5 Web tools to help you manage and organize citations

When it comes to academic writing, it is important to be diligent about collecting and organizing sources that will support your statements. The success of the overall project is often determined by the organizational skills you show during the research stage, and if you lose track of the sources of your ideas, you may also end up inadvertently committing plagiarism.

The following five tools can help you manage your sources and organize citations in accordance with whichever citation format you follow.

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5 Key takeaways from the TAA webinar, ‘5 Ways to Use Your Dissertation for Publications’

Janet Salmons, PhD, mined every element of her dissertation to launch a publishing strategy that has resulted in five books, and numerous chapters and cases, articles and blog posts. She created a typology of five options for drawing from, building on, or applying student writing, which she shared in the May 18 TAA Webinar, “5 Ways to Use Your Dissertation for Publications”. Here are 5 key takeaways from the presentation:

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Quote or paraphrase? Three tips from a pro

It’s a pity when surface problems scuttle otherwise strong scholarship. As an academic editor, I’ve noticed that poorly handled quotations are particularly damning. Inelegant use of prior scholarship can give the impression that a writer is unsophisticated, or even amateur.

Naturally, research does involve mining books and articles to inform our own arguments, which are ideally novel and substantial but still reference that prior work. Often there may be temptation to repurpose existing literature that seems to say exactly what needs to be said in order to get to ideas that are original. It can certainly be difficult to think around the particular ways in which influential scholars have formulated cornerstone concepts.

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How to find and work with an illustrator

Illustrations are an important part of many textbooks and peer reviewed papers because they can help explain concepts in ways that photographs can’t. According to Joanne Haderer Muller, a board certified medical illustrator and Chair of the Board of the Association of Medical Illustrators: “Illustrations have many advantages over photographs. For example, illustrations can show readers an average, rather than a specific, example of a concept, procedure, animal, or anatomical arrangement. They can show detail that may be lost or hidden in a photograph, can help explain things at a molecular or cellular level, and can show how a process unfolds over time to really explain the author’s message.”

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3 Steps to consider when crafting an article introduction

The introduction is perhaps the most important section of an article, but unfortunately it can be notoriously difficult to write. To help make the process less painful and more productive, Meagan Kittle Autry, the Director of Thesis and Dissertation Support Services at NC State University, shared advice for writing exceptional introductions in a recent TAA podcast entitled How to Write an Introduction That Will Get Your Article Accepted.

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