Strategies for Publishing Pedagogical Research

Reports on a seminar by David Boud at Middlesex University on the 2nd of July 2019

At the Middlesex University Business School, I have a dedicated role in research mentoring and improving the research profile of the entire School by stimulating research and research output. I organise and run a range of staff development activities including paper development groups and writing boot-camps. Recently, I also started working with staff who are keen to publish their teaching-based research.

As part of that initiative, I was very happy to find Professor David Boud prepared to share some of his wisdom on Publishing Pedagogical Research with us. The slides of the presentation can be downloaded here. The entire presentation was recorded and is available for viewing here. [Thanks to Paul Stapleton who did the recording, it was his first time but he did a great job!. Editing by Simen Waage.]

My introduction of David Boud

David Boud is currently Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Alfred Deakin Professor at Deakin University, Melbourne, as well as a visiting Research Professor at the Middlesex School of Health & Education. He is also Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and a Senior Fellow of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. His Middlesex bio says that he has been involved in research and teaching development in adult, higher and professional education for over 30 years, but given that his first publication dates from 1970, I think that is a bit of a British understatement.

If I would go through all his previous positions and the honours he has received we wouldn’t have much time left for the seminar. However, I would like to point out two things in particular: his publication record and his citation record. His Google Scholar Profile lists more than 500 publications and he has nearly 50,000 Google Scholar citations. In fact he is getting more citations in a year than most professors in a lifetime, so I think we would be hard pressed to find anyone in the world more suitable to give a seminar like this.

Presentation abstract

Being an academic involves not only publishing in one’s own discipline, but for those with a particular interest in teaching, it increasingly means publishing about teaching and learning. The range of things on which one can publish is very extensive, but there is a very long tail in the higher education literature and getting accepted in some of the higher rated journals demands careful thought and planning. The focus of the seminar will be on the issues involved in getting published in good outlets. It will encompass issues such as: deciding what it is worth publishing about, how papers in higher education might differ from those in one’s home discipline, what editors are looking for and navigating the publishing process. The aim of the session is to build confidence in pursuing the publication path tempered by a realistic view of what can be achieved.

September 2019: World top researcher in Higher Education

In September 2019, the Australian [the most important Australian newspaper] published a special report about the performance of Australian researchers, both in a national and in an international context. The full report can be accessed here  and its methodology can be verified here. It included various rankings, including the top-5 Australian reseachers in some 250 fields. Moreover, it listed the fields in which an Australian-based researcher was ranked number one in the world. In this context, David Boud was named as the top researcher worldwide in two fields: Academic & Psychological Testing and Higher Education.

Related readings

Other Middlesex seminars