Skip to main content

New addition to the bookshelf


Joan Bolker's Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day is the latest addition to the GSRR bookshelf. This book is designed to guide PhD students through the entire thesis-writing process, from first draft to final submission. Bolker quickly admits that the title was designed to be attention grabbing, but explains that the main point is that you do some work on your thesis every day. According to Bolker, '"Every day" is more important than how much time you spend, or how many pages you produce, or what quality of work you produce.' She introduces a number of short-term techniques and methods which can kickstart your writing and help with self-discipline. I've come across many students who are Bolker-devotees, while others find her advice doesn't work for them. As with the other thesis guides on the bookshelf (Dunleavy, Brewer) it is up to you to take a look and pick and choose from the advice on offer. Different stages of your thesis will call for different methods and ways of working. The key piece of advice I took from Bolker was 'Write First'. She advises beginning each day by writing rather than letting yourself get distracted by the numerous other tasks awaiting you. I pinned this mantra to my noticeboard and it certainly helped my focus during a particularly difficult stage of writing-up.

So, make sure you take a look at the bookshelf next time you're in the reading room!
For online advice about writing, The Thesis Whisperer and The Three Month Thesis both have a wealth of resources.

Popular posts from this blog

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar

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

Searching ABS Journals in Business Source Premier

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

Advanced Search Tip: Proximity (Adjacency) Searching

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