Roles of Academic Writers in a Department: Benefits, Structures, and Funding

Background and Objectives: Despite the prevalence of published opinions about the use of professional academic writers to help disseminate the results of clinical research, particularly opinions about the use of ghost writers, very little information has been published on the possible roles for professional writers within academic medical departments or the mechanisms by which these departments can hire and compensate such writers. To begin addressing this lack of information, the Association of Departments of Family Medicine hosted an online discussion and a subsequent webinar in which we obtained input from three departments of family medicine in the United States regarding their use of academic writers. This discussion revealed three basic models by which academic writers have benefitted these departments: (1) grant writing support, (2) research and academic support for clinical faculty, and (3) departmental communication support. Drawing on specific examples from these institutions, the purpose of this paper is to describe the key support activities, advantages, disadvantages, and funding opportunities for each model for other departments to consider and adapt.

Narratives and Metaphors Inspired by the COVID-19 Trauma

The process of the COVID-19 pandemic has produced various social convulsions in our environment. Among these consequences is the development of an abundant literary and paraliterary production. Much of this production stimulated by the pandemic adopts a narrative form (micro-narratives, tales, personal testimonies): it consists of short narratives by non-professional writers included in recent books or on the internet. Based on a sample of this type of text in Spanish, the authors have carried out a study of various aspects of this creative activity, mainly metaphors that convey thematic motifs such as the war against the virus and the home as a complex, ambiguous symbol.

More than the Quantity: The Value of Editorial Reviews for a User-Generated Content Platform

We investigate an editorial review program for which a review platform supplements user reviews with editorial ones written by professional writers. Specifically, we examine whether and how editorial reviews influence subsequent user reviews (reviews written by noneditor reviewers). A quasiexperiment conducted on a leading review platform in Asia, based on several econometric and natural language processing techniques, yields empirical evidence of an overall positive effect of editorial reviews on subsequent user reviews from the platform’s perspective. First, more reviews are provided for restaurants that receive editorial reviews. In addition, these reviews discuss substantive topics while also including a discussion on other topics, leading to a net increase in content length and variety. They also are more neutral in sentiment and are associated with lower rating valences. Further analysis of the mechanism reveals that the subsequent user reviews of the restaurants that receive editorial reviews become more similar to the editorial reviews in regard to topics, sentiment/rating, length, and readability, indicating a herding effect in how to write a review as the main driver of the change in the subsequent reviews. We further empirically isolate this herding effect among long-time reviewers. The findings suggest that review platforms could use an editorial review program not only to boost the quantitative aspect of user reviews but also, to manage the qualitative aspect as well. This paper was accepted by Kartik Hosanagar, information systems.

Strategies of the Texts Translation Published on the Languages of the Indiginous Peoples of the Russian Far East

Lately more and more articles are published, in which the problem of translation the works written in the native languages of the indigenous peoples of Russia are touched upon. Their authors (Yu.V. Limorenko, A.M. Kotorova, N.Ya. Bulatova etc.) emphasize the importance of such translation in popularization the cultural heritage of these peoples. However there isnt any research that highlights the questions of creation of the corpus of translated texts, what kind of methods and strategies were used by translators. It should be mentioned that that the corpus of translated texts can be divided into two types. The first type includes texts written and translated by scientists, missionaries and historians. To the second type belong texts translated by amateur and professional writers. That is why the aim of this article is to answer the question about the stages of the creating of the corpus of the translated from the native languages texts, to determine the most productive methods of translation and to find out what strategies of translation were used by the translators - whether they used their own knowledge of the native languages or interlinear translation, or processed the translation made by the author himself. To achieve this aim the comparative-historical and hermeneutic approaches are used.

Ecology of the digital world of Wikipedia

Wikipedia, a paradigmatic example of online knowledge space is organized in a collaborative, bottom-up way with voluntary contributions, yet it maintains a level of reliability comparable to that of traditional encyclopedias. The lack of selected professional writers and editors makes the judgement about quality and trustworthiness of the articles a real challenge. Here we show that a self-consistent metrics for the network defined by the edit records captures well the character of editors’ activity and the articles’ level of complexity. Using our metrics, one can better identify the human-labeled high-quality articles, e.g., “featured” ones, and differentiate them from the popular and controversial articles. Furthermore, the dynamics of the editor-article system is also well captured by the metrics, revealing the evolutionary pathways of articles and diverse roles of editors. We demonstrate that the collective effort of the editors indeed drives to the direction of article improvement.

Lexical Bundles Ending in that in Academic Writing by Czech Learners and Native Speakers of English

The aim of this paper is to explore how Czech learners of English use lexical bundles ending in that in their academic texts in comparison with novice and professional L1 authors. The analysis is based on three corpora (VESPA-CZ, BAWE and our own cor- pus of papers published in academic journals). The results suggest that Czech learners of English do not use a more limited repertoire of lexical bundles ending in that than pro- fessional writers. However, there are differences between the groups studied, especially in the range of various shell nouns used in nominal bundles. Novice writers, both L1 and L2, use bundles ending in that to express stance more frequently than professional writers.

POLITICAL REALITIES OF THE COMMON REALITY AND THEIR REFLECTION IN THE PROSE OF V. AKSENOV AND S. DOVLATOV

The article compares the memoirs of dissidents and the prose of V. Aksenov and S. Dovlatov (books "In Search of a Sad Baby", "Craft", "Suitcase"). There is a difference in approaches to the creation of texts. In the memoirs of dissidents, the political and ideological aspects of emigration are reproduced, the stages of departure are described in detail. In the prose of the writers of the third wave, the image of the artist of the word, an exile, forcibly separated from his homeland, is comprehended. V. Aksenov and S. Dovlatov follow the tradition that has developed in literature - images of the power / poet opposition. Writers, like immigrants who are not professional writers, do not strive to document all the nuances of going to the West, their goal is to go beyond comprehending only the socio-political aspects of going abroad. Writers solve aesthetic problems, political realities for them are only a reflection of the entourage of external circumstances. Thus, V. Aksenov establishes successive ties between the creators of the "Silver Age" and the artists of the third wave of words. For the autobiographical hero S. Dovlatov, expulsion from the USSR and "relocation" to the United States is an opportunity to realize himself as a person freed from the ideological component, to comprehend the "particularity" of his existence.

Dilemma Work: Problem-Solving Multiple Work Roles Into One Work Life

Scholars have observed workers combining multiple work roles to earn a living to cope with the vicissitudes of the labor market. In studies of creative labor markets, this trend of workers broadening of their skills is termed “occupational generalism”. Previous scholarship has focused on the structural factors that push and pull workers into generalizing and combining multiple work roles. But we lack an understanding of the subjective experience of work as a generalist. I introduce the concept of dilemma work: a form of problem-solving wherein workers who have generalized their work portfolios, attempt to rationalize their professional practices to overcome conflicts that arise from occupying multiple work roles. Drawing on in-depth interviews with professional writers who also freelance as book reviewers, I find that these generalists use three dilemma work strategies: anchoring another role to guide action in the current one; incorporating multiple roles under a higher role or purpose; and compartmentalizing roles in order to act exclusively within a single identity. I propose the general value of a typology of dilemma work for understanding workers’ experience both within artistic labor markets, and beyond.

Plain language practices of professional writers in Quebec

This article investigates the plain language practices of professional writers in Quebec, using a survey. We contacted 55 professional writers and asked them to complete an online survey about how they apply plain language in their work, and the type of writing assistance they would find useful. We also asked 40 of those writers to carry out a simplification task to see what kind of simplifications they were actually making. If the feelings about the reality of the writers’ work is in line with the literature, opinions on plain language guidelines are not. Most writers in our survey find them useful and precise enough, and this contrasts with reported criticisms of such guides. In the simplification task, we noticed that writers focus on the overall understanding of the text, and not only on some linguistic characteristics (as shown in plain language guidelines). The more experienced the writer, the more changes they will make to visual/structural aspects or relational efficiency. Putting the focus on the reader’s needs is their main concern.

Differentiating graffiti in Macao: activity types, multimodality and institutional appropriation

Multimodal graffiti are constrained by the environment in which they are written and by the activities in which graffiti writing takes place. This article examines graffiti collected in Graffiti Park and Nam Van Lake Underground in Macao. The graffiti in the two sites display systematic differences in topics, objectives, subjects, affordance, texture and framing, which are attributed to varied activity types and the multimodality/materiality of public space. Specifically, those in Graffiti Park – a small and secluded area – are products of one-off activities attended by professional writers, ordinary citizens and tourists. Nam Van Lakeside has a more visible space, and yet the graffiti there – largely murals painted by a few commissioned writers – display limited topics/themes under institutional appropriation. The materiality of the wall space also contributes to the variations in styles and contents of graffiti in the two sites.