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Publishing with Impact: A presentation at the BASPCAN Congress, Edinburgh, 2015

cover 24_1Getting published can be a bit of a challenge.  For academics there can be incredible pressures to get published in good journals, and to get your work noticed.  But how do you do so, particularly in an increasingly digital world.  In this presentation, we outline some of the principles for getting published in Child Abuse Review, we consider what makes a good publication and what we as Editors are looking for in a submission, and provide some tips for increasing the visibility of your publication in today’s world.

Click on the link below to see the presentation from the BASPCAN Congress.

Publishing with Impact

 

 

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Dabbling with Ducks

All along the backwater,

Through the rushes tall,

Ducks are a dabbling,

Up tails all!

 

Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,

Yellow feet a-quiver,

Yellow bills all out of sight

Busy in the river.

 

– Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

 

 

I love Eddie Askew’s ability to take something as simple and as laughable as ducks dabbling, and draw deep spiritual truths from it.  Apparently the verb, ‘to dabble’ is used to describe a duck’s activity in feeding, head down, tail up, grazing on the plant life just below the surface of the water:

 Maybe we should all dabble a bit more.  Try to get below the surface of life and take hold of some of the possibilities that could open up if we just went a little bit deeper.  And, who knows, maybe one day we’ll be ready to dive.

– Eddie Askew, Dabbling with Ducks. TLM publishing, 2007

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Childhood pattern – a book review in the Church Times

The teaching of Jesus shapes who we are. But it’s just as true to say that who we are shapes what we make of the teaching of Jesus. Who Peter Sidebotham is — a loving parent and a paediatrician dealing daily with suffering children — has fashioned his understanding of what it means to be a child of God. Who he is, father and beloved physician, is his personal imprint on every page of what is, quibbles notwithstanding, an engaging and perceptive little book.

The Church Times have published the following review of Growing up to be a child:

bookGrowing Up to Be a Child

Peter Sidebotham

Westbow Press £9.14

(978-1-4908-4067-3)

Church Times Bookshop £8.23

Reviewed by The Revd Dr John Pridmore, a former Rector of Hackney in East London Continue reading “Childhood pattern – a book review in the Church Times”

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Go simply in your spirit

Holy Week.

The excitement of Palm Sunday and Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem

The culmination of three years of journeying

The perplexity of those last days

The anguished grief of Good Friday

The empty waiting…

 

mosaic-of-woman

 

We journey this week with some of the women who had accompanied Jesus over those three years, and who stayed with him to the very end.

Can we learn from them a simplicity of spirit that will stay with us, whatever life may bring?

 

Click here to go to this week’s meditations

 

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Go simply in your vocation

As we enter the fifth week in Lent, we journey with Jesus’ mother, Mary – with her struggles to understand and stand with her son; in her discovery of her own vocation, perhaps wondering where and what that is; in her growing recognition and acceptance of her son’s vocation.

 

twig drops

 

Let us accept the different path of others.

Let us not compare or envy.

Let us not control a parent, child or colleague … instead,

Let’s admire the place they have in the world;

Let them simply be

 

Click here to go to this week’s Lent meditations

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Listening for our heart’s truth

banksy-graffiti-street-art-baloon-girl_jpeg

With great skill and energy we have ignored the state of the human heart.

With politics and economics we have denied the heart’s needs.

With eloquence, wit and reason we have belittled the heart’s wisdom.

With sophistication and style with science and technology,

we have drowned out the voice of the human soul.

The primitive voice, the innocent voice. The truth.

We cannot hear our heart’s truth, and thus

we have betrayed and belittled ourselves and pledged madness to our children.

With skill and pride we have made for ourselves an unhappy society.

God be with us.

 

I have been totally gripped this week with the truth captured within Michael Leunig’s prayer and Banksy’s artwork.

 

How about a commitment to rediscovering our heart’s truth, and passing this on to our children and our society?

 

Going simply with our culture

 

 

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Go simply with your culture

Tomorrow is the start of the fifth week of Lent.

 

banksy-graffiti-street-art-baloon-girl_jpegOur prayer this week is that we may hear our heart’s truth.

Can we live within our culture yet challenge it?

Can we learn from Nicodemus, the Pharisee, who came to Jesus in the dead of night?

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to go to this week’s meditations

 

 

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Go simply in your lifestyle

bread wine cheese

As we enter the fourth week of Lent, we will spend time looking at the Bethany family: Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  We will encounter their vulnerability, their love, their hospitality.  We will think about our fragile, vulnerable world, and how we can go simply in our lifestyles, combining active care and contemplative devotion, careful stewardship and extravagant celebration, future hopes and present realities…

 

Click here to go to this week’s meditations