This week’s collection of articles from around the web is filled with resources and advice that you will want to save for present and future writing projects. It opens with some new books on writing that you might want to add to your personal library and then continues with specific advice on mistakes to avoid, data visualizations, how many references are appropriate, and graphical or video abstracts for your articles. Finally, there are some articles on other important topics including research funding, Plan S, and the need for outside jobs in grad school.

As you move forward on your writing projects this week, we wish you great success. Happy writing!

Some new books on writing

There’s a LOT of books out there on how to do a thesis/dissertation (some of them written by me). I’ve managed to plough through a couple of new books on the subject recently and this post is a compilation of my reviews plus one reader review from Jasmine Jenson at the end.

Don’t make these nine mistakes when you write a journal paper

As a frequent reviewer and journal editor, I’m seeing (and reading) quite a lot of articles. Unfortunately, I am also seeing a number of mistakes that are repeated over and over again – both by experienced authors and novice writers.

About data visualizations: Bar graphs

Simple but powerful, bar graphs are one of the most common charts used to compare categorical data, which are data that can be grouped into categories like race and sex. Bar graphs are also unique in design because they can be displayed horizontally or vertically. Bar graphs are helpful for comparing changes that happen over time, such as years, or comparing differences by category.

Writing a journal article – how many references?

I’ve been asked about how many references go in the literature section of a journal article. A supervisor had offered a view – one reference per sentence is best, perhaps two. But, the person asking me said, they had seen papers with lots more. How many is too many? What is not enough? What to do?

YOUR graphical or video abstracts

Before I’d ever met Dr. Rossi, I created a video abstract of sorts about my book, Qualitative Online Interviews. The title changed for the second, expanded edition, so I thought it would be useful to explain key concepts discussed in the book. By today’s standards it is pretty simple– just narration over slides. Still, it communicated the message, and became the basis for webinars and presentations about online research.

Research funding for casuals

There are serious structural problems in universities worldwide. The number of permanently employed staff is shrinking. The number of precariously employed staff (casual, adjunct, paid by the hour) is increasing. I can’t change that. This situation isn’t getting any better. It gets worse.

Plan S and humanities publishing

This is an article about a 336-year old publishing house, its endeavors in open access (OA) and, of course, about Plan S as the title stipulates. It is also an article about how the last 12 months have changed my perspective on academic publishing.

The need for outside jobs in grad school

Many graduate departments have some kind of rule in place to prevent graduate students from taking on outside work. The reasoning behind it might seem sound enough at first glance — graduate students are supposed to be learning their craft, which means working on a dissertation and teaching. Ideally, they should be free from distractions while they’re doing this.