Skip to main content

Thesis forum #1

Image
By

The first thesis forum of the term got off to a good start. It was great to see students in attendance from many different subjects and from both pre- and post-APG stages. Jeremy Bradley started the forum with a   highly engaging overview of his experience of publishing a monograph. Jeremy discussed his dealings with the publisher, the timescale involved in his project and the relationship between his book and his thesis. He also outlined the main options for publishing as a postgraduate student. Jeremy recommended the following web resources:
In addition to the options mentioned by Jeremy, keep an eye out for essay competitions run by societies or journals. There are often prizes involved and the valuable opportunity to turn your essay into a journal article. The website PhD2Published is also worth checking out for tips on publishing your work.

Duncan Stanley then introduced the support available from the Postgraduate Researcher Development Team in helping with the writing process. Further information on the workshops mentioned by Duncan can be found here. If you would like to book a one-to-one consultation, please use this booking form. Make sure to look out for confirmation of the first Cafe Research in early July. For those on Twitter, the latest #AcWri chat focused on 'Finding Motivation to Write' and you can find lots of useful tips within the summary.

After the guest speakers, students split into pre-APG and post-APG groups to share their thoughts on the writing process. Pre-APG students discussed how early you should start writing. Can it be too early? Is it helpful to write and revise from the very beginning? Some students felt this approach helped to form their thoughts and really pushed them to develop an academic writing style. It was acknowledged that a lot depended on the guidance of your supervisor. The importance of setting up systems for referencing and style at the start of the PhD was also discussed; this saves a lot of time and hassle at the end! Differences between disciplines were also acknowledged.

The post-APG group discussed different strategies for thinking and writing, whether linear or genitive. The pros and cons of writing and editing by hand or on screen were also mentioned. Difficulties faced were often linked to the nature of research material, particularly concerning the issues of material in translation.

The next session will welcome a number of guest speakers from different stages of the PhD process who will share their opinions and experience with you. If any current PhD students or early career researchers would like to get more involved with the thesis forum, your contributions would be very welcome. Please email Helen or pop in to the Reading Room on weekdays from 2-5pm.

Hope to see you on Tuesday 12th June!



Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar

By
You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar if you have a Google Account. Go to Google Scholar and sign into your Google Account. Conduct your search. Click on the Star icon (Save) under each reference you want to export. Then click on My Library in the top, right of the screen. Select all the references and click on the Export option: Click the Star/Save Icon Choose Export Option To Export into EndNote Choose the EndNote option. Open the EndNote file that is created. The references should automatically import into EndNote. To Export into RefWorks Choose the RefMan option. Save the RIS file that is created. Login to your RefWorks account. Click on the plus (+) button. Choose Import References. Add the RIS file you just saved. Set the file import option to RIS - Reference Manager. Click import and your references will be imported. --- Good Practice Tip: Always check that all the reference information you need has been
Read more

Searching ABS Journals in Business Source Premier

By
In Business and Management Studies, researchers undertaking a literature review sometimes search across a defined group of journals. This is a way of focusing the literature search to make the results more relevant to the questions in hand. Groups are often chosen from the Association of Business Schools (ABS)'s  Academic Journal Guide . Read more how about how they put together the guide here . There are several ways to search across ABS journals. Here is how to do it in Business Source Premier, a leading literature database for this subject area.  1.     Login into the ABS journal guide. If you have never used it before you will need to create an account. 2.     You can use the guide to draw up a group of journals either by using the Rankings information or the Fields. Fields divides up the journals into categories of research focus e.g. Accounting, Finance etc. In this example we will use the Fields. The field we are interested is ‘Operations Research and Marketin
Read more

Advanced Search Tip: Proximity (Adjacency) Searching

By
Proximity (Adjacency) Searching vs Phrase Searching When you're searching literature databases you might want to find a phrase. The easiest way to do this is to put the phrase in "speech marks". E.g. "heart disease" This will find that exact phrase - with the words next to each other in that order. BUT... You may be interested in variations on that phrase e.g. heart disease, disease of the heart, diseases of the heart, diseases of the human heart. In that case it might be better to use a proximity/adjacency search - this allows you to find one keyword next to another. Or one keyword within a specified number of words of the other keyword. When using a proximity search the keywords can be in any order. Different Databases Use Different Proximity Operators In Ovid Medline : heart adj disease finds the word heart next to the word disease, in that order.    (This is the same as searching for the phrase, of course) heart adj2 disease fin
Read more