From Dissertation to Journal Article: A Useful Method for Planning and Writing Any Manuscript

A structured, analytical approach to manuscript preparation is offered. It emerged from the author's mentoring experiences guiding fellows and junior faculty in their first forays into academic writing. The purpose of the manuscript, its optimal audience(s), and other factors first lead to a decision on publication outlet. Then, the voluminous "memoir" of the research endeavor is trimmed to manageable size through a series of "bullet point" tests that optimize relevance, conciseness, and cohesiveness. Bullet points making the final cut then are organized into an easy-to-follow writing template. This approach to academic writing has shown value beyond helping fellows pare down dissertations to journal manuscripts; at our institution, it has also generally become a popular method for preparing manuscripts and grant applications.