Would it Help if You Heard your Papers Read to You? Well, You Can!

The Adobe Acrobat "Read out Loud" feature was designed primarily as an accessibility feature, to help readers with visual or other reading impairments. 

You might not even know the facility is there, but it also happens to be a valuable writing tool.  If you hear your work read back to you, you can spot repeated phrases, illogical progressions from one argument to the next, or other irritating sentence structures that just don't sound right. 

Karen explains how it works, HERE.  (It's a pdf for you to practise on!)

How to Write About Music

New in stock:-

How to Write About Music: the RILM Manual of Style, 2nd edition

Sure to be useful to readers in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  RILM is the music abstract and indexing database that we subscribe to, and any publication from the RILM organisation is bound to be top quality.  We've got two copies, both for short loan.

 We are the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, here to support our performing artists and technician in all their study, research and teaching requirements.

Some Expert Hints on Academic Writing from Bronwyn Labrum, Design Historian

Matter

A Blog About Writing, by Bronwyn Brown

We recently came across another useful blog about academic writing, and organising yourself to get it done.  It is authored by Bronwyn Labrum, a historian of design, clothing and fashion, museums and everyday life, and Associate Professor of Visual and Material Culture, School of Design,  at Massey University in New Zealand.

• http://bronwynlabrum.wordpress.com/

Success in Research - Useful Series in Whittaker Library

We’ve got several new books in this series now.  Here are the two latest ones, about presenting your research and achieving impact in research.  And there's another about to be catalogued, on publishing journal articles. 

Find the series in our catalogue, HERE.

Academics and Researchers as Creative Writers - Motivational Blog

Academic Ladder is a USA-based support network for people engaged in scholarly writing, be it a thesis, article or book.* 

Here is an article about scholars as creative writers.  It was recently posted on the Academic Ladder website, and you can access it for free:- You, a Creative Writer? Four Techniques to Help ANY Academic get Published


*'Whittaker' has tried and liked this network - it's particularly valuable in alleviating the isolation that part-time or lone researchers sometimes experience.

'Patter' Writes about Turning Your Thesis into a Book

Let me remind you of one of my favourite blogs - 'Patter' writes about the research process and scholarly writing.  She's actually Professor Pat Thomson, Education Professor in Nottingham.

Today she writes about 'Turning Your Thesis into a Book'/

Speaking as one who has recently done just that, I can confirm she makes some very valid points.

Patter - homepage: http://patthomson.wordpress.com/

Read 'Patter' - Pat Thomson's Blog on Research and Scholarly Writing

Pat Thomson is an Education Professor in Nottingham. 

Her blog on research skills and scholarly writing is always well-considered and a good read.  Today she offers this:-

An Unhealthy Paranoia? On 'losing' Academic Work

Pat Thomson suggests reasons why journals reject papers

Anyone in the business of writing and submitting articles will read Pat Thomson's latest blogpost with considerable interest:-

Seven Reasons why Journals Reject Papers

Pat's writing always comes highly recommended!

A Pleasure To Read - Help your Thesis Examiner

Pat Thomson writes 'Patter', a blog about research methodology. Today her posting is about writing your thesis in a way that makes it easy for your examiner to follow your thread:- 

 keeping your thesis reader/examiner on track by pat thomson

Writing and productivity

Interesting blogpost from the London School of Economics - it's sure to be useful to everyone involved in research.

30 tips for successful academic research and writing

By the way, I’m whizzing through Da Silvia’s How to Write A Lot – and I’ve written half an article in my spare time since the weekend, to prove its worth.   Recommended.  I'll review it when I've finished it.

• Amazon link

Writing from the PhD thesis - more about postdoc activity

Another useful blogpost from Pat Thomson, Education Professor at Nottingham:-

Writing from the PhD thesis: letting go

Useful strategies for generating articles from your thesis.

Getting published (scholarly writing)

As promised, here's another suggestion to follow up:-
 

PhD to Published

You can also follow PhD to Published on Twitter @PhDtoPublished - and there's a weekly evening Twitter-chat about it too, hashtag #acwri.

Somewhere to write? Journal for Artistic Research

JAR

Journal for Artistic Research

http://www.jar-online.net/

This is a journal brought to my attention by Anna Birch, Research Lecturer here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

• Online
• Open Access
• Sign up to JAR (free), to find out more.
• Considering submission?  Sign up first, to access the submissions pages.

Scholarly publishing? Visit The Scholarly Kitchen

If you're looking to publish your research work, then you'll be glad of any authoritative help.  Introducing a blog I've recently come across:-

The Scholarly Kitchen

 

Do take a look!  Tomorrow, we'll share another couple of useful websites for scholarly authors.

Publishing your thesis as a book

Continuing yesterday's writing theme - I've just contributed a blogpost to the 'PhD to Published' website.  If you've written a thesis, you're likely to be wondering what to do with it next? 

Publishing your Thesis as a Book: a Question of Planning. Part One
http://www.phd2published.com/?p=2363

I've also done a blogpost of my own about writing readably.   If you're interested, you'll find it here.

(My Twitter presence: @Karenmca #acwri #phdadvice)

You write well, right?

For a bit of innocent entertainment (distraction, really), try this!

http://www.blablameter.com/index.php  The Blablameter detects any rubbish lingering in your perfect prose.  Try it for yourself!

Jobs.ac.uk tells you about contributing to an academic journal

New blogpost from the helpful folk at jobs.ac.uk:-

Academic writing: contributing to a journal

The emotional challenges of academic writing

A six-minute clip from the University of Manchester - video or mp3 audio.

"Carol Smart, May 2010, 6:49 minutes.In this clip, Carol Smart talks about the emotional challenges of writing: why is academic writing so difficult and what can we do to overcome these difficulties?"

Useful stuff.