Michael D. Johnson, PhD

This page contains material from my workshop on academic writing. It is designed for people looking to publish their work in top-tier academic journals in management and applied psychology.

Slide decks

• Finding your story
• Constructing your story
• Introducing your story
• Writing to persuade

Papers on academic writing

• Davis, M. S. (1971). That’s Interesting: Towards a phenomenology of sociology and a sociology of phenomenology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 1(2), 309–344.
• El‐Omar, E. M. (2014). How to publish a scientific manuscript in a high‐impact journal. Advances in Digestive Medicine, 1(4), 105–109.
• Gould, J. C., Luna, R. E., & Vogel, D. L. (2014). Writing well: Lowering the barriers to success. Nature Immunology, 15(8), 695–697.
• Grant, A. M., & Pollock, T. G. (2011). From the editors—Publishing in AMJ—Part 3: Setting the hook. Academy of Management Journal, 54(5), 873–879.
• Hollenbeck, J.R. (2008). The role of editing in knowledge development: Consensus shifting and consensus creation. In Opening the black box of editorship (ed. Y. Baruch). Palgrave Macmillan.
• Judge, T. A., Cable, D. M., Colbert, A. E., & Rynes, S. L. (2007). What causes a management article to be cited–article, author, or journal? Academy of Management Journal, 50(3), 491–506.
• Lange, D., & Pfarrer, M. D. (2017). Editors’ comments: Sense and structure—the core building blocks of an “AMR” article. The Academy of Management Review, 42(3), 407–416.
• Locke, K., & Golden-Biddle, K. (1997). Constructing opportunities for contribution: Structuring intertextual coherence and “problematizing” in organizational studies. Academy of Management Journal, 40(5), 1023–1062.
• Mason, R. M. (2001). Not either/or: Research in Pasteur’s quadrant. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 6, 16.
• Pollock, T. G., & Bono, J. E. (2013). From the editors—Being Scheherazade: The importance of storytelling in academic writing. Academy of Management Journal, 56(3), 629–634.
• Zuckerman, E. On genre: A few more tips to academic journal article-writers. Published online.

Exemplary papers

• Fehr, R., Fulmer, A., Awtrey, E., & Miller, J. A. (2017). The grateful workplace: A multilevel model of gratitude in organizations. The Academy of Management Review, 42(2), 361–381.
• Grant, A. M. (2013). Rocking the boat but keeping it steady: The role of emotion regulation in employee voice. Academy of Management Journal, 56(6), 1703–1723.

Book recommendations

• Belcher, W. L. (2019). Writing your journal article in twelve weeks : A guide to academic publishing success (Second edition). The University of Chicago Press.
• Boice, R. (1990). Professors as writers : A self-help guide to productive writing. New Forums.
• Clark, R. P. (2020). Murder your darlings : And other gentle writing advice from Aristotle to Zinsser (First edition.). Little, Brown, Spark.
• Dreyer, B. (2019). Dreyer’s English : An utterly correct guide to clarity and style. Random House.
• Hall, T. (2019). Writing to persuade : How to bring people over to your side (First edition). Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company.
• Heinrichs, J. (2017). Thank you for arguing : What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson can teach us about the art of persuasion (Third edition). Three Rivers Press.
• Lamott, A. (2019). Bird by bird : Some instructions on writing and life (25th anniversary edition). Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House.
• McCloskey, D. (2019). Economical writing: Thirty-five rules for clear and persuasive prose (3rd edition). University of Chicago Press.
• McPhee, J. (2017). Draft no. 4 : On the writing process (First edition). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Pinker, S. (2014). The sense of style : The thinking person’s guide to writing in the 21st century. Viking.
• Pollock, T. G. (2021). How to use storytelling in your academic writing : Techniques for engaging readers and successfully navigating the writing and publishing processes (Paperback edition.). Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Rodale, J. I. (Jerome I., Urdang, L., & LaRoche, N. (1986). The synonym finder. Warner Books.
• Silvia, P. J. (2015). Write it up! Practical strategies for writing and publishing journal articles. American Psychological Association.
• Silvia, P. J. (2019). How to write a lot : A practical guide to productive academic writing (Second edition). American Psychological Association.
• Stokes, D. E. (1997). Pasteur’s quadrant : Basic science and technological innovation. Brookings Institution Press.
• Storr, W. (2020). The science of storytelling: Why stories make us human and How to Tell Them Better (1st ed.). Abrams, Inc.
• Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis : English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press.
• Thomson, O., & Kamler, B. (2013). Writing for peer reviewed journals: Strategies for getting published. Routledge.
• Zinsser, W. (1990). On writing well : An informal guide to writing nonfiction (4th ed., rev., updated , and expanded). HarperPerennial.