ABSTRACT
To advance in their scholarly careers, it is crucial for doctoral students to master the publication process. Taking a research paper from generation of idea, through multiple drafts, completion, submission, review, and revision is far from an easy or straightforward process. When students work individually, they are often besieged by doubts and procrastination behaviors because they have little experience of how to judge the quality of their work and whether the paper is ready for publication. They also need confidence to navigate and survive the sometimes harrowing review process. We teach a key orienting course in our doctoral program and while the focus is advanced research methods, the course also provides socialization into being a doctoral student, future academic possibilities, and of course, doctoral writing. We discovered that providing scaffolding for students to publish early in their programs enriched their programs. Consequently, we have developed a method of group publishing that is framed by what we call relational mentoring. Relational mentoring emphasizes the relationship over the outcome. We have found this relationship to be key in getting students through the various stages that result in publication. In this paper, we share our practices and experiences that have enabled success.
