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I recently ran a poll on Twitter on the use of first person in academic writing. This poll was by large the most-voted poll I've ever organized, and the discussion was lively as well. The majority of the people that voted in the poll use "I" in their academic writing. For me, this fact is rather surprising. In my field, it's quite uncommon to use first person in our writing. I tend to use it in some of my reports, to emphasize that I did the calculations, but in most cases (as you may have noticed from the abstract that I've published on this blog) I leave myself out of my writing. Perhaps it's related to my type of work as well - it's quite clear to write something like "The bridge has a length of XX m". Here's the poll and its wake:

For some reason, I always thought a doctoral thesis is about 100,000 words in length (and I've taken that number as a reference for my book as well). However, I wanted to test this assumption, so I ran a poll about the topic. From the comments, I learned that word count limits are common in the UK (mostly), and that they differ across disciplines. You can find the poll and its wake here:

I recently ran a poll on Twitter to learn what are the most common challenges with academic writing. While a quick poll with only four options to answer is a very limited approach, I did learn that my idea that "finding time for writing" is a challenge for many. For me, too, it is what I struggle with most. I try to block two hours each morning for my writing, but with everything I still need to write, it often feels like those two hours are not enough. Here's the poll and its wake:

As a follow-up to my recent poll about the use of first person in academic writing, I recently ran a poll on the use of passive voice in academic writing. As I had some issues with my Twitter account, the poll accidentally got posted twice. For both polls, luckily, the answer is the same: most authors avoid the use of passive voice. For me, avoiding passive voice is something I am working on, but I know I could (and should!) do better in that regard. This poll has reminded me of my problem with the passive voice (and I also sometimes write sentences that are too long when I use the passive voice). Here's the result of the poll and its associated wake:

Today, I am welcoming Dr. Nancy R Gough who shares her views on academic publishing as an editor. Nancy R. Gough is the owner and founder of BioSerendipity . After 17 years with AAAS, she stepped down as the Editor of Science Signaling (a weekly journal on the topic of cellular and organismal regulatory biology), she left to start her company. She is dedicated to helping scientists communicate effectively. Dr. Gough has a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics from the University of Maryland Medical School and was a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. You can email her at ngough@bioserendipity.com and follow her on Twitter @NancyRGough and Facebook . Science Signaling is a weekly journal about regulatory biology at all scales. Submitted papers included those about mechanisms of molecular regulation, cellular regulation, regulatory biology in model organisms, and in plants and man. I also had the opportunity to evaluate basic and applied or translational re...

I recently ran a poll on Twitter to ask if respondents received their PhD by writing a big book style thesis or by publication, or what they currently are working towards. The result is that the majority is receiving their PhD by writing a dissertation, but a good 25% (or more, if we leave out the votes for "just show me the results") received their PhD by publication (or are working towards getting their degree in this format). You can find the wake of the pol below:

I recently ran a poll on Twitter to ask my fellow #acwri community how long the writing up stage of developing a manuscript takes. Not to my surprise, the majority voted that it widely depends. I, too, have experienced that not all papers are born equally. Sometimes I can knock out a draft in 12 hours. Sometimes, I keep changing the introduction to make sure I get the right approach angle and get the work to stand on its own. Below you can find the wake of this poll:

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer , your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands. If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic! In the past, we've mostly looked at the topic of academic writing from the perspective of the authors. From working on a writing habit , sustaining writing habits , working on several papers at the same time , writing academic books , setting the scene for deep work and writing and focused flow , and using a template for planning your time that facilitates writing and plan a semester accordingly. Today, we are looking at academic writing from a different perspective. As a journa...

I recently ran a poll about publishing expectations on the Tenure Track, trying to see how many papers TT scholars are expected to publish per year. Whereas in Delft, the expectation is about 2 per year, I've heard (horror) stories about much larger pressure too. The "more than 10" category certainly seems very high, but for some that seems to be the standard. [ View the story "Expectations for publishing on the Tenure Track" on Storify ]

Today's guest post is written by Dr. Laura Pipoly. Laura earned a bachelor's in psychology and a master's in both school counseling and community counseling. Laura graduated from Nova Southeastern University with a doctorate in both special education and in Instructional technology and distance education (ITDE). Her dissertation focused on Counselor Education Curriculum and Online Counseling and was published in part in the Journal of Instructional Research . Laura has also published and presented at the national level. Her most recent work is Meeting the Challenge of Bipolar Disorder: Self-Help Strategies that Work . Laura is both a Licensed Professional Counselor and a certified School Counselor. Throughout the years, she has worked as a school counselor, psychotherapist, behavior specialist, mentor, dissertation chair, methodologist and clinical site supervisor. Laura currently works for University of Phoenix as a full time faculty member. As a dissertation chair, method...

I ran a poll about the writing habits of academics on Twitter, as I was curious to see if most people write every day, or if they do a major writing effort when a deadline approaches. The results are in, and you can find more information about the following discussion in the Storify below: [ View the story "Academic writing habits" on Storify ]

I recently had a conversation on Twitter about suggesting reviewers when you submit a paper, and since I thought the comments were interesting, I turned the discussion into a Storify story: [ View the story "On suggesting reviewers " on Storify ]

At some point during your PhD or in your years after your PhD, you will be asked to review a paper. I've done a fair amount of reviews by now, and have started to keep track of the reviews I write about a year ago by using Publons. You can see my Pulons profile here. If you receive an invitation to review paper, you need to ask yourself the following questions: 1. Do I have sufficient technical knowledge to review this paper? If not, can I recommend a colleague? 2. Do I have enough time to write this review by the deadline? 3. Do I have a conflict of interest that prevents me from writing an unbiased report? If you have the time and knowledge it takes to review the paper, and no conflict of interest, you can go ahead and review the paper. As you read the paper, you need to keep in mind how you will review the paper. A typical review report follows a certain standard form. If you know which elements you need to discuss in your review report, you can pay attention to these while you ...

Many journals require that you write a cover letter that accompanies your paper upon submission. However, it may not be clear from the guidelines for authors what is expected for this cover letter. In general, your cover letter should contain the following elements: It should be addressed to the editor of the journal. It should mention that you prepared the manuscript according to the guidelines. If the formatting guidelines have a limiting word count, mention the word count of your manuscript. It should contain a short description of why you consider your work interesting for the readers of the journal. It should mention that the manuscript is original and has not been published previously. If you’ve shown a preliminary analysis of these results in a conference paper, you should mention this fact. Print your cover letter on official university paper and include your signature. For your convenience, I've developed a template that you can use to write a cover letter. Just copy and...

Some time ago, I read an inspiring post on DoctoralWriting SIG about tracking research . The author, Dr. Abigail Winter, was inspired by Paul Silvia's "How to write a lot", who mentions that he uses a simple database to track his writing each day, as one of his strategies for writing a lot. Winter then started tracking her reading and writing. She adds: "in the first six months of 2016, I read 281 articles or academic books, and wrote 36,477 words towards articles, submissions, applications and reviews" and shares the tool she developed online. Upon reading this article, I decided to start tracking my reading and writing. I had been tracking my writing between February 15th 2012 and May 22nd 2013, mostly to track my word count on my PhD thesis. At that time, my log functioned mostly as a diary. In November 2016, I started tracking my writing again, and in January 2017 I started tracking my reading as well, as I vouched to read 365 papers in 2017. For my writ...

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer , your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands. If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic! At the beginning of this year, we look at how you can build and sustain good reading habits , which are necessary to keep up with the output in your field of research, regardless of where you are in your academic career. Today, we are going to look at another important habit in academia: your writing habits. As Cal Newport pointed out, your publications and their citations are the single most important factor for success in academia . There's no denying: you need to develop and sustai...

On March 10th, I wrote 14046 words, which is my absolute maximum in a day since I started tracking my writing in November. Not bad for being pregnant, with a foggy brain and rather tired. In the category of epic typing battles: I wrote 14046 words today #acwri This may be an all-time record. — Dr Eva Lantsoght (@evalantsoght) March 11, 2017 How did this word count break down? I didn't write all 14046 words on a single writing project. Instead, I worked on several projects, as I do virtually every working day: - 969 words on emails and admin - 2536 words on my blog - 1301 words on a journal paper writing project - 8627 words on my book - 613 words on a research report The main chunk of my writing was done that day in the afternoon, as I was working on the first draft of my book, the A-Z of the PhD Trajectory. The book won't be published anytime soon, but it needs to go for review by March 31st 2018. I like being ahead of deadlines, and especially with the baby coming, I'm ...