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EASP – European Association of Social Psychology

RKTS Grant Report by Wojciech Kulesza

04.11.2015, by Kai Sassenberg in grant report

University of Warsaw, Poland; Writing Workshop: “How to Publish and Review” in Łódz, September 2 & 3, 2015

Organizer
Dr. Wojciech Kulesza (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw) -- wkulesza@swps.edu.pl

Lecturers

  • Tom Postmes (University of Groningen)
  • Bogdan Wojciszke (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Faculty)

Number of participants
20 (of which 12 were early career researchers)

In short, the workshop consisted of several activities: a lectures, a writing workshop and skills training, an opportunity for consultations with skilled and knowledgeable editors, and an idea generation session for fruitful follow-ups. Participants of the workshop gained valuable knowledge of the publishing process and enhanced their professional abilities so that they might improve the quality of East European research papers and increase the number of submissions to academic journals from East European institutions.

In detail, there were several different purposes of the workshop:

  1. To disseminate knowledge about the Editorial process of international peer-reviewed journals to researchers in Poland. Lecturers: Tom Postmes (editor of EJSP), and Bogdan Wojcisze (editor of JESP) were a great resource to help us to identify issues that researchers struggle with.
  2. To help researchers from Poland and Eastern Europe translate their research findings into high-quality submissions suitable for publication in international peer-reviewed journals such as EJSP and JESP.
  3. To create stronger and deeper bonds between social psychologists of Eastern Europe and those in other parts of Europe. This workshop was intended to serve as a launching pad for other seminars concerning academic publication also for the EASP members of other countries of the region.

In my opinion first two goals were fully accomplished. The last one is a long-distance (in terms of time perspective) from now and difficult to measure at this point. However I fully believe that this workshop established a ”bubble of change” in East European region. In the region where information about international scientific standards and norms is relatively scarce compared to other parts of Europe with higher levels of international exchange.

This initiative was designed to promote knowledge concerning academic writing among members of the EASP from Eastern Europe. Some statistics suggest that in comparison to other parts of the world, submissions to professional psychology journals from this region are less numerous and of poorer quality than they could be. The funding from the EASP helped to established an academic writing workshop in Poland before the general meeting of the Polish Association of Social Psychology and to fill this gap between these two parts of Europe (Eastern vs. Western).

At the beginning the participants prepared drafts of the introductions of their own papers. Secondly, every participant had to evaluate several such papers and send such initial reviews to the authors. Later on, Tom Postmes together with Bogdan Wojciszke, explained to the participants of the workshop the editorial process and clarified how submissions are evaluated. After this, participants had the opportunity to discuss the publishing process in small groups with the editors and raise issues they have faced or ask questions. A plenary discussion at the end summarized the key points from the discussions and helped us to identify problems in the publishing process that researchers from Poland find especially difficult. This plenary discussion helped also to formulate a compact set of ”action points” that might lead to concrete suggestions for follow-up activities, writing clinics, mentorship schemes, or other plans that workshop participants judge to be the most fruitful ways of enhancing scholarship. Also informal working group was established.