Passive voice in academic writing

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:

Publishing Advice from a Journal Editor

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 research relevant to biological signaling. I personally evaluated each submission, assigning the appropriate ones to the staff editors, rejecting those that were inappropriate or out of scope, and providing initial comments about level of interest, Board members, and potential reviewers. From this perspective, I can offer a few words of advice for authors preparing to submit a manuscript for in-depth review and publication. The first hurdle you must pass after submission is the editor who assigning manuscripts for evaluation to other staff editors or members of the academic board. Then, you must pass the hurdle of engaging the interest of the handling editor to have your manuscript go for in-depth peer review.

First, think carefully about the title of your paper and the abstract. These two parts, and the cover letter to the editor, give the first impression of your paper. Ask yourself, is the title accurate? Does it overstate or overinterpret the data? If so, the editor and the reviewers can use this as justification to reject the manuscript once they have skimmed the methods and results. A simple example that I saw often was authors who made claims about human disease in the title and abstract from studies performed only in cultured cells or using animal models and who failed to clearly state that the studies were performed in cultured cells or only in an animal model of the disease. The study may have had implications for disease, but the title or abstract used language that was too strong for the main conclusion and the description of the study in the abstract lacked precision and accuracy.

Second, remember that titles and abstracts are what makes readers want to read your paper in more detail. Think about the intended audience for your paper. Are they likely to understand the title and abstract? Are they likely to read the journal where you have submitted the manuscript? Although you are writing for a scientific and expert audience, the abstract should be clear, free of lab jargon, have terms defined the first time that they are used, and provide a clear (not overinterpreted) take-home message. Remember that these parts of the paper are also often read by computers that text mine the scientific literature and by various search engines and indexing services. Think about key search terms that are important for your work. Ensure that these are present, and if they are abbreviations, define them for readers outside of your field. Use precise language, avoiding words that have multiple meanings.

Finally, the cover letter serves as the place where you can convey the excitement and potential implications of your study in stronger terms. Here is a place to capture the interest of the editor, convey discrepancies or controversies in the field, note the main gaps that your paper fills, and highlight a few key findings and their implications for the field of study or across fields, if appropriate. The cover letter is your chance to “sell” your work. Try to keep it to one page or at most 2 pages. Remember that the editor is unlikely to be an expert in your field and may not know the methodology in detail. Give the big picture view and then provide enough explanation for the highlighted findings to make sense to someone who is not familiar with your work or your field. Too often, I found that authors failed to realize that the editor is not an expert in your specific discipline, system of study, or field. The reviewers certainly should have the appropriate detailed expertise, but the editor often will not.

In summary, remember the intended audiences for the different parts of a paper. Avoid giving an editor or a reviewer a reason not to proceed right from the title and abstract. Don’t treat the cover letter as an afterthought. That is your chance to “speak” to the editor.

Thesis by dissertation or publication?

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:

How much time does it take to go from data analysis to manuscript draft

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:

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: What reviewers look for in your submission

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 journal paper reviewer (see my Publons profile here), what do I look for in a submission?

The elements that I look for in a review fall into two categories:

1. General aspects of the scientific method and paper presentation.
2. Technical and editorial details of the paper.

Therefore, I usually compose my reviews in two parts: a few paragraphs discussing the general aspects, and then a table with pages and line numbers of specific elements that I want to discuss.

The specific elements, of course, change from paper to paper, and I can't give you recommendations on that. On the other hand, the general aspects are things you can check for yourself before submission. Ask yourself the following questions before you submit your manuscript to increase your chances of success at acceptance (after review or rounds of review):

• Who is my audience? Who are you writing your paper for? If you are writing for researchers only, are you including all relevant details so that an interested researcher can continue your work? If you are writing (as well) for industry practitioners and/or government officials and policy makers, have you included recommendations for practice? Are you submitting your manuscript to the right journal in terms of audience?
• Is my abstract written correctly? An abstract follows a specific style (see my post on how to write an abstract). Make sure your abstract complies with these elements.
• Does the introduction explain the broader context of the study? Why are you studying a certain topic? What is its broader relevance and impact on society? This information should be contained in your introduction paragraph. Do not mix your introduction paragraph with your literature review - it tends to result in sloppy structure.
• Did you include a literature review? Have you presented your literature review in the right way, and not as an annotated bibliography? Did you cover all relevant references? If you did the work some time ago, did you check the current literature to see if any recent papers were published on your topic that may need to be included?
• Did you describe your methods in sufficient detail? Which methods did you use to address your research question? If you used experiments, have you described all the relevant details of your experiment? If you used a model, have you shown all characteristics and assumptions used in your model? If you derived a theory, have you included all relevant steps? Why did you study certain parameters? Can you place your work within the existing literature?
• Have you discussed your results properly? Don't make the mistake of only reporting your results. Make sure you provide interpretation for your results. How do your results fit within the available body of knowledge? Are your results as expected? If not, can you explain what happened? Can you discuss your results in comparison to existing theories?
• What are the direct implications of your work? Can you formulate recommendations for practice and/or for policy makers? Do you need to do more experiments?
• Is your summary and conclusions section written in the right form? Did you summarize the contents of your paper? Did you highlight the main findings and conclusions from your work? Make sure you don't introduce new contents in this section. Are all conclusions supported by the material presented in the paper?
• How is your writing? Did you ask colleagues and/or native English speakers to read your work? Did you proofread thoroughly for grammar, style, and punctuation? Poor writing will make it difficult for the reviewer to understand the message you want to convey.
• Did you check your figures and tables? Are all references to figures and tables done correctly in the text? Are the figures and tables in the correct style and format? Have you submitted your figures with sufficient resolution? Are your figures and tables clear, and do they contain all relevant information?
• If relevant, did you add a list of notations? If you are using parameters and formulas, you should include a list of notations for easy reference.

Publishing expectations on the Tenure Track

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.

Communication with your Chair: Tips your Chair Wants you to Know

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, methodologist, content expert and former doctoral student I have sat on all sides of the dissertation committee. Throughout this process communication is the most essential element to facilitate student success throughout the progression. Without communication progress stalls, motivation can wane and confusion sets in.

As a dissertation chair, I schedule communication by phone with my learners every two weeks. This timeframe is often enough that I am able to be proactive if any pressing concerns come up, but also spread out far enough so that we have sufficient content to address. If your chair does not have a set communication schedule you certainly have the right to request one. It is likely that your chair is busy and overworked, so be sure that you are being active in taking responsibility to set up a contact strategy that is a good fit for your needs. Do not hesitate to send a friendly email reminder—after all you are in charge of your dissertation. The chair and committee are there as your guides through the process. I do find that phone calls are the best way to stay in contact. An email is good for a quick question about formatting, but it does not translate well for complex design questions. The dissertation process is complex and sometimes it takes hashing it out on the phone. I find students are able to reach their “ah ha” moment with a little back and forth. With email this process slows down and sometimes is completely lost. Just the other day on the phone, I had a student share several ideas. I could hear in her voice her frustration as she discussed being unable to find the “gap” area for her research. As she shared about her thoughts on the topic, I stopped her. She had just unknowingly shared that “gap” area that was so elusive to her.

When you do have a scheduled phone call be on time (keeping in mind any potential time zone differences), be prepared and be organized. Many times I will call a student at our agreed upon time and I can hear that they are distracted. Or even worse, they are driving. This does not facilitate the best use of our time. A quiet, private place will allow for you to focus. Just as you would write an outline for an assignment, I suggest that you do the same for your phone conference. Come prepared by writing down any questions or topics you want to address beforehand and use this as your guide. Not only does this allow you to make sure that everything is covered, but it helps to cut back on emails in between phone conversations which may ultimately slow down the process. When speaking to a student I have a copy of their dissertation in front of me so I can point out specific questions or refer to it as needed. Be sure that you do too and that you are ready to take any notes you may need.

Listen, really listen. As a learner I treated this individual time with my chair as a gift. I was able to get a new perspective, flush out my questions and soak in their expertise. Listen to the suggestions your chair makes, write them down and apply the feedback. So many learners will send me their marked up paper with corrections still unmade. Most times, I have the same suggestions.

Lastly, remember your chair is your cheerleader. Your chair has been there and done that. They know that the dissertation is a journey and that your motivation will wax and wane. I truly want my learners to succeed. I want to be their motivator when things get hard –because they will. I would much rather have an email from a learner stating, “I am having a hard time with…”, than see that they withdrew. When a learner emails me that “they can’t”, I email back them about how they can. Your chair is on your side, not only can they help you with your writing but also through the process. Part of that process is maintaining your motivation and dedication. I remember my own chair referred to me as the “future Dr. Pipoly” which was sometimes the push I needed to read, reread, and dig in a little deeper.

On writing habits

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:

On suggesting reviewers for peer review

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:

How to review a journal paper

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 read the paper. Besides your standard written review report, you may also be asked to fill out an evaluation form on the review website. This post deals only with the basic elements your review report should contain.

A review report usually contains the following elements, often in this order as well:

1. The general information. You can write for example on the first line "Comments on a paper submitted to Journal", followed by the title and then the Manuscript ID.
2. The first heading should be "General comments". In this section you write your review report, in which you focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the presented study.
3. The first paragraph should be a summary in your own words of the manuscript. You can also discuss the possible readership for the manuscript. Is it interesting for researchers, or can it be of value to practitioners?
4. In the next paragraph, discuss if the introduction introduces the topic in the appropriate manner. If not, give suggestions for improvement.
5. Then, discuss the literature review in a paragraph. Are all topics discussed in the manuscript adequately placed within the literature with a thorough literature review?
6. Discuss the methods. Which methods are used? Are the methods appropriate? Are the methods explained in a clear manner? Can you spot weaknesses in the applied methods?
7. How did the authors interpret their results? Are they providing a satisfactory explanation for their observations? How do these observations fit within the body of knowledge of your research field. Are the results used for the development of recommendations? Are these recommendations practice-ready. If there are gaps in the interpretation or possibilities for implementation, point these out.
8. Evaluate the summary and conclusions section. There should be no new information in these sections, and they should be clear for reading.
9. Discuss the writing/language. If the manuscript suffers from serious editorial issues, suggest the authors to send it to a professional proofreading office.
10. Discuss the figures and tables. Are they clear? Do they follow the guidelines of the journal?
11. Write a conclusion of your review report. Summarize in one paragraph your decision (accept, minor revisions, major revisions, reject) and give the main reasons for this decision.
12. The second heading of your review report should read "Technical/Editorial comments." Add a table with detailed technical and editorial comments below your general comments section. You can use the following columns: Page - Lie - T/E - Comment to organize your more detailed comments.

If you want some more inspiration about how to review a paper, you can read the guidelines of Hugh Davis, Shriram Krishnamurthi , and Barak Pearlmutter. Veronika Cheplygina focused on how to become a reviewer, and Science magazine has an interesting article with the experiences of different scholars in reviewing journal papers.

How to write a cover letter

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 paste the text that you can find below, and fill in the relevant information for the text in italix:

Place and Date

Dear Professor Editor,

I hope you will consider the attached manuscript, “Title of Manuscript” for publication in Journal.

The manuscript is prepared according to the guidelines for authors. The topic of study is explain the topic of study in this paragraph.

The readers of Journal might be interested my work – explain here how your work and results could be interesting for the readership of the journal.

This original manuscript has not been previously published. The manuscript is currently not submitted to any other journal for consideration. A preliminary study on the topic was submitted as a conference paper for Conference, if that was the case.

Your comments and feedback on this study are valuable and of great interest to our research.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Signature
Your name

What gets measured gets done

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 writing, I am now tracking my progress per project:



My reading, on the other hand, is more a continuous log:



In total, since tracking my words (between November 2016 and April 2017, upon writing of this post), I have written 455767 words. My writing has been productive, since I am drafting two book projects. I average 2675 words a day, also taking into account the days on which I don't write (weekends, conferences). This word count will drop down drastically as I start to revise and edit what I wrote before.



Since tracking my reading (between January 2017 and April 2017, upon writing of this post), I have read 150 articles. I'm not doing too well with the "read an article a day" - I tend to read multiple articles together, and then carry out research over a number of days based on what I read. As pregnancy has been slowing me down in 2017, I have not been able to schedule much time for reading, and postponed it mostly to my weekends - where sometimes it simply doesn't happen. I don't need this log for realizing that I am running behind. However, seeing my logged number of articles read makes me feel a bit better: even though I feel like I've been behind on reading, I am actually "on track" with reading on average a paper a day.

If you want to have a better insight in your reading and writing habits, I strongly recommend that you start to track your progress. Set goals for writing a certain amount of words a day, track your writing (for example with the PhDometer), and keep a daily log of how your writing progresses. The same holds true for reading: set a goal for the number of papers you want to read, reserve time for reading, and log the number of papers you've read.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: On sustaining writing habits

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 sustain good writing habits as an academic.

Even though writing is so important, for many of us, writing can be the first thing that slips through the cracks when we are juggling different tasks. Journal papers typically don't have deadlines for submission, unless you want to submit something for a special issue. Things that are more urgent, but perhaps not more important, can be taking over your schedule, and your writing ends up on the back burner.

Today, we are going to look at what you can do to give writing the attention it needs, and to treat it as a habit. Here are a few ideas you can implement in your workflow processes to sustain writing habits.

1. Schedule time

If you want to write on a daily basis, you need to reserve time on a daily basis for writing. It may sound very logical, but not many of us really go to the point of booking a meeting with ourselves to write. If something else comes up, it is your time for writing that will be threatened. Figure out which time of the day is the best time of the day for you for writing, and dedicate that time to writing. Don't allow meetings to be booked during that time, close your door, and write.

For many people, writing first thing in the morning, before you do anything else, works well. Others (like myself) prefer a long morning routine, which includes a workout, and then reserve the first hour or first two hours of the work day for writing. If you are a night owl, or your work day is consumed by lab activities, you may find that a few hours after dinner is your best writing time - just make sure you don't book social appointments in the evening or other things that cut into your writing time.

I recommend that you use a weekly template for getting a grip on how you divide your time. You can read more about the weekly template, and how I schedule time for writing, in a previous post.

2. Have a planning of your writing projects

Once you start to get in the flow of writing proposals, doing the research, writing the papers, and revising the papers, you will find that at any point in time, you have a number of papers in progress, in review, or back to you with comments. This combination of different writing projects can be overwhelming. Perhaps you prefer to work on one paper at a time, but if another paper needs to be revised with the comments from the reviewers before a certain deadline, you will have to be more flexible in your schedule.

To keep an overview of the stage of each of your writing projects, I recommend that you have a planning for your writing projects, with self-imposed deadlines, as well as with the deadlines when you need to submit revised versions of papers. You can read about how I keep track of my papers in progress in a previous post from this series.

3. Track and log your writing output

You can schedule two hours a day of time for writing, but if you spend that time staring at a blinking cursor on a white screen, you are not moving your writing forward. A great way to see your progress on a daily basis, is by tracking how many words you are writing. For this purpose, you can use the PhDometer from PhD2Published. You can write down your daily output in a spreadsheet to see how one day compares to another, or to find out how much you write on a monthly or annual basis.

4. Let your work morph from research report to journal paper

If you are faced with the fear of a blank page, make sure you never have to face a blank page. When you are carrying out research, write a research report explaining your methods and results, and detailing all your calculations. Once you have this report finished and are in the stage of developing the corresponding paper, you can throw large parts of the research report into the paper, and take it from there. It is unlikely that any sentence you wrote in the research report will end up in the final paper, but you can start summarizing from the material you have available. You will perhaps summarize the material even further by developing overview tables and figures which are more condensed than anything you had in the research report.

Once you have the section of methods, results, and discussion of the results written in a paper, you feel that you are picking up speed in your writing, and writing the introduction and literature review sections will come more easily. Finally, you can proofread, and then write your section of summary and conclusions.

5. Write first, edit later

Don't think about every sentence twenty times if you want to move your writing forward. Write first, and edit later. Don't edit sentence by sentence as you are writing. Write a first draft, considering it just a very rough draft. Leave the editing stage for later. Make miles in writing first before you will start to evaluate every single word you wrote. It even makes more sense to edit later on, since during the editing stage, you also need to evaluate the structure of your paragraphs and sections.

6. Make writing a daily habit with daily goals

Tracking your word count can become a fun little competition with yourself when you set goals for your word count on a daily basis. If you are getting started with building a sustainable writing habit, I recommend that you set a goal of 1000 words a day. You will see that when you are drafting, you may be producing more words, and that when you are editing, your word count slows down - but in general, 1000 words a day on average hits the sweet spot for many of us.

7. Use deadlines to push yourself a bit further

Use conference papers to show preliminary research results. Write the conference paper by its deadline, and then use the material you have developed to develop this work further into a journal paper. Similarly, use the deadlines for your research reports to develop a report of high quality, that you will be able to use as a basis for writing a journal paper. When you plan a research project, don't consider the end of the project the moment when you deliver the technical report. Shoot for delivering a technical report as well as a draft journal paper (provided that the research project is large and innovative enough to merit publication in a journal).

8. Write different styles

I call this a "writing diet." Take on different writing projects. In your academic work, write entries in your research journal, research reports, research proposals, conference papers, and journal papers. But take the idea one step further, and step outside of the confinement of academia. Consider other ways in which you can flex your writing muscle: blog, write poems, journal, write CD reviews, write op/eds, write non-fiction pieces, write short stories... Develop different writing styles, play around with your voice in different styles, and become more used to write quickly. By being on a writing diet, you will learn to turn your thoughts into written words in a more efficient way.

9. Take notes when you read

If you need a starting point for the literature review section of a paper, take notes while you are reading papers. One way of taking notes that later on you can quickly turn into the literature review section of the paper you are working on, is by taking snapshots of the important parts of each journal paper that you read, and paste these into a designated document together with your thoughts on what you are observing in the paper.

10. Join an accountability group

If you find it still hard to respect the meetings you schedule with yourself for writing, you can join an accountability group. Many universities and cities have #shutupandwrite groups which you can join. The participants of these groups get together in a cafe, get their coffee, write for 1 or 2 hours without talking, and then have some social time together.

If you can't find a #shutupandwrite group, you can use online accountability groups. There is the annual writing event for all writers, which uses the hashtag #NaNoWriMo on Twitter (national novel writing month, in November). The academic sister is #AcWriMo (academic writing month, also in November), where the participants set a goal for the entire month, and update their output in a shared file on a daily basis.

11. Take good care of yourself

You can't do productive academic work if you don't take good care of yourself. You will notice that you are more focused for your writing when you are not too tired. Use common sense, and never let work distract you from your non-negotiable self-care habits. Eat foods that fuel you, sleep the amount of hours you need, and move your body on a daily basis.

The day I wrote 14046 words

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 trying to finish up as much work as possible before I enter a stage in my life of which I have no idea what it will be like (and have no idea how to plan my days for).

So, what did I do that day that made it such a success?
- I slept 9 hours and 37 minutes, according to my fitbit stats, and woke up at 7:46 am. Unfortunately, that rather late wake-up did not give me enough time to squeeze in my yoga practice.
- I must have started with work some time between 8:30 am and 9 am. I worked first on my paper, and then on my research. The idea was to do about 2 hours of each, but since I got off to a late start, it must have been more like 1,5 hours of each. For the research, I was doing calculations, and writing the report about these calculations at the same time, so it was a bit of a combination of writing and the actual number-crunching in matlab.
- I had lunch. Since I was working from home that day, I think I didn't spend more than 30 minutes on lunch: warming up my plate of food, and then quickly eating it.
- I wrote 25 entries for the extended glossary list of my book. When I was working on writing these entries, I made a list with the numbers (1-25), and write down the title for every 5th entry. After each entry was finished, I checked off the number. After 5 to 10 entries, I took a break. This writing kept me busy from 1 pm until about 5pm.
- I replied email for about an hour, and made my planning for the next week.
- I went for a walk while talking to my mom via Skype, and had my dinner.
- I took my laptop to the sofa to type a blog post.
- According to my myfitnesspal account, I had three servings of chocolate peanut butter avocado pudding.

I'm not sure what is the main reason for my major productivity that day: the long sleep the night before? The fact that I was working from home rather undisturbed (except for the lady coming to clean the apartment)? All the chocolate pudding I ate that day?

Extended Strip Model for slabs subjected to load combinations

My coauthors and myself recently published a paper in Engineering Structures, titled "Extended Strip Model for slabs subjected to load combinations". You can download this paper free of access charges until July 1, 2017 via this link.

The abstract of the paper is the following:
The loads that are used for the assessment of existing reinforced concrete slab bridges are the self-weight, superimposed loads, and distributed and concentrated live loads. As such, the shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs under a combination of distributed and concentrated live loads is a topic of practical relevance. For slabs subjected to a single concentrated load, a plastic model for assessment exists: the Extended Strip Model, developed based on the Strip Model for concentric punching shear. A further adaptation of the model to assess slabs subjected to distributed and concentrated loads is presented in this paper. The proposed model is compared to experiments on slabs subjected to a single concentrated load and a line load. The conclusion of this comparison is that the Extended Strip Model results in a safe estimate of the maximum concentrated load on the slab, and that the method can be used for the assessment of existing bridges subjected to heavy truck loads.

E-book and reference articles from proofreading website

Dear readers,

I would like to share with you some valuable resources from a proofreading services website. Most universities have their own proofreading services, so if English is not your native language, or if you struggle with writing, it can be good to send your work to your inhouse proofreading office. Some research groups have a "native" that they always work with. I recommend you inform about the practices within your department or research group. If that's not an option, you can ask if you can use the services from an online company. I have never used an online company, because TU Delft has its own translation office, so I can't really give sound recommendations about how to use these services, and how fast and legit they are. But I came across these links and free ebooks, which are valuable information for any PhD student:

Free e-books

The Best of Beginnings: The First Formal Meeting with Your Supervisor

Writing an Effective Dissertation Abstract

The Importance of Proofreading your Thesis or Dissertation

Creating a Perfect Dissertation Title

Scheduling the Dissertation and Producing a Timeline

Making the Best Use of Tables and Figures in Your Thesis or Dissertation

Using Direct Quotations in Your Thesis or Dissertation

Exploiting the Power of Keywords in your PhD Thesis or Dissertation

Adding a Bibliography and Supplementary Material

Tips for Improving Your Thesis-Writing Skills

The Benefits of Writing for Your Thesis or Dissertation Supervisor as Soon as Possible

Planning the Dissertation: Contents and Structure

Introducing Research Questions and Hypotheses, and Summarising the Proposal or Thesis

Q&A: My super-writing records

It's time for another Q&A post. This post discusses the CDs that assist my writing.

Some time ago, I received the following message (edited for anonimity):

Hi .
you are wrote in http://phdtalk.blogspot.com/2014/01/silver-linings-binaural-beats-for-study.html that "I have the same results with some favorite CDs: I have 3 "super-writing" records, that make me extremely productive, and there is 1 record I used to listen to every single night before sleeping for 1,5 years - that made me sleep like a rose."

i want to download this CDs . how can download ?
how much time you listen to it each time ?

Best Regards.
X

My short reply at that time was:

Dear X,

All depends on personal taste - I for one have as my super-writing CDs "Reroute to Remain" by In Flames, "The Gallery" and "Projector" by Dark Tranquillity, and I used to listen to "Soft Black Stars" by Current 93 before sleeping, always.

Best,
Eva

While these three albums are my super-writing CDs, I generally always listen to music while writing and working. Most of the time, I am either listening to new releases that I will review for Darkview, or listening to the playlists Spotify makes with recommended tracks and new releases, or listening to music or white noise/binaural beats. While writing, I prefer music that has no vocals or distorted vocals, so that my brain does not start to mix my writing with the lyrics of the song. Melodic death metal and post rock are my favorite picks for writing. For reading, I gravitate towards instrumental music that is spaced open wide (shoegaze and the likes). For studying, I sometimes just block out the noise around me with white noise or "concentration" tracks on Spotify.

For relaxing at night, I used to listen every night to "Soft Black Stars" by Current 93. Nowadays, I don't always have music playing in the house, and more often I listen to podcasts while I'm putting my clothes and things ready for the next day and prepare to go to sleep.

Oh, and I almost forgot: don't download music, buy records, support artists!

Q&A: Working from your parents' house

I recently got an interesting question, of which I'd like to share my answer with you.

Here´s the question:

Hello,

This is a random cry for help but I am writing my dissertation and just moved back in with my parents at the same time. Uninterrupted writing time is impossible, I am now the maid and house project do-er of all things and I haven't written a word. My defense is in October and I'm teaching part time at a local university. I have my dual monitor set up and all my resources here at the house so working elsewhere hasn't really worked well for me. Any advice on navigating this without being a terrible person and telling my parents to leave me alone!? I'm also almost 30 and have been out of the nest for over 10 years just moved back in to save money. I feel so ungrateful but I can't get anything done and I need to graduate! Thank you so much...

This is what I answered:

Hi Reader,

Thanks for reaching out to me through my blog.

I understand you are in quite a complicated situation, and that it might be hard to work from your parent's house. Way back when I was still studying in Brussels, I returned homw to study for exams while my parents had health problems, and it was difficult balancing studying and taking care of them (and worrying). After my PhD, I returned to my parents' house while I prepared for my move to Ecuador, and tried to work over distance for TU Delft. My mom was very happy to have me back with her, so it was hard for me to shove her off and tell her that I really needed to concentrate on writing that paper... Long story short, I understand how being back at your parents house can not be an ideal situation, and how you also try not to come across as grumpy and ungrateful.

With that said, I think there are a few things that can help you:

1. Make a to do list
If you need to fix things in the house, cook, run part of the household and all that, it helps to make a todo list. You can't fix all the problems of the house in a day or in a week, so you might want to make a list of what you want to/need to do first, and then distribute that over time.

2. Make a planning and a schedule
Distributing tasks over time, you might for example think of what you can reasonably do in 1 - 2 hours a day. Clean the bathroom, cook, and replace the shower curtain, for example on one day; groceries, making soup, and giving the kitchen a good cleaning the next day? You can, for example, block the time period 5pm - 7 pm for those tasks. You can use google calendar to make a weekly template. Put in your calendar your teaching hours, including the commute, and then see if you can reasonably fit, for excample, 10 blocks of 1,5 to 2 hours in your schedule for writing, so that you know that those need to be your uninterrupted writing times.

3. Pomodoro?
Have you tried the pomodoro technique of working in short bursts of time? You can set a timer for 20 minutes to draw a specific figure, write a certain paragraph, revise a literature source. After 1 pomodoro, you get 5 minutes of break, psosibly to interact with your parents - you can come out of your room and have a quick chat with them. After 4 pomodoros, you take a 30 minute break - have a coffee with your parents and talk a bit with them.

4. Noise-canceling headphones
I love noise-canceling headphones. They are big and chunky, help to obliterate all the noise from outside, and they also signal to other people "I'm busy, please come back later". They are rather pricey at about 300 euros, but if you can spare the money, it's a really good investment.

Do these ideas help you? Please let me know how it is going.

Best,
Eva

Using Eurocodes and AASHTO for assessing shear in slab bridges

We've recently published a paper in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Bridge Engineering. You can find this paper online. The abstract is as follows:

Reinforced concrete short-span solid-slab bridges are used to compare Dutch and North American practices. As an assessment of existing solid-slab bridges in the Netherlands showed that the shear capacity is often governing, this paper provides a comparison between Aashto (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) practice and a method based on the Eurocodes, and recommendations from experimental research for the shear capacity of slab bridges under live loads. The results from recent slab shear experiments conducted at Delft University of Technology indicate that slabs benefit from transverse force redistribution. For ten selected cases of straight solid-slab bridges, unity checks (the ratio between the design value of the applied shear force and the
design beam shear resistance) are calculated according to the Eurocode-based method and the Aashto method. The results show similar design shear forces but higher shear resistances in the North American practice, which is not surprising as the associated reliability index for Aashto is lower.

Q&A: Self plagiarism, ethics and salami slicing

Let's catch up with another good question from a reader today (edited for anonymity):

Hello Eva,

I am Name. I completed my MBBS and MD in anatomy from Country. I am currently an assistant professor in Anatomy in a medical college in Country. I happened to read your article How to turn your dissertation into journal articles. I am confused about this. My thesis topic for MD was Something. I got two important conclusions- both are quite large. As research is at its infancy in parts like ours, I have practically no one to ask for guidance. One conclusion got accepted in a journal and is about to be published. I am planning to send the other one to another journal. And then I heard about this self plagiarism, ethics, and salami slicing.

I really dont understand what these are and I am not sure whether if I publish two parts of my large thesis in two related journals it would be unethical.

Kinldy reply me as to what I should do. Is it that one thesis work can be converted only to one paper and if u need another paper you need to do another work.

Name

My first question here would be: What does your PhD advisor say? Can he give you some guidance in your field?

In my opinion, every original contribution from your dissertation can be a self-sustained article. If I look at my dissertation, this is what I've pulled out of it:
Chapter 2: two companion papers
Chapter 3 + chapter 4 + chapter 6 (parts): six papers
Chapter 5: 1 paper that I am about to submit
Chapter 6: 1 paper
Chapter 7: 3 papers

For example for chapters 3, 4 and 6, I did a large amount of experiments, and I honestly wouldn't even know how to smash them all together into one paper, discuss all the parameters, and compare it to all the codes. Most of these papers do include some additional work as compared to my original thesis, and I have been delving deeper into some topics, also depending on the comments and requests from the reviewers.

For my chapter 2, I tried hard to shrink everything into a single paper - but I just couldn't cut that much, so I ended up writing two companion papers. Am I salami slicing? I tend to think I need my 10000 words for explaining a certain concept...

And as for self plagiarism: of course publishing the same content in different journal is a big no. But, at least from my perspective, when you introduce the broader scope of your work, it is very well possible that you repeat the same thing (perhaps highlighting different aspects, but still...). I don't know how many times I've mentioned the expansion of the Dutch road network following the Second World War, and that the bridges were built at that time are now reaching the end of their service life.

For those universities that require a PhD by publication of papers, they also seem to require 4 to 6 accepted papers (depending on the field) - so I don't think that what you are doing is unethical.