Abraham Maslow once said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” In this time of change in academia, catalyst by the past year of adaptations to learning processes as a result of the pandemic, there have been a multitude of problems and challenges. If there is a positive to the situation, however, it is that such problems have invoked creative responses and new tools shaping our future efforts.

In this week’s collection of posts from around the web, we see some new ideas for the future of our academic writing efforts. We begin with the exploration of researching long term outcomes across time and significance of theses presented through discussions. We look at a non-traditional approach to defining the academic year and how it can affect our writing success. Finally, we explore some technologies for sharing, locating, and publishing academic work.

As your summer break begins, consider ways that you can refine and improve your writing by exploring new tools. Happy writing!

Researching Lives Qualitatively through Time: Broadening the Evidence

QL researchers commonly revisit their participants over the longer-term, thereby extending the longitudinal reach of an intensive study. They are often motivated by an abiding concern to know what has happened to the people who have shared their life stories, to understand the next instalment in a never ending story. This is in a context where the future is essentially unpredictable and the causes and consequences of change need to be pieced together in retrospect. Extending a QL study in this way generates important insights into longer term outcomes, how trajectories unfold over the life course, and how biographical and historical processes intersect.

The thesis discussion – making the move work

The key to the discussion, whether it is a chapter or not, is understanding its place in the logic of the thesis argument. It’s the nearly final step in a chain of moves. And the discussion leads up to the big claims for contribution and significance. The most common way to stage an argument in the thesis goes something like this.

Starting your academic writing year in mid-summer

What if you start your academic year 6 to 8 weeks before the students start arriving? Make your writing a priority in both definitions of the term. You have a lot more control over your time, and how you allocate it, during the summer. You can allocate your best time to your writing and research in the quantities that are appropriate. If you want uninterrupted days devoted to writing, you can have them.

Article Sharing Framework: Facilitating Scholarly Sharing Through Metadata

The ability of sites to capture, index and republish digital content has created a plethora of useful tools and services on the internet. Who hasn’t found it useful to perform a search on Google or another search platform and to be returned not simply the web page, but the answer to your query that might exist on that page, in snippet form? For those conducting research, it is often helpful to store not simply a link to the paper or item, but the item itself within one’s information management tool.

Finding and Using Archives

In today’s world, documents and artifacts are being scanned and photographed, and made available online. The the Society of American Archivists, a professional association dedicated to the needs and interests of archives and archivists, has put together an open-access resource that can help you get started.

New book publishing concept combines Taylor & Francis Books Heritage with F1000’s Open Research model

Taylor & Francis Group has launched the pilot of a new book publishing concept, Open Plus Books, that fuses the traditional print and Open Access books model with F1000’s Open Research publishing model.