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Arts PhD and masters students get a GRiP on writing

31 May 2006

Graduate Researchers in Print program facilitator Dr Ceridwen Spark (left) with Arts faculty Deputy Dean and Associate Dean (Graduate Research) Associate Professor Denise Cuthbert.

An innovative new writing program for higher degree by research candidates in the Arts faculty has achieved remarkable success for its participants.

The Graduate Researchers in Print (GRiP) program is designed to support and encourage students to write and publish in their fields. It is believed to be the only program of its type being run in Australian universities.

The program was developed and funded by the Arts Research Graduate School, led by Arts Deputy Dean and Associate Dean (Graduate Research) Associate Professor Denise Cuthbert. Dr Ceridwen Spark, also from the Arts faculty, is the program's facilitator.

The introduction of the program follows a successful pilot that ran in 2005 and attracted 28 participants from a variety of disciplines in the faculty. Divided into four groups of seven, each group met for a two-hour workshop each month from March to December, with participants developing an article for publication as part of their writing goals.

The program also covered various aspects of publishing, including identifying appropriate journals, preparing submissions, responding to reviewers' reports, writing book proposals and writing for non-academic media. Students supported each other by reading each other's work and acting as 'peer reviewers'.

Dr Cuthbert said the program recognised a long-term need to better support arts research candidates in publishing.

"In other faculties, there is a strong co-publication culture, with many PhD candidates having the opportunity to 'learn the ropes' by co-publishing with their supervisor," Dr Cuthbert said. "As the publication culture in Arts tends to be more individualistic, we perceived a need to develop a program to induct our young researchers into publishing."

The results from the pilot program were highly encouraging, with 98 per cent of participants drafting an article for eventual publication in a referred journal and 53 per cent submitting an article for publication. Nearly one in five had journal articles accepted for publication, while 23 per cent had conference papers accepted for publication in an edited conference proceedings or collection.

Dr Cuthbert said the success of the program was not surprising.

"Because our candidates are doing work of great intrinsic interest and because they have publishable material, all they needed was to have the publication process demystified for them," she said.

"A large part of the success of the program was also due to the particular skills and attributes of the facilitator, Dr Spark, who is very well published herself, and as a relatively recent graduate well able to see things from the perspective of the students involved in the program."

The 2006 program started in March with 25 participants and will run until December. For more information, visit the Arts Faculty website or contact Dr Ceridwen Spark on +61 3 9905 8779.