ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses the issues, the problems, and the solutions involved in writing and publishing, and offers behavioral, attitudinal, and organizational strategies to promote and facilitate productivity in publication. It focuses on the nature of and problems inherent in that transition and offers strategies for successful passage from doctoral to postdoctoral work. The book argues that the pains of doctoral education, in addition to the disparities in the institutional settings, support systems, nature of the work, and type of writing required in the doctoral versus postdoctoral stages, deter the productivity of many Ph.D. holders. It discusses the importance of understanding both the overall book-publishing industry as well as the individual contractual clauses in the author-publisher agreement. The book offers sagacious reflections on writing style, structure, and subject and their relationship to the social organization of science and scholarship.
