Writing a journal article in 12 weeks: Week Six

I’m using Wendy Laura Belcher’s book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success to prepare my paper for publication. This week was Week Six.

Week Six deals with strengthening the article’s structure. Belcher explains that

Structure is the organization of your argument and the evidence for your argument. When each part of your article leads logically to the next part, you have a coherent structure. (p. 172)

Structure occurs at the level of the whole article, as well as at the paragraph level. Belcher calls those macro and micro structures. She discusses 5 basic micro structures, which journal articles use in combination, such as description, sequence, causation, problem/solution, and comparison. Belcher acknowledges that knowing those structural types doesn’t necessarily help a writer determine which organizational principles to use and when. For some reason, the section on micro structure reminded me of a discussion of organizational patterns commonly included in public speaking textbooks. In the section on macro structure, Belcher argues that journal articles, as a genre, have some rhetorical features that have persisted for centuries, and, in addition, there are some new organizational structures that appear every day. Then, she outlines common structures of articles (qualitative and quantitative) both in social sciences and humanities. The final section of this week’s chapter is devoted to solving structural problems. Belcher shares several suggestions on how to improve the structure of an article, among them using of subheadings and summaries, stating one’s argument first and presenting evidence second, organizing the article around its argument, staying on topic, etc. 

As usual, on the first day of the week, I read the workbook. On the second day, I created an outline of the model article, which I selected several weeks ago. This outline closely resembled some of Belcher’s examples. On the third day, I worked on outlining my own article, which helped me identify some gaps and deviations. I spent the next two days restructuring my paper. First, I once again revised my argument. Then, I worked on my research questions, ways of representing textual evidence and framing my discussion in order to better connect them to the argument. Two days were not enough to revise everything, but overall Week Six was fruitful and productive.