Rethinking Research “Impact”
If you’ve ever thought about publishing, you’ve probably heard all about impact factors. Here’s how they work: the impact factor of a journal measures how often an average article within […]
Author: Anaise Irvine
Should I Cite This?
Quality-checking sources is something we start to learn in secondary school or undergrad – just ask my students who felt my wrath when they cited Wikipedia (or what’s worse: when […]
When Data has a Mind of its Own
So you have a hypothesis. You’re really excited about it. You’d love it to be true. You can’t wait to explore it in full detail and spend months or years […]
Reading for Keeps
I just performed a very unscientific study of thesis bibliographies. Of the last 5 doctoral theses published to ProQuest, there were an average of 333 entries per bibliography.* That’s an […]
Five Hundred Pounds: Research and Socioeconomic Privilege
The writer Virginia Woolf famously said that in order to write, all a woman needed was “a room of her own and five hundred a year.” Woolf was making a […]
Practical Tips for Formatting a Thesis
Editor’s note: this article, published in 2016, makes reference to a previous edition of the AUT Postgraduate Handbook that is now out of date. The most recent edition can be […]
Software Review: Scrivener for Academic Writing
Some writers love Scrivener. Some writers hate Scrivener. It’s one of those things, like the taste of licorice or the perceived talent of Nicholas Cage, that is deeply polarising. But […]
The Science of Mental Focus
The other night, exhausted from a day of taxing thesis writing and mentally fried, I collapsed on the couch. In my half-dead state, my brain was mulling how on earth […]
What Can Academic Writers Learn from Novelists?
‘Tis true, the job of an academic writer is very different from that of a novelist. But when you come right down to it, we’re all putting pen to paper […]
How to Handle a Withering Critique
“If you’ve never cried before, during, or after a meeting with your advisor, something is amiss.” – Dr Karen Kelsky of The Professor Is In When I signed up […]
In Defence of Occasional Desk Jobs
Have you had to fill out a form recently? Given that you’re reading this blog, I’d guess that you’re involved in some way with tertiary study. And given that you’re […]
Your Academic Credentials Are Better Than You Think
I used to look at samples of academic CVs and sigh wistfully, thinking mine could never look so bountiful. As a mid-project PhD student, my academic CV contained abstracts for […]