Category Archives: literature review

making your writing authoritative – a citation revision strategy

Posted on April 19, 2021 by pat thomson

Readers expect academic writers to know what they are talking about. We meet that expectation by grounding our writing in good scholarship – and making it sound authoritative. Authoritative. You can see the words author and authority contained within authoritative … Continue reading →

Posted in authority in writing, citation, citations, laundry list, revision, revision strategy | Tagged citation practice, citations, Pat Thomson, revision strategy, writing with authority | 8 Comments

writing for publication – finding an angle and an argument

Posted on February 1, 2021 by pat thomson

This is a story, a my story, which leads to eight pointers about writing for publication. I’m currently writing a paper. Well, yes, always writing something. But right now it’s a paper. A paper designed to do some thinking work … Continue reading →

Posted in argument, choosing the right journal, contribution, journal article, journal publication, literature a resource, the angle | Tagged angle, argument, contribution, Pat Thomson, writing a journal article | 5 Comments

seven prompts for writing with literatures – #startingthePhD

Posted on November 16, 2020 by pat thomson

if you have just started your doctorate, then your supervisor has no doubt asked you to read, and read a lot. By now, you probably have quite a few texts entered in your bibliographic software. You can start to write … Continue reading →

Posted in acwrimo, grey literatures, literature a resource, literature review, starting the PhD, writing prompts | Tagged academic writing, Academic writing Pat Thomson, acwrimo, starting the PhD, writing prompts, writing with literature | 4 Comments

#litreview. Defining – It’s your ‘take’

Posted on September 28, 2020 by pat thomson

Most of us work in occupied research territories. Other researchers have been around at least some of the things that we are concerned with. Their work offers particular interpretations and perhaps ‘evidence’ that may – or may not – be … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, argument, definition, literature review, literature reviews | Tagged argument, definition, literature review, literature work, Pat Thomson | Leave a comment

#litreview – getting to argument, part 2.

Posted on September 21, 2020 by pat thomson

Writing about literatures doesn’t mean writing a summary of what you have read. You dont want a paragraph by paragraph laundry list of the texts you’ve been reading organised into a rough kind of order. Of course you write summaries … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, argument, literature review, literature themes | Tagged academic writing, argument, literature review, literature themes, Pat Thomson, working with literatures | Leave a comment

#LitReview – Getting to structure, part one

Posted on September 7, 2020 by pat thomson

If you are about to start reading for your doctorate, or are already in the reading phase, then you know that you are reading in order to: refine your research question, locate your work in the field, identify your potential … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, literature review, literature review structure, literature reviews, literature themes | Tagged literature review, literature themes, literature work, Pat Thomson | 5 Comments

how to start your literature review

Posted on August 3, 2020 by pat thomson

Thinking of starting a doctorate? Already deep into PhDing and worried about the literature work? Well, when it comes to working with literatures, the old saying that there’s more than one way to skin a cat might be ugly, but … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, literature mapping, literature review, literature reviews, literature themes | Tagged literature review, Pat Thomson | Leave a comment

reading against the literatures – #litreview

Posted on June 15, 2020 by pat thomson

Advice on literature reviews pretty well always say something like – the literature review should say what’s already been said about your topic – or – you need to bring together the particular literatures that your study is going to … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, literature a resource, literature mapping, literature review, literature reviews | Tagged critical reading, literature review, Literatures, Pat Thomson | 10 Comments

I’m writing a journal article – what literatures do I choose?

Posted on January 27, 2020 by pat thomson

I’m often asked about the literatures sections of journal articles. Not your literatures based paper of course but your standard empirical paper. They only want a short section! I can’t cram everything I’ve read into a few paragraphs – how … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, journal article, literature review, literature reviews | Tagged academic writing, journal article, literature section, Pat Thomson | 3 Comments

getting to grips with new literatures

Posted on January 13, 2020 by pat thomson

Over time all researchers build a knowledge base about their key interests. A large part of this knowledge is a core set of literatures. They/we do need to keep up to date, but they/we can rely on – and use … Continue reading →