During Academic Writing Month 2018, TAA hosted a series of #AcWriChat TweetChat events focused on the five W’s of academic writing. Throughout the series we explored The What: Defining a research project; The Where: Constructing an effective writing environment; The When: Setting realistic timeframes for your research; The Who: Finding key sources in the existing literature; and The Why: Explaining the significance of your research. This series of posts brings together the discussions and resources from those events. Let’s start with The What: Defining a research project.

Before moving forward on any academic writing effort, it is important to understand what the research project is intended to understand and document. In order to accomplish this, it’s also important to understand what a research project is. This is where we began our discussion of the five W’s of academic writing.