Original, informed, well-crafted, and targeted writing is a fundamental part of the learning and knowledge generation and dissemination work at the core of higher education and other research and professional contexts.

As demand for output grows, resources decline and knowledge generators are pressured to maintain or increase output without commensurate institutional support, writing work suffers. And as scholarly and professional writing and publication increasingly rely on algorithmic tools, the vital role of craft, community and sensemaking involved in writing is at risk of being devalued.

Social writing is an effective counter to this risk and provides a set of methods that sustain and nurture the elements that underpin impactful research writing: vision, exploration and connection.

To that end, the WRAP Network calls on leaders and practitioners in higher education and professional settings – e.g. scholars and researchers, teachers and supervisors, academic line managers, senior officers, managers, policy-makers, and writing professionals – to effect change to:

1.  Support the practice of academic writing as a socially embedded and embodied act of knowledge creation and dissemination.

2.  Avoid language that reduces writing to technical skills or competence.

3.  Broaden access to social writing for all by hosting and funding social writing events and programmes and training faculty, staff and instructors to facilitate social writing.

4.  Allocate time and space for writing in work and study.

5.  Make writing an explicit practice for all staff and students.

6.  Support and enable the diversity and multiplicity of ways to produce and disseminate academic/scientific knowledge.

7.  Acknowledge the benefits of social writing for staff, students and institutions and a range of academic and professional workplaces.

8.  Guarantee equal opportunities for social writing.

9.  Ensure staff and student wellbeing by supporting social writing.

10. Prioritise social writing practices over surveillance of written outputs through writers’ groups, writing meetings, and writing retreats.