Saturday, June 8, 2013

Tips for Academic Research and Writing




Plan your research in for time chunks: this morning, today, this week, this month, next few months, this year, next three years. Have a clear idea for what you want to achieve in these time periods and try to stick to this as much as you can.

Make a start. Once you have an idea for a piece of writing, create a file and folder  for it on your computer and write down anything, however rough and however brief.  It can always be polished and developed later or even discarded if you decide eventually not to go ahead with the idea.

Organise your writing into different computer files and folders: articles in progress, submitted articles, accepted articles, conference papers, blog posts, book proposals, grant applications etc.

Organise your PDF journal article collection under topics in folders on your computer.

If you are feeling unenthusiastic or have hit a wall on a topic – leave that piece of writing for a while and work on another piece of writing.


Use your writing in as many different ways as you can – conference papers, articles/chapters, books, blog posts. Turn the small (unrefereed) pieces into bigger (refereed) pieces whenever you can and vice versa. What starts out as a blog post can be later developed into an article.  Conversely some of the main arguments of an article can be used in one or more blog posts.




References

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/11/28/lupton-30-tips-writing/

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/05/14/stylish-academic-writing/

A long list
http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/jbednar/writingtips.html

http://emedia.leeward.hawaii.edu/lrc/handouts/acad_writing_checklist.pdf

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