4 Tips for Spotting “Predatory” Scholarly Journals

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Over the last few decades there’s been a spike in predatory academic journals. These journals often accept every article submitted to them as long as the author can pay the exorbitant publication fee—which the journal takes without offering peer review or other services in exchange. The sole aim of predatory journals is to make a profit, which they do by preying on unsuspecting academics. As PhD programs grow increasingly competitive, students become easier targets; many are desperate for publication and will gratefully publish their work anywhere that will accept it.

Until recently, emerging scholars could deduce which journals were legitimate and which were scams using Beall’s List. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, curated and maintained this list of predatory open-access publishers for nearly a decade before shutting it down in 2017 due to frequent complaints and defamation suits. Interested or concerned academics can still access an archived version of Beall’s List, but it is no longer being updated.

There remain many useful resources that can help guide academics toward reputable journals, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals. Here are four more tips on how to steer clear of predatory publications when trying to find a home for your paper.

 

1. Pricey publication fees

One of the quickest ways to spot a predatory journal is by its gratuitous publication fee. Predatory journals are more interested in taking your money than in publishing valuable information. While many journals do charge legitimate publication fees in order to keep articles open access or to fund expensive peer review and article preparation processes, journals that do not offer these services—meaning that they are not open-access or don’t review your work—charge this fee for the sole reason of making a profit. Journals that ask for unreasonably high publication fees are thus unlikely to be reputable.

Another red flag is if the journal requires you to pay a submission fee. Most journals that charge a publication fee only ask for this after your paper has been accepted, pending revision and peer review. If you have to pay just to submit a paper, it’s probably not worth the cost.

 

2. Unprofessional presentation

Usually, you can tell intuitively if an academic journal is a scam. You’re best off avoiding journals with clear grammatical errors, typos, or inconsistent formatting, as well as those with unprofessional websites. If the journal’s appearance isn’t up to par, chances are that its editorial standards fall short as well.

 

3. Unlisted or small editorial board

Avoid journals that obscure or omit information regarding their editorial board. Reputable scholarly journals should have a large editorial board composed of respected academics, as well as a transparent editing process. Moreover, you likely want to know who will be reviewing, editing, and overseeing the publication of your paper—after all, you worked hard on it. A reputable journal has nothing to hide, so if you can’t find any information on, say, a journal’s editor-in-chief, take that as a clear warning sign that it might not be a trustworthy publication.

 

4. Misleading location

Often, predatory journals deliberately mislead readers as to where they are based. For example, many such journals use words such as “American” or “international” in their titles to add a sense of prestige, even if their headquarters are not in America, or if they aren’t international publications. Check where the journal is based before you submit your work and ensure that their branding reflects their true location. Again, good journals should have nothing to hide.

5 Alternative Academic (“Alt-Ac”) Careers for PhD Graduates

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Every year, colleges churn out far more PhD graduates than can possibly replace retiring professors. It should thus come as no surprise that only a small percentage of PhD graduates land coveted tenure-track positions. In fact, according to the National Science Foundation, less than 17% of PhD candidates in the sciences manage to obtain tenure-track jobs within three years of graduation (this might seem like a tight timeline, but most people can’t afford to job-hunt indefinitely).

This situation is exacerbated by the prevalence of precarious and part-time work in academia. Roughly 50% of all faculty teaching positions are now part-time, as tenured professors are rapidly being replaced with sessional lecturers or adjuncts, and over 70% of academic appointments are non-tenure track. Yet, despite this marked decline in available tenure-track positions, the number of PhD graduates continues to rise each year, making stable academic jobs extremely difficult to land.

In response, many PhD graduates are turning to alternative academic, or “alt-ac,” jobs. Below, we’ve collated a list of five possible alt-ac pathways for graduates, all of which offer highly skilled, stable job opportunities that might just beat sticking to academia.

1. High school teacher

Teaching high school students can be a fun, rewarding, and challenging job. Plus, as a PhD graduate you’re already a trained teacher: your work as a teaching assistant has prepared you for lecturing on difficult material, explaining concepts clearly and patiently, marking coursework, and offering students feedback and support. You’re also at an advantage for finding employment, since you’re an expert in your field—especially if you earned your PhD in a core high school subject like math, history, or English.

2. Academic publishing

Chances are that if you’ve graduated from a PhD program, you’ve had several papers published. You’re thus likely familiar with the academic publishing world and well-versed in the conventions of your field, including jargon, citations, reference lists, and peer review processes. This makes you a great candidate for a job at an academic publishing house or scholarly journal, especially if you enjoyed the writing and editing side of your dissertation.

3. Non-profit organization (NPO)

NPOs tend to look favourably on high levels of education, especially for research- or communication-related roles. Not only do PhD graduates excel in this kind of work, but many also love it: NPOs offer plenty of new learning opportunities, along with career mobility and the chance to work with interesting people from diverse professional backgrounds.

4. Government jobs

As it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a stable job with health insurance and a pension plan, the competition for government jobs has grown fiercer than ever. Fortunately for you, government employers often look for candidates with impressive academic backgrounds. Moreover, communication, research, and data analysis skills are invaluable for a career in policy-making—and are skills that every PhD graduate likely possesses.

5. Academic administration

Even if you don’t want the pressure of working in academia, you may still crave an academic environment. With a job in academic administration, you get the best of both worlds: a stable career, but without having to leave campus.

Further resources 

While this is not a comprehensive list of possible alt-ac career paths, these suggestions can be treated as jumping-off points for further exploration. It’s best to tailor your alt-ac job search to your specific area of expertise, and there are several tools that can help you narrow down your options. For more information, check out alt-ac blogs such as VersatilePhD or Alt-Academy or read some of the useful books available on this subject.

 

How to Become a Proofreader or Copy Editor

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We are delighted to announce that our CEO and founder, Jinny Hayman, has just launched a book detailing exactly how anyone with an ear for the English language can get into proofreading and copy editing.

The book breaks down the mythos surrounding the industry and details how you can launch a lucrative editing business from anywhere in the world, using just a laptop and your brain. It covers all aspects of the business, from setting up (without having to invest huge amounts of capital) to finding work and attracting repeat clients. It also includes a “crash course” that outlines all the main editing conventions, so that you can accelerate your learning curve and start generating a solid income sooner.

So if you’ve ever thought about becoming a copy editor but weren’t sure you had the right tools, or if you’ve been desperate to find work as a proofreader but had no idea how, this book is for you.

Get your copy here.

Strengthening your Academic Writing: How to Evaluate Your Sources for Relevance, Reliability, and Rigor

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Evaluating your sources is an important part of academic writing. If your sources are trustworthy, accurate, and unbiased, your paper will be much stronger. Your sources should also be relevant to the topic you are writing about.

Is your source relevant?

Before evaluating the reliability of your source, you should decide whether the source is relevant. You don’t have to read the entire document to be able to tell if the source will complement your own work—there are several aspects you can use as starting points to help you assess its relevance.

Keywords

Keywords tell you the main topics of a book or an article. You can use these to quickly determine whether the source discusses your topic to a useful extent.

Abstracts

Journal articles typically have abstracts, which are concise descriptions of the paper’s content. Reading an abstract should give you a good indication of whether the source will be relevant for your paper.

Introduction and Conclusion

The introduction to a book or article usually contains a summary of the work. This will be more detailed than an abstract and can help determine relevance. Conclusions function similarly, summarizing the work and its findings.

Is your source reliable and rigorous?

It is important to choose trustworthy sources. You want to ensure your paper is well-researched, with appropriate citations, and is based on accurate, up-to-date information. With the advent of the Internet anyone can publish anything, so it is important to evaluate each source you are considering using. There are many ways to evaluate reliability.

Reputability

You can evaluate reputability in several ways. Is the publisher or journal well-known and reputable? Has the source undergone a peer-review process? Is the scholar established? What is the journal’s impact factor? Self-published and open-access sources can be tricky in this regard. It is important to carefully examine these works before you use them, particularly if the publisher or author is not yet well-established. That’s not to say that open-access sources can’t provide useful information, but you must vet lesser-known journals and self-published authors by looking at criteria like the following when making your decision.

Is the source current?

Certain fields of scholarship change quickly and information can become outdated. This is particularly true in the sciences. Before using a source, make sure that the information in it is still relevant in your field.

Does the source use citations to back up the claims it makes?

If a source has no citations, it is likely to be unreliable. Unless the work is an opinion piece—and this should be clearly expressed in the text itself—you should always be able to go back and check the information it gives. Similarly, if the source you are evaluating has been cited many times by other authors, this is a good sign that it is reliable. You can check how many times a source has been cited and who has cited it using Google Scholar.

Reviews

Have other scholars reviewed the source? Reviews can tell you whether a source is scholarly and has been accepted in its field of research. If reviews are bad, you may not want to use the source in your paper.

Considerations for Internet Sources

Internet sources can be difficult to evaluate. In addition to the criteria above, you’ll want to check whether the source is grammatically correct and uses language that is not inflammatory, derogatory, or overly biased. Additionally, you will want to find who is responsible for the online material and determine whether they are an established scholar or organization, or if the material is sponsored by someone with a vested interest. Wikipedia should almost never be used in academic writing, since the information can be amended by anyone and is therefore notoriously unreliable.

How to Write More Concisely

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Most journals, and even dissertation and thesis guidelines, have word limits in place to ensure that papers are digestible. However, good academic writing needs to be concise not just to meet those limits but also to ensure that readers can understand the complex topic at hand, and that your argument is coherent and not muddied by lots of extraneous information. Removing unnecessary words and complicated phrases will make your writing much stronger. This post offers some ways in which you can tighten up your writing to produce clearer content and more easily adhere to word count restrictions.

Remove inflated phrases

An inflated phrase is one that uses more words than necessary to convey the sense and idea. Inflated phrases can add many words to your writing, so removing them can reduce your word count significantly. Here are some examples:

   Inflated: This paper seeks to examine…

   Concise: This paper examines… (note that this is also more accurate, since the paper actually does examine the issue in question, rather than just seeking to do so).

   Inflated: …were of the opinion…

   Concise: …stated…

Once you start to identify inflated phrases, you will start to notice them everywhere. These phrases can be easily replaced by shorter ones that will save you some valuable writing space.

Avoid passive voice

Avoiding passive voice in your writing as much as possible will make your sentences more concise and clearer. This does not mean passive voice is wrong—passive voice is often necessary and helpful, particularly in scientific writing, and in fact there are occasions when passive voice makes for a clearer sentence than active voice. Using the passive voice too often, however, can make your writing unnecessarily wordy and difficult to understand.

   Passive: The interviews were conducted by three trained researchers.

   Active: Three trained researchers conducted the interviews.

   Passive: New findings were revealed by the study.

   Active: The study revealed new findings.

Remove redundancies

Text is redundant when it expresses the same idea twice. This often happens when you use words or phrases where the meaning of one of the words is already implied in the other. For example, cooperation implies working together, so the phrase “cooperating together” suffers from redundancy and you could simply use “cooperate.”

Here are two more examples:

   Redundant: In addition, we also conducted surveys.

   Concise: In addition, we conducted surveys. (Or: We also conducted surveys.)

   Redundant: We reviewed literature by knowledgeable experts in the field of management.

   Concise: We reviewed literature by experts in the field of management.

Make sure each word is necessary

If you need to cut some words, look at each part of your sentence. Is it necessary? Does it enhance your writing? Long sentences are good candidates for revision. They often contain many extra words that do not contribute to the overall meaning.

   Unnecessarily Long: Based on the results of the survey, we came to the conclusion of that most of the employees preferred working in the office rather than working from home.

   Concise: The survey results revealed that most employees preferred working from the office rather than from home.

Hopefully, these tips will enable you to stick to your word count and become a better writer. However, there are times when your draft is so far over the word limit that cutting it down sufficiently feels like an impossible task. That’s where we can take an objective view and help you meet even the tightest word limit. In fact, we relish the challenge of word count reductions and would love to help you!

How to Incorporate Quotations into Your Writing

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Incorporating the ideas of others into your paper is a key part of academic writing. Quotations help to make your own writing stronger, show that you have read widely and intelligently on your topic, and demonstrate that your arguments can be backed up with findings from other studies. Whenever you use someone else’s exact words, this is a direct quote; if you paraphrase or otherwise incorporate someone else’s ideas or findings without using their own words, it’s known as an indirect quote.

When incorporating direct quotes from others into your work, you will need to indicate the quotations clearly (via quotation marks or, particularly in the case of longer quotes, as a separate block of text), credit the original author (through an appropriate citation presented according to the style guidelines you are using), and copy the text verbatim (or indicate clearly where you have made changes, for example using ellipses or square brackets—see below).

Quotations should not be dropped into your text as stand-alone sentences. Good academic writing thoughtfully integrates quotes to support the argument and help your reader to understand why you are using the quote, and the relevance it has to your work.

In this post, we’ll use some text taken from Barbara M. Wildemuth’s Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science to show how to incorporate a quotation in three different ways.

Full grammatical integration into your sentence

If you just want to use shorter phrases from another source, grammatically integrating the quotation into your sentence is a good choice. If the quote does not quite fit your sentence grammatically, you can modify it to fit your sentence as long as you do not change the meaning. If you delete part of the text, you can show this using an ellipsis. If you change a word so that it fits grammatically, under most style guides you will signal this using square brackets.

Here is an example:

With respect to the research process, Wildemuth (2009, p. 11) stated that it is crucial to “define [an appropriate] research question.”

Integration through an introductory sentence

Another way to incorporate a quotation is to introduce it using a full sentence that describes or interprets the quotation.

Wildemuth (2009, p. 11) suggested that developing a research question is the key to a successful project: “Having a clear statement of your research question in hand allows you to design your study (including your overall strategy and your specific data collection procedures).”

Integration through a brief introduction

Finally, you can integrate a quotation by briefly introducing it. This puts the focus on the quotation rather than on your interpretation.

Wildemuth (2009, p. 11) wrote, “The first […] step in conducting a research study is to define your research question.”

However, your next sentence would probably need to make clear why this quotation is relevant to your context.

You can use the methods above to integrate quotations in any style (e.g., APA, Chicago, Harvard, etc.), but the citation format and location in the sentence will vary according to the style you are following.

One final note: Although quotations are vital for providing readers with evidence for the validity of your claim, it’s important to strike a balance between your own words and the words of others. Be thoughtful in deciding when to quote and when to paraphrase, making sure your voice comes through strongly in your paper. And when in doubt, send your paper to us. We’ll make sure quotations are appropriate, relevant, and have been cited adequately. We’ll also ensure the relevant style guide has been correctly applied.

Works Cited

Wildemuth, Barbara M. 2009. Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

APA 7th Edition: Key Changes

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Whenever the American Psychological Association (APA) introduces a new edition of its publication manual, the new version usually includes several important changes to the style standards. This post covers some of the most significant updates introduced in the 7th edition of the APA style guide.

Referencing Standards

Changes to citation style in APA 7 mainly relate to simplifying citations and making online sources easier to cite. The main changes are as follows:

Publisher locations should no longer be included in the reference list for book entries.

Previously, references to books had to include both the publisher location and publisher name (e.g., “Washington, DC: American Psychological Association”). Now, only the publisher name should be included (e.g., “American Psychological Association”). For references where the publisher and author are the same, the publisher name is simply omitted from the citation.

DOIs and URLs are now presented differently.

Both are now included as hyperlinks in references and DOIs no longer need to be preceded by the label “DOI.” The label “Retrieved from” is now only used before URLs when a retrieval date is necessary—otherwise, the URL follows the period after the page title or page name (e.g., Howe, J. (2006, June 1). The rise of crowdsourcing. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2006/06/crowds).

Use of “et al.” has changed.

Previously, APA stipulated that in-text citations for up to five authors should include all author surnames, with “et al.” used in subsequent citations of the same work. In APA 7, “et al.” is used for all instances of citations with three or more authors, even at first mention.

In the reference list, if a source has 20 or fewer authors the surnames and initials of all of these authors should be included in the full reference. For sources with 21 or more authors, the first 19 authors should be listed, followed by an ellipsis, and then the final author’s surname and initial(s) (e.g. “Wiskunde, B., Arslan, M., Fischer, P., Nowak, L., Van den Berg, O., Coetzee, L., Juárez, U., Riyaziyyat, E., Wang, C., Zhang, I., Li, P., Yang, R., Kumar, B., Xu, A., Martinez, R., McIntosh, V., Ibáñez, L. M., Mäkinen, G., Virtanen, E., . . . Kovács, A. (2019). Indie pop rocks mathematics: Twenty One Pilots, Nicolas Bourbaki, and the empty set. Journal of Improbable Mathematics, 27(1), 1935–1968. https://doi.org/10.0000/3mp7y-537”).

Inclusive and Bias-Free Language

APA 7 provides new guidelines regarding writing in a way that is inclusive and respectful of all people, regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, and racial and ethnic identity. For example, the APA now endorses the singular “they,” which is a gender-neutral pronoun (e.g., “A writer’s career might be influenced by how much they read,” rather than “…how much he or she reads,” “how much he reads,” etc.).

APA 7 also recommends sensitivity when applying labels and using descriptive phrases or adjectival forms over adjectives as labels. For example, the 7th edition endorses using the phrase “people living in poverty” instead of “the poor” (American Psychological Association, 2020, p. 133). If you are interested in learning more, chapter 5 of the APA 7th edition provides extensive examples of and recommendations for using inclusive and bias-free language.

For more details on the above changes, or to read about all changes, you can check out this handy document published by the APA. And if you are feeling overwhelmed by trying to keep track of these new standards, our editors can help. We our experts in applying whichever version of APA (or other style) is required by your school or journal, so you can spend time writing and leave the style points to us.

 

Work Cited and Consulted:

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).

Write Smarter: How to Set Effective Goals in Your Academic Writing

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How often do you walk away from your computer after a writing session feeling disappointed at having not written more? This will be familiar to any academic, but ask yourself: What did you set out to achieve in the first place? One mistake too many of us make is that we approach writing with ill-defined goals. However, the research is clear: Setting effective goals is the first step toward making tremendous accomplishments.1

Thankfully, there are plenty of methods to help you set practical goals, one of which is the SMART framework. Using this framework will help you not only keep on track but identify when a day’s work is complete. This means you can walk away from the computer feeling proud of what you have accomplished.

What does SMART stand for? The short answer is Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. Each of these corresponds to a strategy you can use when setting your writing goals. Below, we explore each component in the context of academic writing.

Specific

Rather than being vague, a good writing goal will make crystal clear the particular task to be completed (and how), often using numbers.

Bad example of a specific goal: “I will write some of my introduction section today.”

Good example of a specific goal: “I will write five paragraphs of my introduction, focusing on the quantity of writing. I’ll go back and edit for quality tomorrow.”

Measurable

How will you know that you are making progress toward your writing goal, and how will you know when you have achieved it? Ensuring you have quantifiable metrics against which you can benchmark your progress is essential for holding yourself accountable and knowing when it’s time to close the laptop.

Bad example of a measurable goal: “I will write up some of my discussion section today, stopping when I get tired.”

Good example of a measurable goal: “I will write 500 words of my discussion, after which I will stop writing and review my work tomorrow.”

Achievable

It’s possible that being accepted by a top-tier publication on your first submission, or drafting an entire thesis in a day, is unrealistic. Take a moment to consider whether your goals are achievable. Seek support and keep your goals manageable.

Bad example of an achievable goal: “I will finish the last chapter of my thesis before editing and proofreading the entire manuscript in time for the submission deadline. I’ll squeeze it in around the other things I have to do. Everything will be fine!”

Good example of an achievable goal: “I will take the next day to finalize the last chapter of my thesis and then send it to a professional proofreading service to get the language polished.”

Relevant

It’s much easier to work on things that feel personally relevant to you. Ask yourself—ideally before you even commence writing—whether your current writing project feels meaningful and exciting. Goals that motivate us in and of themselves, irrespective of their material rewards, are much more motivating than goals we’re pursuing purely for a paycheck.2

Bad example of a relevant goal: You see a call for proposals for an upcoming special issue. The issue is not on a topic that you find particularly interesting, but you’ve got some results that you think will fit the bill. You decide to write up a proposal but it feels like a chore. When the proposal is accepted, you dread the time you must now dedicate to writing the full manuscript.

Good example of a relevant goal: You have been offered the chance to submit a chapter to an edited book. The offer comes from a prestigious and reputable publisher, but the topic you would be writing about isn’t as interesting to you as your focal research. You decide to decline the offer and focus on your core research. Consequently, you enjoy sitting down to write much more than if you had pursued the opportunity, and are highly productive.

Time-bound

Lastly, the best goals are time-bound. Create a timeline of tasks that lead up to a final deadline, ensuring they are bite-sized and allow buffer room for any unexpected hiccups.

Bad example of a time-bound goal: “I’m going to finish that chapter of my thesis… eventually.”

Good example of a time-bound goal: “I will complete the first draft of my 3,000-word discussion section within seven days. Therefore, I will write 500 words each day up to the deadline, allowing one day for any delays.”

Consider setting yourself some SMART goals and watch as your writing productivity soars!

Tracking Down Information: How and Where to Find Sources for an Academic Paper

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You have an idea about what you want to write about, but where do you go from there? Research is the key to good writing, but you might not know just where to start. Most people jump straight to Google, and while, of course, Google abounds with information, not all of it is useful or legitimate. Here are some ideas for other great places to start looking. And remember, we can help you ensure you have cited correctly and styled your references according to any applicable guidelines. This means you can focus on the research and writing side!

Head to the Library

This might seem obvious, but libraries are not only a great resource for the books themselves—they also have librarians who are trained to help you find the information you need. Each library also has its own online catalog you can use to search and access its holdings. If you don’t find what you need, you can check out WorldCat, which connects you to the materials of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. Often, your library will be able to order the material in for you (sometimes this is free, sometimes it costs a small fee—just check with your library first).

Libraries also provide access to online databases. Libraries pay for access to these databases so that you can use the materials in them for free. You can find out what articles and e-books your library has available through its online catalog. You might need to log in to access these items. Library stacks can also be helpful: books are generally organized by subject, so if you find one really great book in the catalog, you can go find the book on the shelf. Chances are, if you look at the books around it you’ll find even more books to use in your research.

Check Reference Works

If you don’t know a lot about your topic, reference works might be a good place to start. It can be very helpful to read broadly on a topic before narrowing in on your specific research question. Textbooks, handbooks, and subject dictionaries are great places to start for understanding the basics, and these sources can point you to more specific scholarly sources. Encyclopedias are great too, but a word of caution: don’t rely on or cite Wikipedia unless absolutely necessary—it is not considered a sufficiently reliable source for use in scholarly work.

Follow Citation “Rabbit Holes”

Going down a citation rabbit hole can be one of the best ways to find good information. It just takes a little time and detective work. Once you have found a really good, recent academic source, look at the works that book or paper cites in its footnotes or reference list. You can then hunt down these sources, and later look at the publications they use—and so on. Another way to do this is to use Google Scholar to identify authors that have cited your primary article. These rabbit holes are essentially bottomless and can be incredibly useful in building the body of scholarship that will inform your paper.

Find an Expert

Never underestimate the power of human connection. If you know or can easily contact someone working in your field, reach out to them. Scholars love to discuss their work and see how your study fits in. Not only will this help to further your own research, but you might build a lasting connection for future work. Experts can also point you to good research that you might have overlooked.

If you want even more information on the research, writing, and citation process, check out citation handbooks such as Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, the MLA Handbook, or the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

We hope these tips will be helpful in your quest for information. One final piece of advice: make sure you keep track of the sources you find as you go along, and know how to access them again. This will make it much easier to build your reference list and avoid accidental plagiarism. And don’t worry if you’re not confident on citation and reference formatting—we can help you with this as part of our academic editing service.

Happy reading!

Take a Better Break: How to Boost Your Writing Productivity Using Breaks

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We talked about the Pomodoro Method of writing—which is a strategy combining 25-minute increments of focused writing with five-minute breaks—in another post. But what exactly should you do during writing or study breaks to maximize your productivity once you’re back behind the keyboard?

Take a moment to reflect on what a typical break from writing looks like for you. Do you chat with your colleagues or friends? Do you browse social media? Maybe you take a short walk. Ultimately, a productive break from writing is likely to look different for different people. However, new findings about the science of recovery suggest some rules of thumb to increase your chances of feeling replenished and ready to write after your breaks. Below, we explore three science-backed tips for taking a better break.

Spend a Moment in Nature

Studies show that taking some time outside may be more restorative than taking a break indoors. The reason for this is related to the effect of the natural environment on our attentional capacity. Findings indicate that when we spend time in nature, we tend to subconsciously focus on features of the environment, such as the calls of birds, the chill of the wind, or the sounds of rustling trees. This soft, nondeliberate focus allows your conscious attention to rest, meaning that once you return to the computer you’ll be better able to mobilize your attention and focus on your work.1 Additionally, getting some physical distance from your work will help you to psychologically detach and truly relax during your break.2

Even if you can’t physically get outside, studies show that just gazing upon natural scenery through a window is sufficient to rest your attentional capacity.3

Do Something Nonwordy

Be sure not to spend too much time during your break engaging in “wordy” activities, such as reading articles or responding to messages. These activities use the same language-processing parts of your brain that writing does, and may continue to draw on the same cognitive resources you need to get your work done.4

Instead, try something you enjoy that is “nonwordy,” such as light stretching or a short game on your smartphone.

Let Your Mind Wander

Stuck on your next paragraph? Take a few minutes to let your mind wander during your writing break. Findings from creativity research suggest that intentionally disengaging from problems and taking a moment to daydream can be an effective way to have those much-needed “a-hah!” moments. This is because our brains unconsciously work through problems when we’re not consciously thinking about them.5

To make this type of break work for you, physically distance yourself from your work for a few minutes and take that time to daydream about whatever comes to mind. The ideas will come flowing in no time.

Ready to be a more productive writer? Commit to testing out one of these tips today and see how your productivity improves!