Is it Free Labor or a "Harmless" Academic Favor? How to Tell Which Academic Favors Are Worth Your Time
Not every request from a professor is exploitative, but some are. Use these five questions to decide which academic favors are worth your time.
Publish and Flourish
Tips for excelling at academic publishing and surviving the PhD, from a PhD and former journal Managing Editor.
Developmental Editing vs. Copyediting vs. Line Editing for Academic Work: Which Do You Need?
Not sure whether your academic manuscript needs a developmental edit, line edit, or copyedit? Here’s how each differs, with examples, and the order to do them in.
How to Pick a Publisher for Your Academic Book
There's no prescribed route to the right academic publisher. It comes down to finding a good fit, and fit has several parts.
Why Academic Friends Make Terrible Manuscript Reviewers
Your academic friends are brilliant, and that's the problem. Each one reads your manuscript through their own training and pet peeves, leaving you confused, frazzled, and pulled in five directions. Here's what a developmental editor does differently.
How to Choose Inclusive Terminology in Academic Writing
Inclusive terminology is so much more than a box to check before you submit your research for evaluation by your peers; it's about showing care and consideration in your writing and upholding the humanity of the people or places your research is about.
To PhD or to Mom...or Both? Things to Consider Before You Have a Baby in Grad School
Like many people feel when they've found their person, we knew we wanted to start a family. But as broke grad students living hundreds if not thousands of miles away from our families and wider support networks, how would this even be feasible? Could we become parents and still achieve our PhD dreams?
A Researcher's Guide to Publishing Social Justice Work That Actually Matters
At a time when your work is more necessary than ever, how do you go about producing meaningful, publishable, social justice research?
Strategies for Dissertation Writing as a Postpartum PhD Student
If you're pregnant or postpartum and wondering how you will ever get back to researching and writing again (or perhaps you've tried and it's just not going well), here are some strategies I used that may help you.
How to Publish Your First Academic Article
Publishing your first article is learnable. There is a process from the idea phase right through to the revision and final submission stage that if followed can make publishing your first article an efficient and logical process. Let's explore it.
Why Even "Good" Writers Need Editors
When writing is complicated, multilayered, and drawing together many different threads in the hope of producing an (aspirationally) coherent narrative—not to mention of political or social consequence—it's so easy to find yourself in an inescapable tangle. But I'm a "good" writer—why can't I get myself out of this, you may ask.
How to Know When to Hire an Academic Editor
Rather than offering you a prescriptive timeline, here are the key factors to consider when deciding whether to hire an academic editor sooner (or later) in your process. Once you've reflected on these considerations, you might find the answer of when to hire becomes radically less complicated.
How I Finished My PhD as a Toddler Mom (and How You Can Do It, Too)
After the birth of my son, I faced extreme isolation, Postpartum Anxiety (PPA), breastfeeding struggles, adrenal fatigue and chronically high cortisol levels, constant pain from diastasis recti, a child who needed surgery at six months old, and more. And then I was expected to return to teaching and writing my dissertation as if my body and mind had not just gone through the beautiful trauma of creating and nurturing a life.
How to start writing a dissertation: 3 practical strategies
If you’ve ever found yourself staring at a blank document and then quietly Googling "how do I start my dissertation?," you are not alone. If you’re stuck on how to start writing your dissertation and get that momentum going, here are three strategies that work—especially for high-achieving, thoughtful scholars who feel the weight of the work.
Hate it or love it, "Wuthering Heights" (2026) shows the power of a developmental edit
An academic editor went on a toddlerless V-day date to see Wuthering Heights (2026)—and ended up exploring obsession, fantasy, and the power of a developmental edit.
5 Reasons Why Your Article is Not Getting Published—With Solutions
You've poured so many of your precious work and personal hours into perfecting an article. You finally click "Submit" and feel so relieved. And then, after perhaps months or—let's face it, maybe years—you receive a cold rejection email. Or worse, the journal ghosts you completely. This is a really hard but unfortunately very common occurrence in academic publishing. Why is it so hard to get your article published when you're putting in all the work you should be?
Three Ways to Practice Self-Care as an Academic
When deadlines are immovable, expectations are high, and the work itself carries intellectual, political, or emotional weight, self-care can feel like a luxury you simply don’t have.