The Use of Peer-Reviewed Published Lecture Model in Promoting Academic Paper Writing: A Cost Effective Strategy

Sometime in 2016, the South African Journal of Higher Education, on pages 73‒93 published a very incisive and noteworthy article by Jane Castle and Moyra Keane, both of the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. The article was intended “to inspire academic staff developers and research managers to initiate and support strategies to help academics write more and better, and to take pleasure in writing” (p. 1). In implementing this aim the two authors turned a critical eye to writing development strategies extant in the literature for supporting and promoting academic writing. In carefully reading through their analysis and criticisms of the benefits and drawbacks of each of those strategies, it became clear that despite the importance attached to them, the need for proposing more viable strategies still exits since none of the current approaches was deemed a masterful solution to the challenge of promoting academic paper writing. What was missing in that list is the failure to recognize and adopt the published lecture model as a cost effective didactic strategy for promoting the art and science of academic paper writing among emerging academics and research managers in universities in Africa and the wider world. This article is an attempt to contribute to this need.