of my PhD to write my very first research paper.

After a couple of internal reviews with my supervisory team, I was about to submit my first paper to the journal. I remember exactly how I felt. I was hopeful. I was excited. I was scared… But I didn’t need to wait for a response very long. My paper was REJECTED after a month. The reviewers were harsh. They did not give me a chance to improve my work. I was devastated. I felt like a failure and that my PhD does not make any sense. It is always difficult to have your work rejected.

But you need to know one thing about me. Whenever someone tells me I cannot do something, I become furiously motivated to prove them wrong! I didn’t give up! During my PhD I spent hundreds of hours, countless evenings and weekends, mastering the principles of academic writing and publishing. I learnt to take harsh reviewers’ comments and rejection as feedback rather than failure. I learnt to reflect on reviewers’ comments to improve my work.

Did it pay off? YES! During my PhD, I published 9 first-authored papers in top journals in the Energy and Chemical Engineering field, including two papers in Energy and Environmental Science with an impact factor of 30! Consequently, my PhD thesis was awarded a prestigious medal for the best thesis at my university! My track record helped me to get a post-doc and then a full academic position. I was over the moon.

Since then, I published 43 journal articles and currently have 10 more under review. Because of my track record, I was offered Associate Editor position with Wiley and Editorial Board position with Oxford University Press. Hard work during my PhD really paid off!

And you know what? Today I want to share my experience, reflections and advice with you, to save you 1000s of hours trying to figure out how to write a research paper. In the Paper Writing Masterclass, I will share my academic and editorial advice on the publication development process, idea generation, tailoring your writing to key audiences for your research, and writing each section of your research paper, and many more.

Eager to learn? Let’s get started!