Getting Going on your Thesis and Getting Your Work Published

1. Getting Going on your Thesis and Getting Your Work Published

2. Aims By the end of the course, participants will feel more confident about starting, or continuing, to write their thesis and about the process of getting their work published.

3. Specific Objectives By the end of this course we will have • identified the features of good writing in a thesis or journal article • identified individual sections or building blocks of the thesis • understood the content and writing style for each section • practised writing an introduction and received feedback from a partner on this draft • understood the mechanics of getting published • developed a structure for your thesis

4. Four Features for Assessing Writing Academic writing includes a thesis, dissertation or research article and must have good • Content • Selection • Organisation • Presentation

5. What Makes Academic Writing Good? • Content • Original, sound research, timely, valuable, justifiable, replicable • Selection • (WHAT is included, and in how much detail.) Focused, in sufficient detail that someone else could replicate • Organisation • Logical, following a conventional pattern for article or thesis • Presentation • Appropriate writing style/ choices of words and phrases. Grammar, punctuation, spelling, all correct. Visually: does it look nice on the page? Typography, layout, clear diagrams

6. Criteria for getting your PhD

7. Example language and their message 1 ‘This is original’ • While much effort has been directed towards the study of these genes in the rat, relatively little is understood about them in the mouse. 2 ‘This is important and exciting’ • This study will be important for several reasons. • A detailed understanding of the murine Cyp4a subfamily would be crucial for understanding… • Ventilation engineers are increasingly turning to analysis tools to assist them in the design and operation of mine ventilation systems. 3 ‘This work is good quality’ • Nottingham is the perfect location to conduct research of this kind… the localised nature is one of the strengths of the study. 4 ‘I know the relevant literature, and how my works fit in with it’ • Thus the issues of ‘captive’ and floater’ consumers raised by Moir (1990) and discussed in Section 4.2 are included in the design of this study.

8. Research about writing • Daily regime improves productivity – Boice 1990 • Writing is a thinking tool/mode of learning – Elbow 1973, Emig 1977 • Need a range of approaches and strategies – Murray 1995, 2000 • Text generation strategies better than cognitive strategies (learning about how to write) – Torrance et al. 1993 • “To be a successful writer I know of only two methods; read a lot and write a lot” – Stephen King (ok not really research)

9. Task How do you write?

10. Types of writer Structurer • Needs all the answers before starting to write • Wants clear assessment criteria • Writes to a document plan Freewriter • Uses writing to ‘think’ – clarify the answers • Happy with uncertainty • Structure falls out of the writing

11. Why? “There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt. If I write rapidly I can keep up with my original enthusiasm and at the same time outrun the self-doubt that is always waiting to set in” Stephen King

12. “The most effective way I know to improve your writing is to do freewriting exercises regularly … It isn’t just therapeutic garbage. It is a way to produce bits of text that are better than usual: less random, more coherent, more highly organised” Peter Elbow

13. One strategy: Freewriting • Write for 5 minutes non-stop • In complete sentences • Don’t worry about grammar • DON’T EDIT OR CROSS OUT • Topic what you want to write about next • Today’s is “What I already know about my thesis and what I still need to find out”

14. Using Freewriting to find a structure Freewrite to ‘What is this document about?’ • Analyse for main headings Freewrite to ‘What are the themes in this section?’ • Analyse for sub-headings Freewrite to ‘What are the ideas in this sub-section?’ • Analyse for bullet points of key ideas Freewrite to ‘What is this idea?’

15. How to Write The Introduction • Your introduction (to your thesis or paper) • needs to: • grab the reader’s attention • establish your credibility • set the scene • justify the work which is to be reported • tell the reader what is coming next • One way to achieve this is the Four Move Schema.

16. The Four-Move Schema • Move 1 – Establish the general field of the research • Move 2 – Briefly mention key previous work in the field • Move 3 - Make a link between previous work and the author’s present work • Move 4 – Briefly describe the present work

17. An Example of an Introduction ‘Late presenters’ after paracetamol self poisoning Bradley, M., Nguyen-Van-Tam, J.S. and J.C.G. Pearson 1998 in J. Epidemiology and Community Health. The popularity of paracetamol as a drug for self-poisoning has increased dramatically since the early 1980s [1, 2]; nowadays almost 50 percent of episodes of self-poisoning presenting to hospital involve the ingestion of paracetamol or paracetamol-containing drugs [3-5]. 1 It is estimated that about 70 000 episodes of paracetamol self-poisoning occur each year in Britain 6. Although serious morbidity and deaths are rare, [6, 7] these usually result from late presentation, which reduces the effectiveness of available antidotes [8, 9]. 2 The epidemiology of paracetamol self-poisoning has not previously been described in detail in relation to recorded delays in presentation for treatment. 3 We studied, retrospectively, all episodes of paracetamol self-poisoning occurring at either of the two acute hospital units in Nottingham during the first six months of 1996. These included patients seen only in the accident and emergency department, as well as those admitted for in-patient care. 4 References: 1 Hawton, K, Fagg J. Trends in deliberate self poisoning and self injury in Oxford, 1976-90, BMJ 1992,3, 304: 1409-11 2 [ . . . ]

18. Your Thesis Before writing anything, you need to be clear about the importance of your own work. This exercise is designed to help you to clarify why your research is being done. Work with a partner. Take it in turns to talk through your answers to the following prompts: 1 Briefly, what is your research about? 2 Why is the work important? 3 In what way(s) is your work different from anything which has gone before?

19. Exercises to Help you Get Going: Practising writing an Introduction Conceptual Frameworks Building Blocks of a Thesis

20. Conceptual Frameworks …are mind maps of your research. They help you to set down all the components of the research project and then organise them into segments such as: • Hypothesis • Literature Review • Research Design etc.

21. Mind Mapping

22. Task Mind Mapping

23. Bullet point approach • A more structural approach than freewriting • Alternative to mind maps or can be used in conjunction with them • Construct lists of priorities and bullet points to summarise main ideas • Create lists then re-order according to logical sequence or order of importance • Refer to Page 19 in the handout

24. Task Bullet Points

25. Editing • Editing is separate from “writing from scratch” • Successful writing is a 2-stage process: write first, edit later • Freewriting helps separate these stages • Different objectives for each stage • Grammar/spelling • Structure • Content • Coherence • Expression/style • Possible editors to help you? • Remember – editors are not responsible for your mistakes!

26. Quick editing test How many Fs? Frozen foods are the result of years of scientific studies and the refinement of refrigeration.

27. Getting into the writing habit TASK: generate some prompts to help you write for 5 minutes each day What could you write about on day 1? ... Day 2? ... Day 3?

28. PUBLICATION PROCESS

29. Steps To Publication 1 Select topic [2 Write to editor to ask if there would be interest in topic] 3 Draft paper 4 Obtain comments from friendly colleagues/ ask advice about journals [5 Give paper at conference and draw on comments] 6 Submit to journal 7 Preliminary assessment by editor 8 Acknowledgement sent

30. Accept paper with minor revisions Please rewrite & resubmit Reject Steps To Publication Contd. 9 Paper sent to referees 10 Referees submit comments 11 Editors confer 12 Editors send letter with 3 possible contents: 13 Do revisions 14 Join publication queue 15 Journal produces proofs 16Publication!

31. The Structure Of Academic Papers (title) (abstract) Introduction Description of previous work Description of your work Discussion Summary and Conclusions

32. The Structure of Academic Papers • (title) • (abstract) • Introduction • Description of previous work • Description of your work • Discussion • Summary and Conclusions

33. Personal Action Plan List three key things you have learnt about writing skills: 1………………………………………… 2………………………………………… 3………………………………………… How are you going to put these points into practise when you are writing? 1………………………………………… 2………………………………………… 3…………………………………………

34. What’s Next? • Academic support www.nottingham.ac.uk/as • CELE http://vsac.cele.nottingham.ac.uk • Writing map • Writing buddies? • Writing workshops – run by Graduate School and AELSU (dates to follow)