LibGuides: SPH Writing Support Services: Other Helpful Resources

Succeeding in Graduate School

These resources will help you succeed in graduate school:

5 Secrets to Surviving (and Thriving in) a PhD Program (Elsevier Connect)
10 Tips to Finishing Your PhD Faster (Elsevier Connect)
How Should Grad Students Learn to Write? (from the blog, Scientist Sees Squirrel)
Tools for Success in Graduate School and Beyond (from UT Austin's Graduate School)
Writing & Speaking Guides (from TAMU Writing Center)
Writing Commons, the open-education home for writers
Writing and Presenting Your Thesis or Dissertation

Managing your time is critical for success in graduate school; these resources are designed to help you manage your time:

Managing Your Time (from Dartmouth's Academic Skills Center)
6 Time Management Tips for College Students (from Rasmussen College)
Time Management (handout from Stanford)
Time Management (series from Study Guides and Strategies Website)
Writing Assignment Calculator (from UP's Clark Library)

Reading lots, lots, and lots of scholarly literature is required in graduate school; these resources (videos) are designed to show you how to read faster:

Speed Reading for Graduate Students (from University of Oregon Graduate School)
Speed Reading Workshop (from UNC Charlotte)

Stinky Academic Writing and How to Fix It

The Chronicle of Higher Education has reprinted Steven Pinker's manifesto, "Why Academics' Writing Stinks," along with advice from four experts on how to fix it, in a booklet.

A PDF version of this booklet is provided below:

Why Academics' Writing Stinks

Logical Fallacies & Cognitive Biases

1. According to the Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies website, "A logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. Logical fallacies are like tricks or illusions of thought, and they're often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people." This website presents various logical fallacies.

A PDF version of a logical fallacies poster is provided below:

Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies

2. Cognitive biases are flaws in our thinking or judgment that arise from errors of memory, social attribution, and miscalculations. The Royal Society of Account Planning has produced a visual study guide to help you memorize all the cognitive biases.

A PDF version of the visual study guide is provided below, as well as PDF versions of other lists of cognitive biases:

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) Writing Style

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) is a writing strategy used extensively across the U.S. military for efficient communication.

Effective Writing for Army Leaders: The Army Writing Standard Redefined
In this article, Gieseman (2015) provides an excellent description of effective Army writing, in particular, and of effective writing, in general, and promotes the use of the NCTE beliefs and principles for writing instruction.
How to Write an Intelligence Product in the Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) Format
"This exercise will demonstrate how to write an intelligence product in the BLUF format, using an intelligence assessment produced by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) as an example."
Strategies and Benefits of Using the Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) Writing Strategy in Grant Proposals
In this article, Hooper (2013) “describes how BLUF was initially developed, how writers can benefit from following BLUF’s supporting strategies and tools, and how these strategies translate into a more efficient grant review process.”

"Predatory" Publishers Are Ruining Science

"Paging Dr. Fraud": The Fake Publishers That Are Ruining Science
"The rise of the Internet introduced the open-access model—journals such as Public Library of Science, or PLoS, which are free and widely available. Some of these publications, including PLoS, charge the author a fee for the privilege of having her work peer-reviewed and published."
Predatory Journals Recruit Fake Editor
In this Nature commentary, Katarzyna Pisanski and colleagues report their findings from an investigation that revealed that dozens of academic journals offered "Dr. Fraud," a fake scientist, a place on their editorial board.