After You Ship, Stay Open


Reader,

Before publication, openness to feedback helps you have a productive orientation toward responses to your work. Those responses might be positive or negative.

The same is true after publication. Responses may be positive or negative. Often, they'll be some of both. That's why openness to feedback after publication can be helpful for your future work as well.

Until next time, keep honing your craft.

Blessings,
David

P.S.: A rising tide lifts all boats. If you know anyone else who would benefit from this article, would you share it to help them hone their craft as biblical scholars too?

J. David Stark

I’m a research professor committed to helping you hone your craft as a biblical scholar. Academic programs in biblical studies often provide excellent training in content areas like Old or New Testament. But these programs have to leave out a lot. And very often, what’s left out is precisely what can help you hone your craft as a knowledge worker so that you can focus on the people and projects that matter most.

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Reader, Thus far, 2025 has been an eventful year. In the last 60 days, I've submitted volumes with two different co-editors and groups of contributors. In the coming weeks and months, I'll share more about these volumes and how their projects are continuing. But in both cases, preparing the volumes provided good opportunities to revisit the process I recently mentioned about how to convert Word documents' "styles" to "direct formatting." That said, preparing the second volume—which we...

Reader, For books, SBL style generally requires identifying "facts of publication." Zotero can handle all this information, including for co-published volumes. Until next time, keep honing your craft. Blessings,David P.S.: A rising tide lifts all boats. Feel free to send this article to others you think it might help.

Reader, You can't safely synchronize your Zotero database other than with Zotero's servers. But you can synchronize your other profile data if you configure things carefully. Recent versions of the Dropbox client make doing so much easier than in years past. But there are also now comparatively straightforward ways of managing your profile data with Git in order to avoid some of the challenges of a Dropbox setup. Until next time, keep honing your craft. Blessings,David P.S.: A rising tide...