November is Academic Writing Month! Writing theses, articles or books is a key skill for graduate students and researchers, and it is not an easy one to master. To help students master it, the Graduate Institute Library offers a wide choice of print and e-books on this topic. These resources are often updated and presented in a dedicated libguide, as well as a temporary display in the entrance of the Library.
Writing a thesis
Students at the Graduate Institute are usually required to write a Master’s or PhD thesis. Naturally, doing this for the first time in your life can seem daunting. Fortunately, Yvonne N. Bui, Lynn Nigaard and John Biggam offer some welcome guidance to master’s students.
The editorial offer on PhD theses writing manuals is much more developed: even a bestselling author like Umberto Eco has written a seminal book on the subject. But there are a lot of other books in our library to help PhD researchers with advice on how to write a watertight thesis, how to travel safely to a done dissertation, or how to take control of the writing process. Doctoral studies are long and can put students’ mental health to the test. However, for our francophone students, we even have a funny graphic novel to help with the pressure.
Publish and do not perish
And graduation is not the end! Many dream of publishing their thesis as a book or as one or several articles. It takes a lot of rewriting to make it publishable, and again, the library has books to help you revise your dissertation to make it a book. Getting it published, that’s the motto, and it requires some strategy.
Writing and publishing are long-term companions of every scholar. Writing, in English, often a second language, remains an arduous process. Academic writing has its own rules, and it’s quite difficult to get to grips with them, stay motivated and be productive. The goal, of course, is to be published. More than that, to be read (yes, the readers matter!), because you want your research to have an impact. Publish and flourish, this is the dream of many aspiring scholars.
Field-specific resources
Academic writing has its rules, but every field has its own rules! So our 371.3 “Academic Research and Publishing” is not the only shelf where students and researchers can find interesting books. Anthropologists can visit shelf 300.723, or read this e-book. Historians will find books on writing history on shelf 930, like, for example, The Nelson Guide to Writing in History.
Check out some of our titles on Academic writing on display in the entrance of the Library.
Illustration (cropped): “Be seeing you“, CC BY-NC-SA Oliver Hammond
Geneva Graduate Institute Library Blog 
One thought on “Taming academic writing”