The purpose of the retreat

The writing retreat seeks to provide academic participants with an ‘enabling environment to write a journal article under the supervision of an experienced facilitator and publisher’.

The duration of the retreat

The writing retreat will take place over five days, Monday to Friday. It will involve between 10-15 academics at a venue outside of the university campus.

The submission of draft papers prior to the retreat

The Research Directorate will issue a call for expression of interest to participants announcing the intention to host a writing retreat. The interested participants are expected to indicate their willingness to take part in the retreat.

Once the Research Directorate has received an acceptable number of interested participants, it will issue a submission date for draft articles.

The acceptance of participants into the programme is premised on the submission of an acceptable draft paper prior the retreat.

Once the Research Directorate receives the draft papers, it will submit same to the facilitator for review before the retreat so that at the retreat; the facilitator can provide the participants with feedback.

The retreat writing process

Unlike during the ‘writing for scholarly publishing workshops’ there are no presentations of modules during the ‘writing retreat’. Instead of a facilitator leading the process, the participants spend time writing and the facilitator reviewing their articles ‘as per specifications of journal articles’ that the participants will be writing for. It should also be impressed upon participants that this is ‘the time to write’ and not ‘time to conduct a literature search’. The literature review should be conducted prior to arrival at the writing retreat.

The retreat review process

Upon arrival at the retreat, the facilitator will draw up a timetable of review feedback during which the facilitator provides the participants with feedback on their articles in a one-on-one session. Since the participants bring along a draft article, the idea is that they concentrate on that particular article for the duration of the retreat.

The writing retreat outcomes

At the end of the week, on the Friday morning, the group convenes and the participants and the facilitator agree on the submission dates for the journal articles depending on the status of each of the articles.