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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:

My colleagues and I published two papers in the recent ACI SP-323 "Evaluation of Concrete Bridge Behavior through Load Testing – International Perspectives", of which Dr. Pinar Okumus and myself were coeditors. The two papers are: SP-323—1: ASSESSMENT OF SLAB BRIDGES THROUGH PROOF LOADING IN THE NETHERLANDS Eva O. L. Lantsoght, Cor van der Veen, Ane de Boer and Dick A. Hordijk Abstract A large subset of the Dutch bridge stock consists of reinforced concrete slab bridges, for which assessment often results in low ratings. To prioritize the efforts of the bridge owner, more suitable assessment methods for slab bridges are necessary. Research efforts over the past years resulted in the development of several methods, at levels requiring increasing costs, time, and effort for increasing accuracy. The last option, when an analytical assessment is not possible due to uncertainties, is to use proof load testing to evaluate the bridge directly. To develop recommendations for the proo...

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:

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! As you reach the end of your PhD years, you may be invited as a reviewer for scientific journals for the first time. If you have never been asked to review a paper, and feel ready to take on the task, you can follow the recommendations of Dr. Cheplygina in this post . Once you are invited to write the review, you can follow the procedure that I recommend for writing a review of a paper . But what do you do after you have finished reviewing a paper? How can you keep track of your efforts a...

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:

Today, I am inviting Michael Kulakov to share his best tips for writing papers. Michael is a freelance writer, who mainly works in the field of art, academia and education. He is also majoring in Linguistics. You can reach him at his Facebook page . Writing a paper, whether it is a PhD research or a short essay, may be a huge pain. While it is fun, given that you enjoy the topic, the process of putting it together in writing takes an awful amount of time. Follow these tips and you will find that the time you spend writing your paper will decrease significantly. Take breaks As counter intuitive as it may seem, to work more efficiently, you should take breaks rather often. It may be appealing to think that you can finish the paper in a 5 hour writing binge, but more often than not, working for too many hours straight will actually decrease your productivity. Eye strain and mental fatigue will build up over time, making it harder for you to concentrate. Make sure to have a 5 minutes break...

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 on Twitter to see if it is common to write discussions to journal papers. With this term, I meant to ask if researchers submit a written discussion of an interesting recently published paper. I've only done so once, and I have the impression that submitting discussions is now less common than it used to. I think researchers used to read the print copy of their favorite journal and then perhaps send a discussion, whereas nowadays we read mostly electronically, access PDFs and read across a variety of journals. The results of the poll are below - although it seems there was some confusion with regard to the term "discussions":

I recenlty published a chapter titled "Field assessment of a concrete bridge" in the book " Eco-efficient Repair and Rehabilitation of Concrete Infrastructures ", edited by Fernando Pacheco-Torgal, Robert Melchers, Nele de Belie, Xianming Shi, Kim Van Tittelboom, and Andres Saez Perez. This book is part of the Woodhead Publishing series in Civil and Structural Engineering . The description of the book is as follows: Eco-efficient Repair and Rehabilitation of Concrete Infrastructures provides an updated state-of-the-art review on eco-efficient repair and rehabilitation of concrete infrastructure. The first section focuses on deterioration assessment methods, and includes chapters on stress wave assessment, ground-penetrating radar, monitoring of corrosion, SHM using acoustic emission and optical fiber sensors. Other sections discuss the development and application of several new innovative repair and rehabilitation materials, including geopolymer concrete, sulfoalumi...

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 ]

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! When you finish your dissertation, you may be wondering what is next. Have you considered turning your thesis into a book, either an academic book or perhaps a non-fiction book? Or when you have taken on a large project as a post-doc, and published several papers on the topic, you may feel ready to take the next step and write a book about this topic. Granted, after finishing your dissertation or after turning in a manuscript, writing a book may be the last thing on your mind. You'd ...

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 ]

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...

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 ...

We recently published our second paper in Structural Concrete, the journal of fib (the international concrete federation). You can find the paper online here. The abstract of the paper is as follows: The bridges built during the development of the Dutch road network after the Second World War are reaching their originally devised service life. A large subset of the Dutch bridge stock consists of reinforced concrete slab bridges. This bridge type often rates insufficient according to the recently introduced Eurocodes. Therefore, more suitable methods are developed to assess reinforced concrete slab bridges to help transportation officials make informed decisions about the safety and remaining life of the existing bridges. Field testing can be used for example when the effect of deterioration on the structural capacity is unknown. A proof load test demonstrates that a given bridge can carry a certain load level. In the Netherlands, a number of existing reinforced concrete slab bridges ha...