The second life of the dissertation

The day I received my dissertation as a printed and published document, I considered it a final, finished entity of writing. I thought of it as a milestone, or even a giant monument in my life.

And for a few months, it felt like a finished entity indeed.

But then things changed. As I started working on my papers, I started working with the dissertation again. I started to look up in my dissertation how I precisely did certain things, and I started to look up my experimental data.

My dissertation became a tool. It is on my desk, and I use it often.

And now that I am using it often, I am aware of the flaws in my work. There are theoretical elements that I am refining. There are typing errors. There are printing errors (a few rows of the overview table of my experiments is missing, and I didn't notice that in the print proof). I came to realize that my dissertation was not the holy grail for which I took it.

I'm still very proud of my dissertation, and I still believe in the value of my work - but I'm also bothered by the mistakes I found months after publication.

I've come to understand that my dissertation marks a milestone in a learning process, in a process in which I evolved into an independent researcher, but it is not the end - not the end of my research on shear in slabs, nor the end of my writing on this topic.

Discussion of Shear in One-Way Slabs under Concentrated Load Close to Support

In the latest issue of the ACI Structural Journal, the discussion and authors' closure of the very first journal paper about my research was published.

This publication marks the end of a process that started long ago, in the Fall of 2010 when I began to outline this article. I submitted the article for review in May 2011, received the comments of review at the end of the summer, resubmitted in February 2012, got acceptance in June, and then finally publication at the beginning of 2013. Now, 3,5 years later since outlining the first draft, the very final step is published as discussion and closure.

I'm glad the paper received a discussion - and more than glad to see that it's an encouraging kind of discussion!

Writers' Lab: Turning your dissertation into journal papers

Depending on your institution's guidelines, you will either finish your PhD by having a number of papers accepted for publication, or by writing a "big book"-style thesis.

This post is entirely aimed at those of us who spend months on end delivering a thesis of several hundred of pages. We might be overly proud of having our baby finally sent out into the world, but then it will dawn upon us: the majority of the researchers would prefer to read a 10-page paper about a more specific part of this research than plow through our 400 pages of labor.

And thus, for most of us "big book"-thesis-writing-and-publishing folks, we'll need to revisit all our material again after publication of the thesis, and turn it into a number of journal papers.

If you are lucky enough to get into a post-doc position that is fully research-oriented, you have all the time (or at least, you might think you have) to write your papers. If you venture out into the industry, you'll have to do it in your evenings and weekends.

Regardless the time constraints, it's still extremely valuable to take the step of turning your dissertation into journal papers. I'm in the very middle of this process (and I mean with "middle" that it surrounds myself, not that I am convinced that in X months, I'll have them all out, written and then accepted) - and so far, I've made the following observations.

1. Plan for it

After you graduate, life is going to take over. You might be changing jobs, moving to a different place/city/country, and these papers might start to slip to the back of your mind. Take some time while your dissertation is still fresh from the press, and ask yourself the following questions:
- Which chapters or subchapters would serve as a good journal paper?
- Which journal should I submit my work to?
- How much time do I think I need for writing this paper?

Then, start planning paper by paper. I'm currently assuming that I can produce a paper per month or 1,5 months' period of time, besides all my other duties and transitioning to my new job. I then give my co-authors a month to send their feedback. Then, I plan another 2 weeks to implement the comments of my co-authors. I plan to start writing the next paper whenever the draft of the previous one is done, so that I create a constant stream of writing, revising, sending to co-authors and submitting.

2. Co-authors

Now that you have -hopefully- worked well with some committee members to deliver the final draft of your dissertation, taking into account their advice, is there any part of your research that particularly benefited from their input? If you are planning to write a paper on this topic, consider inviting this committee member to be a co-author.

Writing with other authors than your standard folks (typically daily supervisor and promotor), will improve your writing, and is also considered well in most fields. Publishing with different authors shows that you can work across research groups, universities and that you are ready to extended into the world.

3. Not all papers are born equally

Some papers will roll out from your dissertation in a mere few writing sessions. For other papers you'll be sweating and sighing as you try to force a piece of research into a stand-alone narrative. Don't get mad at yourself or your work - just accept this fact as it is. And if the frustration becomes too much, just head out and have an ice cream.

Have you published several papers from the work in your dissertation? How did you organize this, and what advice would you like to share with me?

Writer's Lab: #GoScholarGo

Today, I have the pleasure of inviting Dr. Scheg to share her views on the unique type of writing that is dissertation writing. Dr. Abigail Scheg is an Assistant Professor of English at Elizabeth City State University and an Adjunct Dissertation Chair for Northcentral University. She researches and publishes in the areas of composition, online pedagogy, and popular culture. She loves working with doctoral students and is dedicated to creating and participating in networks for doctoral student support. Follow her on Twitter @ag_scheg.  

My doctoral program was incredibly supportive; the cohort structure was supportive, the other members of my cohort were wonderful, and the faculty were welcoming and encouraging. The summer workload was more than full-time intensity and all of my cohort members, no matter how much experience they had, were worrying about having “what it takes” to be a doctoral student. In one of our first courses, one from our cohort asked the instructor how long the final paper listed in the syllabus had to be. Her response was, “If you don't know the answer to that question, then you shouldn't be a doctoral student.”

We sat there straight faced, taking notes, not making eye contact at one another too scared to admit that none of us knew the answer and none of us knew what she meant by that. After class we got together and asked general questions, “So how long is your paper going to be?”

At the time, this seemed like an incredibly harsh response that upset many of the members of my cohort, myself included. But upon reflection this experience seems to represent a lot of the self-questioning, self-worth, and challenges in the doctoral learning process. We never actually found out what the answer to the paper-length question was, but there seemed to be two answers:

1. You should structure your writing as though you were writing it for a journal article, so follow those constraints of length requirement.
2. All journals are different, so there is no real length requirement; just write as much as you need to write to address your research question.

Although not all of the members of my cohort finished their coursework, it was at that moment that I really began to think about what each member brought to the table. There is a certain level of unnecessary competitiveness in doctoral programs, but everybody has different experiences, interests, and abilities. At some point in the program I felt that I really needed to work on encouraging my classmates/colleagues to do great things. I would try to take notes on what other people were doing so that I could ask them about the progress of their projects; I would try to be cheerful and positive in the midst of seemingly insurmountable workloads; I started to embrace the deep simplicity of encouraging words.

I'm not sure exactly where it started, but I started to write in my emails to colleagues, “Go Scholar Go!” when we would correspond about their projects. It was simple, encouraging, silly, and some people really embraced it. Now that I am finished with my PhD, I still have a number of friends from the program who often use the phrase too. I've started using it on Twitter as a supportive hashtag: #GoScholarGo because I've found that everyone has more work to do than time to do it. Doctoral students may very well need more hours in the day, but more importantly than that, they need individuals to believe in them when those moments of silent doubt consume their thoughts. And we've all been there.

Go Scholar Go.

Writers' Lab: How to write your Conclusions, Part I: Journal or Conference Paper

If you are the type of linear writer like me, you will typically start your paper from the abstract, then the "Introduction", and on and on - all the way down to the "Summary and Conclusions."

When you start proofreading your entire opus, you might find that you didn't quite keep the same red thread throughout your work that started at the "Introduction" section. You might have trailed off, adding something along the way that seemed relevant when you were writing that section. In the very worst case, you'll end up with a "Summary and Conclusions" section that is completely running in the wild.

Now, what do we not want in a "Summary and Conclusions" section? If you've been reading a number of papers for your literature review, I'm sure you might have come across a few papers where the final sections left you puzzled. Here are the typical ingredients of a poor "Summary and Conclusions" section:

• Contains new ideas: The final sections happily comes to serve you up with an unexpected dessert. No background, no reference to the experiments, no analysis - just an out-of-the-blue statement that leaves you startled.
• Contains nothing beyond the current state-of-the-art: If you are pressed for time and want to quickly get a grasp of a paper, you will typically browse through the abstract, then glance over the figures, and then read the "Summary and Conclusions." If this section is filled up with general statements of things we all know already, then you will start to wonder what original work this paper contains - and toss it to the side.
• Only sums up one part of the paper: If you read a "Summary", you expect a quick recap of all parts of the paper. Some authors (presumably pressed for word count or paper length) come in wham-bam with a list of their conclusions - without the soft bed of a few sentences that repeat the problem, literature review results and methods.
• Is not a self-sufficient unit: Take a summary out of a paper, without knowing the contents of a paper, and the paragraph(s) still need to be a logical unit that requires no further reading of the paper to understand the "Summary and Conclusions."

So now that we got these typical mistakes highlighted, I would like to share with you how I write my "Summary and Conclusions" section. Admittedly, I learned it the hard way, by getting a paper returned and the "Summary and Conclusions" part torn to pieces by the gentle reviewers. To repair the damage done, I used a strategy that I have been implementing ever since.

The approach that I will discuss is mostly suitable for linear writers. If you prefer to nibble and scribble at different subheadings at more random points in time, you might as well find this approach useful - it will help you get a grasp of the entire paper again and focus on the main points to wrap up your writing.

As I said, I typically start by writing my outline, then filling in what I already have from reports or earlier work, and then start to rework the sentences to actually write the paragraphs. The only thing that I never do is the following:

I never write my "Summary and Conclusions" section before a first round of proofreading.

I simply leave it blank - a completely blank section. Instead of finishing up my very first draft -as good as that might feel- I leave it open.
Then, I use the following sequence:

• I sit down to proofread my very first version.
• While proofreading, I take notes of the main points of every subchapter.
• Once I reach the end of the paper, I reread these notes.
• I use these notes to write the "Summary and Conclusions" sections.

Let's quickly look back at the list-of-shame for a "Summary and Conclusions" section, and link that to this strategy:

• No new ideas: it is virtually impossible to take notes of the main points and use these as a guidance and still manage to slip in a new idea.
• No general truths: Noting down your contributions helps you to keep your focus on your own work, and helps you stay clear of the random chatter.
• You cover all the parts: If you take notes of the main ideas of every subchapter, you'll be able to cover all the contents of the paper.
• Self-sufficient unit: Make sure you proofread your "Summary and Conclusions" to see if you wrote it as a stand-alone paragraph. Don't reference to elements of the paper, just keep it sharp and shine a light on the major elements of the paper.

How do you write your conclusions section? Do you agree with my approach?

Writers' Lab: A drastic revision strategy for improving your paper's story and organization

Today, I once more have the pleasure of hosting Nicole K.S. Barker in the writers' lab. Nicole is a Ph.D. student at Laval University in Québec, Canada, working with Ducks Unlimited Canada and the Boreal Avian Modelling Project. While technically a Forestry student, she classifies her research as "applied ecological modelling". 

Within her Ph.D. she is investigating various methods for quantifying patterns in waterfowl populations over space in time. 
Alongside her research, she continually searches for ways to improve her writing, productivity, and R programming skills, and has found social media to be instrumental in this regard. You can read more about Nicole on her blog or Twitter. 

It seems like revising a piece of writing should be easy. You’ve completed the hard part in actually writing a draft, so it should be simple to fix the grammar and simply be done with it. However, depending on how long it took to write your paper and how much your thinking changed over that duration, you may find some hidden challenges.

If your vision, objectives, or "pitch" differed during the outlining or drafting stages from where it ended up, you’ll have a somewhat disjointed piece of work or section of work. I find that this happens most often for introduction sections. For example, it might not set up your paper’s objectives correctly, or perhaps it provides all of the details but not in an easy-to-follow story.

I recently adopted a new strategy, and now I recommend it to everyone I know. It’s based on chapter 3 of a book by Michael Jay Katz called From Research to Manuscript: A Guide to Scientific Writing. Any time I read a disjointed section of a paper, I remind people about this strategy. I also use it myself for all sections of a manuscript, from methods, to results, to discussion and introduction (keep in mind I’m in the sciences, but this strategy should be relevant for all types of papers, essays, and other writing).

The general procedure is somewhat drastic. It involves start from scratch – yes, a blank page! – once you have already written a draft. It can be intimidating and even discouraging to start from a blank page after spending the time to write a draft, but I guarantee it will lead to a better organized paper.

Steps: Within this new blank document, identify the main idea of each of your paragraphs and write it in sentence form. Ensure that these main sentences tell a story before you add any other detail. Fill in sentences one at a time from your rough draft to the correct paragraph in your new document in a coherent order. Edit each sentence for grammar and wordiness, but keep it in bullet point form. Once you have copied over all sentences and edited for coherence, you can change the sentences to paragraph form instead of point form. Ensure that each sentence flows into the next. Your “main idea” sentences become the topic sentences of each of your paragraphs. Katz’s book leads the reader through a detailed example of what this process looks like, and it’s quite illuminating.

Advantages: Starting from a blank page frees your thinking from the confines of your rough draft. Starting with main message of each paragraph ensures that your work has a flow and tells a story from start to finish. Reworking each sentence individually focuses your energy instead of breezing over individual sentences’ awkwardness or wordiness as can happen when reading a paper as a whole.

Disadvantages: It can be time consuming because you’re starting over. However, keep in mind that much of the work in your rough draft will be kept in this draft – it’s just moved around or reworked.

Let Eva or me know if you’ve tried this method or if you use another strategy for drastic revisions.

Writer's Lab: Constructing effective outlines using assertive language

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Nicole K.S. Barker in the writers' lab. Nicole is a Ph.D. student at Laval University in Québec, Canada, working with Ducks Unlimited Canada and the Boreal Avian Modelling Project. While technically a Forestry student, she classifies her research as "applied ecological modelling". 

Within her Ph.D. she is investigating various methods for quantifying patterns in waterfowl populations over space in time. 
Alongside her research, she continually searches for ways to improve her writing, productivity, and R programming skills, and has found social media to be instrumental in this regard. You can read more about Nicole on her blog or Twitter. 

Most writers start with an outline. And if they don’t, they should.

Outlines help you think through your topic. They help you identify the thread of your story - the message you’ll carry through from start to finish. Nothing is more frustrating than writing a full introduction to your paper only to discover that it doesn’t mesh well with your results or discussion once you get to those sections. As you fill in the finer details of your outline, you can revise the order of sentences (or even paragraphs) more fluidly than if you were writing in paragraph format.

I’ve been using outlines to guide my writing since the beginning of my academic studies, and I've used basically the same format the whole time. However, I recently revised my outline format following a tip from one of my writing group members. I’ve already found it useful, so I wanted to share it.

Étienne suggests that instead of using an outline to simply describe the content of each paragraph, we should use assertive statements. That is, summarize the main message or conclusion of each paragraph in one sentence or phrase. In this way, the story of the paper is apparent within the outline before we’ve even started writing the full content.

These outlines are harder to write, because they require you to really think through what you are trying to say. (You might find that this style works best for a second outline once you’ve got the very rough ideas down.) However, the assertive outline makes it easier to identify problems with flow between paragraphs, or areas where your story becomes inconsistent. Because the ideas are still in outline format, it’s easy to rearrange or adjust as necessary.

Give it a try and let Eva or me know how it went for you.

As an example, the introduction and discussion from a hypothetical paper about visualizing music with paint as a means to understand hearing impairment.

Old

Introduction:

• Broad opening statement – hearing impairment
• Previous research 1 – cochlear implants
• Previous research 2 – visualizing sound
• Our study and objectives – effect of music on paint

Discussion

• Summary of results
• Relation to previous research – other attempts to visualize sound
• Relation to previous research – other attempts to understand cochlear implants
• Conclusions and implications for hearing impairment

New

Introduction:

• XXX number of people experiencing hearing impairment in one form or another
• Cochlear implants have substantially improved hearing in XXX people since 19XX
• In an effort to understand effects of cochlear implants, researchers have attempted to visualize sound using a variety of methods.
• We applied a novel technique to visually represent sound using paint and multiple styles of music.

Discussion

• We found that different musical styles showed distinct patterns in the corresponding paint splatters.
• Our research corroborates previous results that visual representations of sound display meaningful differences.
• The differences between paint splatters from Mozart and those from Metallica help explain why those with cochlear implants prefer music with a strong beat.
• Our results provide a novel means to make sound relatable for those with hearing impairments.

Prolonging the service life of existing reinforced concrete slab bridges

I recently presented a paper at the 1st International Conference on Concrete Sustainability in Tokyo, Japan. The next edition will be in Madrid, in 2016.

The abstract of my paper is:

A large number of existing reinforced concrete slab bridges are found to be insufficient for shear when calculated according to the governing codes. Seeking improved methods, for example, based on new experimental evidence, to assess the residual shear capacity and prolonging their service life can avoid large economic, environmental and social costs. Experimental results are combined with Monte Carlo simulations to quantify the increase in shear capacity in slabs as a result of transverse load redistribution. As a result, a larger number of slab bridges can remain in service.

You can find the slides here:

Prolonging the service life of existing reinforced concrete slab bridges from Eva Lantsoght

Writers' Lab: Seven Short Research Ideas to Discuss in a Conference Paper

Whenever I hear a fellow PhD student tell me that he/she has nothing to write a conference paper about, I get a little antsy.

While the main chunk of your research might not be ready yet, that doesn't mean you have nothing to show to the international research community in your field. Likewise, when your experiment is not finished yet, that doesn't mean you haven't learned something that isn't worth talking about.

When the purpose of your trip to a conference is to spark discussion, there are quite a number of topics that you can touch upon and use to your benefit to get early input from fellow researchers.

If you have travel budget, by all means, get your ass on a plane and go to as many conferences as you can. I truly think that my crazy conference schedule has been one of the key factors to my successful PhD.

Here are some examples of topics that you can write about early on and present at a conference:

1. Case study

Take an example from practice, and use the deeper knowledge that you obtained while making your literature review to delve into this case under consideration.

2. Review paper

A classic - but often overlooked type of paper. If you've spend the right energy in your literature review, you should be able to write great, critical review paper that other researchers in remotely connected fields would love to look at to learn more about your discipline.

3. Mix & Match paper

Why not compare the test results from research X with the theory from researcher Y? Play around with existing data, and see if you can learn something new from this. Doing so will only deepen your understanding of your topic.

4. Parameter study

Parameter studies can teach you a lot, and give you some good food to write about. Even simple Excel-style exercises to study how a certain parameter is represented in different theories and how this is observed in experiments will be a valuable starting point.

5. Bounds and Assumptions

If you've done your literature review correctly, you'll have identified the limitations and boundaries to the major existing theories in your field. You can use that insight and expand on it: what are the limiting assumptions and bounds of some of the most commonly used theories? What should we do as a research community to verify these bounds or to make sure the theory can include more exceptions?

6. Comparison of design methods

Maybe a typical idea for a structural engineering paper, but it's always interesting to compare different codes and design methods. Start with a simple case, and see what is the resulting design if you follow different codes. Make sure you discuss the boundaries and assumptions of the codes you considered.

7. Computer modeling

For reinforced concrete, computer modeling sure is a topic in itself that is worth a lot of advanced PhD research. However, you can always start modeling an experiment from the literature, and discuss your observations with respect to the different parameters that you need to assume. This technique will also give you the tools to model your own experiments more easily later on.

Do you feel inspired to go and tinker in the sideline and see what you can learn from these examples?

Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting: Presentation and Paper

At the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, I've presented in the session of "Topics in Concrete Bridges".

You can find the slides of my presentation here:

Assessment of the Shear Capacity of Existing Reinforced Concrete Solid Slab Bridges from elantsoght

The paper, published in the Annual Compendium of Papers, can be accessed online.

As always, if this topic is of your interest, give me a shout-out and let's exchange ideas!

Paper nominated for paper of the year!

Our paper "Spreiding puntlasten plaatviaducten"  in the Dutch magazine "Cement" has been nominated as 1 of the 6 papers that might make it as paper of the year.

You can find the announcement here.

Voting goes on this page. It'd be super awesome if you spend 1 minute on clicking there.

Thanks!

fib Symposium 2011 - paper and presentation

Last week, I attended the fib Symposium 2011 in Prague, and presented some of my experimental results in the Friday morning session on Construction Technology.

The full paper is published on the CD proceedings, and the short version of 4 pages is published in the printed version of the proceedings. The abstract is the following:

Reinforced concrete one-way slabs subjected to concentrated loads are designed for shear by checking beam shear over an effective width and punching shear. Only a limited number of test data regarding the shear capacity of one-way slabs subjected to concentrated loads is available. To better evaluate the shear capacity of reinforced concrete one-way slabs, a series of experiments has been carried out on continuous one-way slabs (5m x 2,5m x 0,3m) loaded close to the support. The influence of the shear span to depth ratio is discussed. Conclusions about the influence of this parameter on the one-way shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs and possible explanations for the difference with beams are provided. Test results are compared to the Eurocode provisions and a method to calculate shear capacity from the literature. A higher shear strength is found as compared to the Eurocode. As a result of these experiments expressions resulting in a higher theoretical shear strength for the design of one-way slabs under concentrated loads are recommended.

The keywords were: Shear, One-Way Slabs, Effective Width

Here are the slides I used for my 12 minute presentation:

Experimental study of shear in reinforced concrete one way slabs subjected to concentrated loads

View more presentations from elantsoght.

As you can see, I added the tables with the experimental results which I used in the paper as a few extra slides at the end of my presentation. I didn't want to go over all the numbers during my talk, but I wanted to be prepared for more detailed questions. And in fact, I had a question about the flexural capacity of the tested slabs, so I could simply show the table with the reinforcement ratios and explain how we designed the reinforcement.

ASCE Structures Congress 2011 - paper and presentation

Last month, I presented a paper at the ASCE Structures Congress 2011.

The full paper is published in the conference proceedings, as well as online in the ASCE library.
The abstract of the paper is:

When assessing the capacity of existing reinforced concrete slab bridges under the increased traffic loads prescribed in the current codes, shear may become the critical failure mode. To better evaluate the shear capacity of reinforced concrete slab bridges, a series of experiments is carried out on continuous one‐way slabs loaded close to the support. Eight continuous slabs of 5m × 2,5m × 0,3m are tested. The loading position is taken at different a/d ratios. Six slabs with a standard concrete mixture and two slabs with a higher strength concrete are tested. The influence of the loading history, the shear span to depth ratio and the concrete compressive strength is discussed. Conclusions on the influence of these parameters on the one‐way shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs are drawn.

You can also find the slides I used for my presentation here:

Experimental study of shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs

View more presentations from elantsoght