Having publications in both online and offline sources is highly beneficial for students and young professionals. It shows their ability to work with practical materials at the highest level and to present in comprehensive enough. No matter the discipline you are related to, the rules for publishing a case study are very similar. Of course, there might be some differences, but here we will embrace the cross-disciplinary approach appreciated by the majority of our readers. You can use just several of these tips and still your way to a stellar publication will already be easier and more straight. It also goes without saying that editors prefer to work repeatedly with authors able to provide them with coherent and well-prepared texts. Doing it right once, you can rest assured you will receive more requests further which will undoubtedly enrich your portfolio.
Provide Readers with a Logical Structure
Though within the academic case study structure is defined rather strictly, for publication you might consider stepping aside in order to engage your readers and keep them hooked till the end. Your structure should be more a structure of the detective novel than of the academic paper. Make sure your narration is logical, one phrase presents one thought, the end of the abstract is logically followed with the beginning of the next one.
Choose the Case which is Closer to the Audience
Young academicians and even field experts often decide to present the most complex case study in order to show how competent they are. It might be a winning strategy, but we would like to provide you win an alternative. Choose not the most complicated and deep case, but the case which refers to the audience’s experience, the case which they can somehow relate to themselves while reading. If it sounds close to impossible considering the scientific character of your research, try to give an example which would present your key ideas in terms of the real-life understood by most of your readers.
Be Precise but Leave the Necessary Details
It is always better to delete the excessive information, than to explain too much. The idea of a case study is to learn from a practical example, how it is solved, how it could be solved and how these ideas can be used in other cases. However, if you provide readers only with a direct line from the beginning till the end, they might miss some critical points. Not all the details are unnecessary, and it is better to add an abstract or two that to publish a case study that most of the audience will hardly understand. It is not a simple task to decide what should remain and what should be deleted, but you can deal with it asking yourself whether you would understand the whole thing without similar explanation if it was a paper in a discipline not similar with yours.
Read Everything Aloud. Several Times
This advice you can find in the variety of books and articles by actual writers where their try to share some the most useful findings in their experience.
Reading aloud is a simple yet necessary step towards making your case study, or any other text, flawless. Don’t whisper, read it with your normal voice. Don’t hurry too much, this way you will not only read but listen at the same time. If in the middle of the sentence you stop breathing, it means you have got trapped by the most common academic pitfall — wordiness. Mark this sentence and later split into several parts. If you stumble upon some awkward phrases or long, tiring words, try to find more “humane” equivalents. Don’t be afraid to sound too folksy. It is better if your case study is vivid than academically dry. Of course, you can’t replace some terms. However, try not to overweight your text with unnecessary long and complicated words and phrases.
If some of the rules listed above seemed somewhat too obvious to you, it doesn’t mean you should ignore all of them. Most probably you have a definite experience in publishing case studies and we’ve mixed tips for beginners and more advanced authors here. Choose information valuable for you and employ it when getting your next case study ready to be published. Good luck!