5 myths about doctoral writing

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academic writing misconceptions, literature review, writing conclusions, writing style

By Cally Guerin

Over the years I’ve noticed that doctoral writers sometimes come to their work with unhelpful ideas about what makes for good academic writing. Today I’d like to bust a few of those myths so that researchers can produce the kind of writing that is required, without going down the paths that waste time or obscure the central messages of the writing.

1. Nothing new in the Conclusion

One of the misconceptions that disrupts good thesis writing is the idea that there must be nothing new in the Conclusion.

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My questions now: preparing a thesis conclusion

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Thesis Conclusions, writing conclusions

By Cally Guerin

Conclusions continue to be a challenge for thesis writers, not least because they need to bring together a whole range of ideas and step back from the detail to look at the bigger picture of what all these words and findings mean. This is the moment when examiners are assessing whether the whole text has persuaded them that, yes, this thesis makes an original and significant contribution to knowledge in its field and is therefore worth a PhD. Yet, as Trafford, Lesham and Bitzer (2014) point out, a surprising number of theses fail to make a direct statement about the originality of the research and its contribution; in fact, some don’t even have a chapter labelled ‘Conclusion’. While it is still possible to succeed in exhibiting ‘doctorateness’ without fulfilling the standard requirements, my own approach is to make it as easy as possible for readers (here I mean examiners) to identify the elements they are looking for and thus be firmly confident that the thesis meets the established criteria.

‘Impact’ is important for published researchers, but what does it mean for doctoral writers?

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Impact and thesis writing, Significance of research

By Claire Aitchison

These days there is an increasing expectation that research has ‘impact’. There is more to this than government policy (such as Australia’s Engagement and Impact Assessment). The impact agenda has particular resonance in a world where research funding is increasingly constrained and universities compete for influence and reputation in order to attract funding. ‘Impact’ also connects to quality, and accountability.

Impact is sometimes narrowly conceived of as countable measures of the uptake of research (ie publications, citations and grants) but it also includes less easily quantifiable things like influence on practice, resultant applications, the generation of new ideas and outcomes, and longer-term subtle change. This perspective relates to ideas about the public good and the public intellectual – in other words, it is about being connected to, and giving back to, society.

But how does this impact agenda affect doctoral research and writing?

I think there might be a number of ways. Firstly, considerations of ‘impact’ can constrain or influence the choice of doctoral research topic. For example, an aspiring doctoral candidate may have a personal passion or interest in floral art – but is this alone worthy of 4 years of public funding? If, however, their research concerns the re-imagination of the cultural aesthetic, an exploration of commercial value, or the preservation of endangered flora for floristry, the potential impact becomes clear because the benefit of the research is clear.

How many chapters and pages are there in a doctoral thesis?

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number of chapters, number of pages, size of thesis, word length

In a follow up to his post on ‘When is enough reading enough for a doctoral thesis’, Ian Brailsford provides some fascinating metrics on the size of doctoral theses. Ian is Postgraduate Learning Adviser in the Libraries and Learning Services at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. 

By Ian Brailsford

The digitisation of doctoral theses is a great boon to current doctoral candidates: reviewing recent examples of doctoral work in their institution is only a few clicks away. New candidates can appraise doctoral work done by former scholars in their department to get a feel for aspects such as chapter structure, page length, academic writing style, and referencing conventions: reading a thesis to write a thesis as Cally Guerin recently advised. Moreover, they can readily access doctoral work globally and, with a bit of research savvy, probably locate a PDF copy of their supervisor’s doctoral thesis!

As a postgraduate learning adviser one of my regular weekly routines has been to check our digital repository to see which new doctoral theses have been uploaded. This reconnaissance is a nice way to see who has finished, who has been thanked in the acknowledgements, whether or not the thesis includes publications, and if I’m able to understand the abstract. Although a few new doctoral theses are embargoed, there are usually six or seven new ones to scan through each week.

Just over three years ago I started keeping an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of how many pages there were in each thesis and the number of chapters. Once I got a sample of 100 theses from 2015 I began looking for patterns in the data.

When is enough reading enough for a doctoral thesis?

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literature review, reference list, thesis bibliography

Ian Brailsford is Postgraduate Learning Adviser in the Libraries and Learning Services at the University of Auckland. Here he shares insights from his recent research into thesis bibiliographies.  

By Ian Brailsford

If I had a dollar for every time in the last decade I’ve responded to a question in a doctoral writing workshop with a succinct ‘it depends’, I wouldn’t be able to retire. But I could go on a nice overseas vacation. My answer is commonly voiced when running sessions for new doctoral candidates embarking on the literature review when the question relates to how much reading is required. This is one of the core ‘how do I know when it’s enough?’ research dilemmas (recently identified by Dr Inger Mewburn) that experienced postgraduate learning advisers are familiar with.

When it comes to the ‘how much literature is required (or expected)’ question, I have teased out my ‘it depends’ answer with a few questions of my own,

Reading theses to write a thesis

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reading, reading for writing, thesis reader

By Cally Guerin

One of the major challenges of writing a doctoral thesis is that the document submitted for examination doesn’t usually look much like the texts that PhD candidates read. For many students, the first six months or so is spent reading masses of articles, chapters and books, and the focus is on the content of those texts. Then they turn their attention to writing a markedly different genre. Even for those writing a thesis by publication, the document submitted for examination includes sections that do not resemble much of what they have been reading during candidature.