Writers' Lab: Turning your dissertation into journal papers

Depending on your institution's guidelines, you will either finish your PhD by having a number of papers accepted for publication, or by writing a "big book"-style thesis.

This post is entirely aimed at those of us who spend months on end delivering a thesis of several hundred of pages. We might be overly proud of having our baby finally sent out into the world, but then it will dawn upon us: the majority of the researchers would prefer to read a 10-page paper about a more specific part of this research than plow through our 400 pages of labor.

And thus, for most of us "big book"-thesis-writing-and-publishing folks, we'll need to revisit all our material again after publication of the thesis, and turn it into a number of journal papers.

If you are lucky enough to get into a post-doc position that is fully research-oriented, you have all the time (or at least, you might think you have) to write your papers. If you venture out into the industry, you'll have to do it in your evenings and weekends.

Regardless the time constraints, it's still extremely valuable to take the step of turning your dissertation into journal papers. I'm in the very middle of this process (and I mean with "middle" that it surrounds myself, not that I am convinced that in X months, I'll have them all out, written and then accepted) - and so far, I've made the following observations.

1. Plan for it

After you graduate, life is going to take over. You might be changing jobs, moving to a different place/city/country, and these papers might start to slip to the back of your mind. Take some time while your dissertation is still fresh from the press, and ask yourself the following questions:
- Which chapters or subchapters would serve as a good journal paper?
- Which journal should I submit my work to?
- How much time do I think I need for writing this paper?

Then, start planning paper by paper. I'm currently assuming that I can produce a paper per month or 1,5 months' period of time, besides all my other duties and transitioning to my new job. I then give my co-authors a month to send their feedback. Then, I plan another 2 weeks to implement the comments of my co-authors. I plan to start writing the next paper whenever the draft of the previous one is done, so that I create a constant stream of writing, revising, sending to co-authors and submitting.

2. Co-authors

Now that you have -hopefully- worked well with some committee members to deliver the final draft of your dissertation, taking into account their advice, is there any part of your research that particularly benefited from their input? If you are planning to write a paper on this topic, consider inviting this committee member to be a co-author.

Writing with other authors than your standard folks (typically daily supervisor and promotor), will improve your writing, and is also considered well in most fields. Publishing with different authors shows that you can work across research groups, universities and that you are ready to extended into the world.

3. Not all papers are born equally

Some papers will roll out from your dissertation in a mere few writing sessions. For other papers you'll be sweating and sighing as you try to force a piece of research into a stand-alone narrative. Don't get mad at yourself or your work - just accept this fact as it is. And if the frustration becomes too much, just head out and have an ice cream.

Have you published several papers from the work in your dissertation? How did you organize this, and what advice would you like to share with me?

Writers' Lab: Experimenting with Expertise

Today, I have the pleasure of inviting Dr. Scheg to share her views on the unique type of writing that is dissertation writing. Dr. Abigail Scheg is an Assistant Professor of English at Elizabeth City State University and an Adjunct Dissertation Chair for Northcentral University. She researches and publishes in the areas of composition, online pedagogy, and popular culture. She loves working with doctoral students and is dedicated to creating and participating in networks for doctoral student support. Follow her on Twitter @ag_scheg.  

As a doctoral student, I proclaimed a certain level of expertise in my subject area: online pedagogy and teacher preparation. I read, toiled, read, labored, read, wrote, and edited until I began to have dreams about Allen and Seaman and the No Significant Difference phenomenon. Since all of my degrees are in English-related fields, I felt fairly confident in my writing abilities as I drafted my actual dissertation chapters. I felt confident until I received the response from my Chair, who had obviously given this same speech a number of times,“The dissertation is a unique genre. Basically it's a new type of writing that you'll only use this once and then you can continue with your usual style.”

And just like that, everything that I knew seemed to slip away. If I couldn't even write it correctly, which I thought was my strong point, then did I really deserve to write it? Should I be working on a dissertation? Are people actually going to listen to me talk about online pedagogy?

The dissertation process is a unique juxtaposition of being a subject-matter expert and a neophyte. Jimmy Buffett's song, “If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me,” has the line, “I've had good days and bad days and going half mad days,” which, if I didn't know any better, would say that Jimmy wrote in the middle of the dissertation process. 

Some days spent reading journal articles will fit gloriously into the puzzle; a study will represent exactly the information you needed in chapter three. Other days will be spent staring at the same journal article for hours, unable to comprehend why one article was cited in another when they seem to have no ties whatsoever.

Now I find myself on the other side of the puzzle as a dissertation director. I strive to have a very open and honest dialogue with my doctoral students about the process of writing a dissertation. While the entire process can be isolating and frustrating, I always reach out to students that I haven't heard from and call them back towards the light. I find that students are usually very well-versed in their topics, but hesitant on the presentation of their documents or the appropriate length, tone, or amount of research in a finished chapter. 

Let me reiterate the advice from my Chair, a dissertation is an entirely unique writing process and provided that this is probably your first doctoral program, you're allowed to be relatively unfamiliar with nuances of this genre.  That is not to say that you should be entirely unfamiliar; read other people's dissertations. Learn about the styles that different universities use; look at the chapter breakdowns and try to recognize patterns. Make informed decisions about your writing based on the other dissertations that you have seen and then use your Chair as a sounding board.

My wonderful Chair helped me organize the information in my later chapters. I had the data, I had the analysis, but I couldn't figure out how to piece it together to fit the parameters of the chapter guidelines. He helped me to take the information and fit it into the puzzle.

One of the most important things that I learned about the dissertation process that made me want to get involved with doctoral students was this: Nobody knows what they're doing. Once a person reaches that stage in their education, there is a sense of confidence in their understanding of content materials, but until you have successfully completed a dissertation, you may not understand the genre. Accept your status as subject-matter expert and dissertation-writing neophyte and press on. Go, scholar, go.

 

Writers' Lab: How to write your Conclusions, Part II: Doctoral Dissertation

Last week, we discussed how to write the "Summary and Conclusions" section for a paper. We looked at what we don't want to see in this section in any paper - regardless of your excuse - and then we discussed how I go about writing this very section of a paper.

Today, we are looking at writing the final chapter of your dissertation, or at least, my 2 cents on that topic. We are assuming that you did some decent planning, so that you don't need to write your final chapter the night before your draft dissertation is due. I can't repeat it often enough: keep some buffer in your planning so that, whatever happens, you leave yourself the luxury of time to edit your work.

Before looking at the HOW of writing the final chapter of the dissertation, let's zoom into the GOALS for this chapter. Regardless of your field, you will have specific messages that you want your readers to remember. For my dissertation (engineering), my specific goals were the following - and elements of this can apply over the boundaries of disciplines:

• Give an overview of the main original contributions: I wanted to serve these up on a shiny tray for the committee and readers to show that where precisely my contributions are situated, within my research field. No need for unnecessary modesty, simply listing your contributions can be quite helpful to start a summary.
• Summarize what was said in the different chapters: My goal for the final chapter was to have an executive summary of the entire dissertation. I was shooting for about 10 pages, and ended up with 13 pages for my final chapter (book size, that is - not A4/letter). For every reader pressed for time or not so interested in my work, I wanted to have this chapter ready so that they can get a nice eagle view of the dissertation.
• Release the structure of the chapters: You might not agree with me on this point, but I wanted the summary to be rather thematic than by chapter. Therefore, I selected a number of main topic and summarized around these ideas. The overall sequence of these topics did follow the sequence of the chapters in my dissertation.
• Reaching out to practice: This goal might be typical for a more practice-oriented topic as mine, but I still think including a paragraph in which you reflect upon the practical implications of your results into the your field is very valuable. This paragraph can be detailed and ready-to-implement, such as the list of recommendations that I included for engineers assessing reinforced concrete slab bridges in shear, but it can also be as general as pointing towards a few ideas that can be further worked out by practitioners. Having a link to practice, by all accounts, seems to be valuable to me.
• Future work. As much as you might have done during your PhD and studies, you'll never have it all finished. As in, there will always be a number of open ends, questions that remain lingering in the sideline. That does not mean that your work isn't ready for a doctorate, that simply means another researcher might like to pick up from here, or you might like to assign these topics later on to a masters' student.

Given that we now have defined the elements that we want to include in the Conclusions section, it is now time to look at how we will be doing this. The key element here is reflection, reflection and then some more reflection.

• If someone were to read nothing but your conclusions chapter, what would you want them to remember from your work?
• What is your take-home message for your audience?

These are the questions to ask yourself, and to keep asking yourself while writing your final chapter.

As I explained last week, I write the "Summary and Conclusions" section of a paper by taking notes while proofreading the first draft. For the final chapter of my dissertation, I used a scaled-up version of this approach:

• I had used the "proofread, note, summarize" approach for the final section ("Conclusions") of every single chapter.
• I then went out to copy-paste all these summaries together into the final chapter.
• From that raw material, I started cooking up the main ideas for the overall summary.
• Then, I added the sections with the practical implications and the future research.
• Finally, I reread it, asking myself if this is really the very core of my work or not.

Using this approach, I could not only write my final chapter very quickly (about 2 to 3 days of work for the first version), but I also kept reminding myself frequently of staying on course, staying close to the core of my work and trying to make the final chapter the executive summary of the entire dissertation.

How did you write your final dissertation chapter, or how are you planning to do this? Is your approach similar, or completely different? Share your experience in the comments section!

Writers' Lab: The final months of the dissertation

"The final months of a PhD are incredibly messy," says James Clewett - and I couldn't agree more.
Unless you are doing your PhD in your home country and will roll into a faculty position naturally at your institution (there are rumors some people still get that opportunity), you will be searching for a job, moving out of your place, boxing up your stuff again and arranging long-distance moving.

I wasn't quite expecting it all to be so messy, but in between getting the thesis to the printer, filling out HR forms for my next job, attending 7 conferences to show the world the results of my research, finding babysits for my cat, ending all insurance and utilities contracts I had in the Netherlands and buying plane tickets, I reached a moment where I felt massive overwhelm.

The only piece of advice that I have to offer you, and what saved my sanity through this, is to just keep your head clear, plan realistically, allow enough time for sleep and recovery and just try to do your best without straining yourself out of bounds.

If you need to move away after your PhD and find another job, just be prepared for a messy period of time. It seems to be part of the rite of passage.

You can watch the interview with James Clewett below - I'm so grateful he spoke up about the messiness of the final months of the dissertation.

Writers' Lab: How much time does it take to write a dissertation?

As I've been keeping track of how I spend my time in ManicTime, I can now assess how much time writing my dissertation took me, and how much time rewriting and implementing comments took me.

When I finished my first draft, I thought the biggest chunk of work was done.

So. Wrong.

I spent a total of a little over 600 hours on my dissertation, over a time period from March 2012 to May 2013.

The following list shows you how my time budget breaks down:

Writing the first draft: 205 hours
Rewriting the first draft for approval by promotor and copromotor: 123 hours
Working on the comments of my committee: 255 hours
Final preparations on layout to get it ready for printing and publishing: 30 hours

As you can see: writing the first draft is only 1/3 of all the work. There's much more to be done afterwards...

If we break it down into time, the chronology of my dissertation looked like this:


Writing the first draft: March 2012 - November 2012

I delivered my first draft on November 14th. Most of my first 4 chapters as well as my 7th chapter were written in weekends and on the evenings, as I couldn't find the peace and calm for writing during the office hours, where regular research and teaching activities were in full swing. Over summer, I wrote a set of conference papers for the conferences that I was planning to attend in 2013, and in September and October I carried out the research for chapters 5 and 6.

Rewriting the first draft for approval by promotor and copromotor: early December 2012 - end of January 2013

As so many PhD students, I had to try rather hard to convince my busy supervisors to sit down, read the draft and provide me with their comments. As I had been working on my theory in silence, and not discussed it until I delivered the first draft, it took a number of meetings and significant rewriting of my chapter 5 to actually get my message across. In fact, this chunk of research was something I hadn't shown in a presentation yet, nor written down in a paper, so it naturally took me more time t crystallize my message.

Working on the comments of my committee: March 2013- mid April 2013

That was one hell of a busy time! The committee members get maximum 3 weeks for their feedback, I calculated a month, but the time it takes to pin a meeting with everybody added another 2 weeks. Working through the comments also added about 100 pages to the final document (also a number of extra Annexes).

Final preparations on layout to get it ready for printing and publishing: first half of May 2013

I found it very hard to stop proofreading, and to just let it go and accept that it can't be perfect. The final preparations were mostly related to fishing for typos, and getting my layout ready for the printer. Don't ask me about putting landscape tables on a portrait page - I spent three full days fretting away at that, and I still have a Table of Doom in my final dissertation.

How much time did you spend on rewriting as compared to writing? Do my results correspond to yours, or was your first draft an immediate hit?

Writers' Lab: Writing your acknowledgements

Your acknowledgements might be the only part of your dissertation that your friends and family will ever read (and probably some other researchers in your field too).

While acknowledgements typically have a lighter tone than the rest of the dissertation, it doesn't make writing them something you finish within 20 minutes.

So when you are planning to write your chapters, you need to understand that compiling everything into the entire dissertation might take some additional time. You'll need to add not only your acknowledgements, but also your CV and make sure everything is in the same layout.

Sometimes I open an old dissertation from my research group, and I can really feel the despair of the final weeks of writing and getting everything finished speak through in the acknowledgements. While I can totally relate to those feelings, I don't think it is necessary to show these in your dissertation. The feelings will pass once you defend, but those words will remain there.

My colleagues told me to write my acknowledgements early on, and I followed that advice. I wrote my acknowledgements in November, as I was preparing my first draft. And I'm very glad I did so before getting sucked into the frustrations and anger/sadness that can arise at later stages in the writing/editing process.

I've restated a few sentences, and I've added some people that I forgot to name, but the core of the text hasn't been altered since November.

Therefore, if you are writing your chapters, don't forget to write your acknowledgements!

Writer's Lab: How to stay motivated when writing an entire dissertation

That very beginning of writing your dissertation - chapter 1, the introduction - and then nothing but the flashing cursor in your writing software... This situation is probably the beginning of 99% of all dissertations.

The end is also quite the same for most of us: compiling a list of notations, adding the references if you haven't used an automatic importing system, and compiling the table of contents.

What happens in between those moments can be a bit messier. You might just sit down and write it all out, or you might come across gaps in your work and spend a few more weeks to figure things out.

Even though you might be able to write your dissertation quickly, chances are still that you will hit a rough patch at some point in the process. If you want to stay motivated when working on such a large project, here are 7 ideas to try out when you need to pick up your motivation again.

1. Reread an important paper

If you want to get your inspiration flowing again, then try to remember which work inspired you in the first place. When you are stuck somewhere, reread an important paper that was essential to your work. Or read a new publication in your field. Remember how we discussed earlier how reading sparks creativity?

2. Edit a previous chapter

Do some work that doesn't require much of your hard thinking deep working capacities, but that needs to be done to move forward. You can for example edit a chapter that you wrote earlier, and wait until your bad mood drifts away.

3. Think about your propositions

If you need to defend both your dissertation and 10 propositions as in the Netherlands, you might like to take your thoughts and worries away from your dissertation and look for good citations or ideas to use for your propositions.

4. Take some time off

You know yourself best - when you need a break, take some time to recharge and refuel. That doesn't need to be an entire holiday, but you can simply take an evening off and indulge in some things you love, or you can take a weekend to yourself and try to watch some inspiring documentaries or read some thought-provoking books.

5. Have a discussion with your supervisor

If you're really stuck and you are doubting the quality of your work, then don't suffer in silence. Speak up and ask for a meeting with your supervisor to discuss the difficulties that you are facing.

6. Don't stress over it

Friction and creative blocks are inherent parts of the entire process of creating something - and a 100k word thesis is certainly "something". So be prepared: you will run into some creative blocks, but that is just fine! That does not mean that something is wrong with you as a PhD candidate.

7. Set boundaries

At incredibly busy times in the lab and with my funding agency, I've ran on an 8am to 10pm schedule to get all the measurements done and all the simulations run. For writing, that just doesn't work (or at least not, to write an entire thesis). Set office hours for yourself, even if you work as a part time PhD. Know when you can work on your dissertation, and make a realistic planning of what you can achieve.

How did you get from the flickering cursor to compiling your table of contents? What challenges did you face along the way, and how did you resolve them?

Writers' Lab: How to put a landscape table on a portrait page

One of the major moments of intense frustration I went through in preparing the final draft for my dissertation, was the moment when I needed to revert the landscape pages that contained large tables back into portrait pages.

Why was that necessary?
The printer/publisher needs to have all pages as portrait pages, 17cm x 24cm. Landscape pages should either be rotated, or given as portrait pages, with their contents turned 90 degrees.

I opted for turning everything back into portrait pages, so that I could have my headers and footers uniform throughout the document.

So, I searched online on how to put a landscape table in a portrait page. It looked easy, make a textbox, paste the table into the textbox and turn the textbox 90 degrees.
The problem is: if you convert an MS Word document into a PDF file, these textbox-tables show up as completely empty. I tried different PDF convertors, some of them already crash on the size of my dissertation, all others leave a blank where my table was supposed to go.

After going way over my boiling temperature and feeling ready to throw my chili con carne over the grumpy security dude of the building, I finally found a way to work around this problem.

So, if you meet the same guidelines for the printer/publisher of your dissertation, these steps can help you out:

1. Have you landscape table in MS Word.
2. Convert that one single page with that table into a PDF
3. Open that PDF in Adobe Illustrator.
4. Clean out the "damage" (in my case; the font Times New Roman Bold Italic went lost, and some greek symbols showed up as a crossed-out little box).
5. Clean out everything that doesn't belong to the table.
6. Save the table as an .eps file.
7. Import the .eps file as an image into your MS Word document.

Yes, this method is really tedious, but at least it will print correctly in the PDF document that needs ultimately needs to go to the printer.

Happy dissertating!

Breaking News: The Dissertation

I'm breaking my regular stream of posts to let you know that my dissertation is now available online through the TU Delft Repository. The printed copies should be ready on Thursday - 250 books in total are coming my way.

Even though I still need to defend the thesis, on June 14th, in Delft the thesis gets printed and published before the actual date of the defense, which also serves as commencement ceremony.

 

Here's the metadata of my dissertation, which you can access here:

Author: Lantsoght, E.O.L.
Promotor: Walraven, J.C.
Faculty: Civil Engineering and Geosciences
Department: Structural Engineering
Type: Dissertation
Date: 2013-06-14
ISBN: 9789088916328
Keywords: reinforced concrete · slabs · effective width · shear · experiments · assessment of bridges
Rights: (c) 2013 Lantsoght, E.O.L. · Creative Commons BY NC SA

The capacity of existing solid slab bridges in the Netherlands is under discussion for two reasons: 1) the increased traffic loads and volumes and 2) the fact that the majority of the existing bridges were built before 1976, and are thus reaching the end of their original life span. Upon assessment according to the governing codes, a large number of slab bridges are found to be shear-critical. However, the shear capacity as prescribed by the codes is based on experiments on beams in shear. Slabs subjected to concentrated loads (such as truck wheel load) are assumed to have additional capacity as a result of transverse load redistribution. This thesis studies the capacity of slabs under concentrated loads close to supports. A literature review, resulting in a slab shear database with 215 experiments from the literature, is used to study the mechanisms at work in one-way and two-way shear. For this research, 156 experiments were carried out on 38 half-scale bridge deck specimens. The experimental results are studied by means of a parameter analysis. To determine the capacity of slabs in shear subjected to concentrated loads, two methods are proposed in the thesis: 1) the Modified Bond Model, a new theory to determine the capacity of slabs subjected to concentrated loads; and 2) by using a code extension proposal that results from probabilistic calculations following the safety philosophy of the Eurocodes. Finally, the link to the assessment practice is made by formulating recommendations, improving the Quick Scan assessment tool of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, and then applying this to cases of existing solid slab bridges.

Thesis Distance: Inner resistance

Mid November I finished the first draft of my thesis, printed it and handed a copy of it to my 2 supervisors. Shortly afterwards, I headed to Pittsburgh for holidays. I intended to take my thesis print with me, and proofread it in the beautiful library of Pittsburgh.

And then, I decided to take a step back.

I decided to take a Real Holiday and not to touch my thesis until returning.

I forced myself to create a distance between what I wrote and myself.

And to be honest, it was very hard. Here, I give you some insights in why I found it difficult to take a break (you'd think I'd be more than happy to relax after such a big effort, no?):

1. Tunnel vision

For many months, I have been planning my writing and have been focused on the thesis and the thesis alone. Finishing the thesis not only became my first priority, but also took over my entire mind. Realizing how much of tunnel vision I am experiencing is already one step towards returning to the world outside of the thesis again.

2. Stress

Admittedly, I am terrified by the idea of not graduating within the 4 years of my program. It creates a certain type of stress that makes me act like a hamster in a wheel: keep running keep running and keep busy to make sure it will all get done in time.

3. Perfectionism

I dislike the opening lines of my first chapter. I've wanted to change them around again recently, but I decided that instead I should ask the opinions of my supervisors. As a perfectionist, I want to keep on editing my text and polishing it and proofreading it. Again, taking a step aside and waiting two weeks to continue working on my thesis, helps me to reflect on which editing is necessary and which comes out of perfectionism.

Have you walked away from your thesis at a certain point in the process? I'd love to hear your stories in the comments below!

Seven simple steps to tackle writer's block

As a PhD student, writing is one of my main activities. I've been trying to improve my academic writing over the past year as part of my PhD journey. Although I haven't had to face a giant writer's block yet, I do remember staring at a white screen for hours and hours, trying to write an abstract, but always deleting parts and trying to start over new. With a few basic principles, I've overcome this slight panic which I feel when I'm faced with a new document, staring at me in all its whiteness.

1. Don't postpone writing 

Don't wait until you're in your last year and need to start writing your thesis. Although this statement is common knowledge by now, there are still students who wait until all their experiments are finished to look at their data, analyze them and then write about it. By the time these students reach the point of writing, there is quite a burden on their shoulders. Students like me, who are funded from outside university, need to write partially finished reports whenever a deadline of a part of the project is near. This pushed me to start off with the "easy" writing: the description of every single test which I've been carrying out. An introduction to the test setup and measurement methods came along with that, and without noticing I had some basic material to describe my experimental work.

2. Learn from your examples

There's nothing wrong with being inspired by a great paper or a very clear thesis. The outline of my papers is usually tied to a strict scheme since I have been mainly describing my experiments, but I've been inspired by other papers that describe their experimental program very clearly. When someone has a good and structured setting out there, it's an ideal opportunity to learn from it and use it as a basis for your own writing. Your final product won't look anything like the original.

3. Have material ready

I have probably more (not-so) random documents on my computer with loose ideas, citations and copy-pasted pictures and paragraphs from papers than I have finished documents. I love having material ready and being able to start brewing a story from some ingredients. It feels much more motivating to me than to be staring an empty document.

4. Body first

Don't bother finding the perfect opening sentence for your paper. Just start with the core of your writing: some background information and literature review, and then off to your own contributions. Once these thoughts are out there, it's much easier to write an introduction and conclusion which embody the main ideas of your piece.

5. Let the ideas flow

Try not to correct yourself and reread too much while you are typing out your ideas, as this will only slow you down. Emptying your head first helps to let the ideas flow out in your writing. You'll be proofreading anyway later on, so you'll still have plenty of opportunity to correct and improve every sentence. However, having an entire part written, will help you keep an eye on what really matters: the flow of the story, not a collection of perfectly written sentences. 

6. Explore different facets of writing

I've always quite liked writing, but I used to keep a distinct line between my creative writing and my university stuff (which I didn't enjoy writing previously). Over the past few months, I've exploring as many facets of writing as possible: writing poems, writing my diary, keeping this blog, trying to force my thoughts into 140 characters (and I hope to add writing short stories to this list soon as well). Having the habit of writing helps all possible forms of writing, academic writing included. Writing can be lots of fun once you've learned to appreciate it.

7. Fresh air

Still staring at a blank sheet,  no matter what you've tried? Then don't be too harsh on yourself and go and get some fresh air. Play outside, have some fun, sleep over it. Tomorrow gives you another possibility (assuming you've been good at planning and you're not writing a few hours before your deadline).

What helps you to avoid staring at an empty document and gets you started to write?