scholarly journals The Bullshit Cartoon Abstract: In Praise of Creative Academic Writing

Author(s):  
Michiel Van Oudheusden ◽  
Frédéric Claisse ◽  
Hans Boeykens

This article introduces and discusses a novel form of scholarly output, the bullshit cartoon abstract, which can be used to illustrate summaries of fictitious research papers for both scholarly and lay readers. Presenting five self-authored examples that meticulously deal with trivial research subjects, from the use of visual mnemonics in education to disaster marketing, the article classifies these abstracts along seven dimensions (analytic, aesthetic, existential, satirical, pedagogical, recreational, and opportunistic) to illuminate how bullshit is enacted in academic writing. Building on this classification, it reappraises academic bullshit(ting) as potentially generative of new and multi-textured expressions of creative scholarship.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Wiseheart Sarnecka

Research is all about writing, but most PhD programs don’t teach students how to produce the writing needed to get a PhD, publish research, or win fellowships and grants. Plus, the academic environment can feel as cold and harsh as the South Pole. But just as penguins form social huddles to survive the Antarctic winter, researchers can form writing groups to help them learn how to write more, write better and be happier in academia. The Writing Workshop tells you everything you need to know about forming and running a successful writing group, and provides invaluable tips on how to become better at and more comfortable with academic writing. Written by a professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, this friendly guide is aimed at early-career researchers such as PhD students, postdoctoral scholars and new faculty members. Chapter topics include: How to form and run a writing workshop; how to plan research and writing projects over the long (one to five years) medium (ten to fifteen weeks) and short (one week) terms; how to establish and maintain a regular daily(ish) writing practice; how to write a literature review, research article, funding proposal or presentation; and how to revise for clarity at the document, paragraph, sentence and word levels. There are templates to help students set writing goals and log their writing practice, plus in-class exercises to help writers learn to hear the difference between effective and ineffective writing. Running through the book is the theme of well-being, and the idea that creativity comes from self-compassion rather than self-punishment. Writing is not only a way of producing scholarly output, but also a way of thinking, learning and generating new ideas. A regular writing practice grounded in a supportive community is something that every early-career scholar deserves and, with this book, it’s something every early-career scholar can have.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 1229
Author(s):  
Paula Tavares Pinto ◽  
Diva Cardoso de Camargo ◽  
Talita Serpa ◽  
Luciano Franco da Silva

Abstract: Authors from different countries have published their papers in English, aiming to promote their research results widely and to become internationally known by their peers. It is also true that, although they are aware of the English terminology used in their respective field, some authors still struggle with some features of academic writing such as collocations. Thus, this paper presents a discussion on the underuse and overuse traces of academic collocations by Brazilian authors who had their articles published in English on an open electronic library of scientific journals. In order to analyse the collocations used by these researchers, we compiled a 906,035-word corpus from eight different academic areas. The collocations observed were statistically compared to those from an academic corpus of English writings which contains texts produced by English-speaking authors. Results showed that there are more collocations underused than overused by the authors. The analysis proved that the collocation repertoire of researchers could be broadened by being pointed out during academic writing workshops.Keywords: academic collocations; research paper writing; corpus linguistics.Resumo: Autores de vários países têm publicado seus artigos científicos em inglês com o intuito de promover amplamente os resultados de suas pesquisas dentre a comunidade científica internacional. É verdade que, embora estejam cientes da terminologia utilizada no respectivo campo de pesquisa, alguns autores ainda apresentam dificuldade em lidar com certas características da escrita acadêmica, como o uso das colocações. Este artigo apresenta uma discussão sobre traços de sobreuso e subuso de colocações acadêmicas utilizadas por autores brasileiros que têm seus artigos publicados em inglês numa plataforma eletrônica aberta de artigos científicos. Para analisar as colocações utilizadas por estes pesquisadores, compilamos um corpus de 906.000 palavras a partir de oito áreas científicas. As colocações analisadas foram comparadas estatisticamente com as colocações de um corpus acadêmico de inglês que contém textos escritos por autores anglófonos. Os resultados mostraram que há mais traços de subuso que sobreuso de colocações acadêmicas utilizadas pelos pesquisadores e este repertório poderia ser ampliado se fossem destacadas durante cursos de escrita acadêmica em língua inglesa.Palavras-chave: colocações acadêmicas; escrita de artigos científicos; linguística de corpus.


Author(s):  
MANISANKAR SANNIGRAHI

English language is an important tool in academic writing, millions of students of thousands of Universities are using English to write research papers. The various obstacles that the researchers face while using English language is the core of this study.Ellis, R et al. (2008), The Study is about the faith of teachers and educators about writing corrective feedback and investigate the effects of it in subsequent writing. This study also shows that CF is helpful in the context of EFL. In this paper the comparison of the written CF on accuracy of using English articles as a reference between the unfocused and focused students of Japanese University had been done.


Author(s):  
SARALA SHOBINI M

Rao, C. S. (2018). English is the language accepted globally for academic Research. It is the choice for many scholarly publications and journals. It is the official language for academic and scientific world of research. It is undoubtedly used for writing research papers and scientific articles by academicians and researchers. English used for academic writing is entirely different than the English which has been used for teaching.


2021 ◽  
pp. 234-250
Author(s):  
RADHIKA C

English as a universal academic language enables the international flexibility of researchers. Hynninen, N., &Kuteeva, M. (2017) have discussed the use of English in academic writing. In recent days most of the international research journals prefer English to be their choice due to dominated L2 writers. Writing a research paper is complex and academic research paper writing should be clear, formal, and precise. This study states that in what way the English language used for research writing in their domain by the researchers


Author(s):  
Virginia LoCastro ◽  
Mayumi Masuko

Incidents and anecdotal evidence accrue of learners’ resorting to plagiarism in their essays and research papers. There seem to be three possible reasons that plagiarism is common among students writing in English as a second language. First is the desire to cut corners. Second, there are differences in cultural practices. Third, the learners have a lack of skills and/or language proficiency. We wanted to begin to document the actual situation in Japan. Therefore, we decided to conduct an ethnographic type of study in which we would seek evidence from a variety of sources. Although we focused our attention on written assignments of learners within the classroom context, specifically examining plagiarising the work of others, we also examine the broader social context.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Sujito Sujito ◽  
Wildan Mahir Muttaqien

  This study reports pattern of rhetoric in argumentative essay of academic writing accros three achievement categories: fast learner, medium learner, and slow learner.  Descriptive correlation between the  pattern of the rhetoric and overall quality of academic writing was also identified. This research was descriptive study using content analysis approach. The research subjects were 3 classes of semester VII EFL student out of 9 classes selected  in purposive sampling. Pattern of rhetoric in students work was analyzed in seven categories: thesis statement, reservation, background information, rational appeal, affective appeal, conclusion, and hesitation. ESL composition profile by Jacobs was employed  to measure students’ academic argumentative essay. The finding showed that rhetoric pattern categories in three different writing achievers was failed to use. However, strong connectivity between pattern of the seven rhetoric categories and overall quality of academic writing across level of achievement was significantly linked.  


Human Arenas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Manuti ◽  
Giuseppe Mininni ◽  
Rosa Scardigno ◽  
Ignazio Grattagliano

Abstract In line with the general aims of scientific textuality, research papers in the biomedical and psychiatric academic domains mostly attempt to demonstrate the validity of their assumptions and to contrast with the sense of uncertainty that sometimes frames their conclusions. Moving from this premise, the present paper aimed to focus on these features and to investigate if and the extent to which biomedical and psychiatric texts convey different social-epistemic rhetoric of uncertainty. In view of this, a qualitative study was conducted adopting diatextual analysis to investigate a corpus of 298 scientific articles taken from the British Medical Journal and from the British Journal of Psychiatry published in 2013. Our analytical approach led to identifying two different types of social-epistemic rhetoric. The first one was mostly oriented to “describing” the world, accounting for the body-mind nexus as conceptualized within the “medical” point of view. On the other hand, the second one was oriented to “interpreting” the world, debating the problematic and critical features of the body-mind relationship as developed within the psychiatry discursive realm.


Author(s):  
Suoling Zhu ◽  
Wen Shi

This paper analyzes the years of publication, authors and their institutions, journal titles, and keywords of research papers relevant to academic libraries published in the 18 core journals of library and information science, which were downloaded from the full-text database of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). The purpose of this paper is to discover the distribution of the research subjects, hot topics in library and information research, and development trends in the age of big data.


2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 2-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clement Chukwuma Okeji ◽  
Monica Eberechukwu Eze ◽  
Nneka Maureen Chibueze

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which academic librarians in Nigerian universities use self-archiving options to make their research papers visible globally. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was designed using SurveyMonkey software to collect data from 394 academic librarians in Nigerian Universities. Findings The study revealed that the academic librarians in Nigerian universities know and actually use self-archiving options such as ResearchGate, institutional repository and Academia.edu to self-archive their publications. While other promotional tools such as kudos, Mendeley.com and personal websites/servers are not popularly used by the academic librarians. Increased exposure of previously published work, broadens the dissemination of academic research generally, and increases institutions’ visibility were among the factors the academic librarians indicated as very important that motivate them to contribute their scholarly output to self-archiving options. Research limitations/implications One major challenge to the study is that many academic librarians in Nigeria do not check their e-mails regularly to enable them to respond to a request to participate in an online survey; some of them do not have stable internet facilities, whereas others are reluctant to respond to an online questionnaire. These reasons led to a low response rate which makes it difficult to generalize findings. Practical implications Findings from the study will create awareness for academic librarians in developing countries to see the need to self-archive their pre-print and accepted version of their papers in different self-archiving platforms. Originality/value Self-archiving of papers by authors will lead to an increased visibility of the author and possible citation of the work and chances of collaboration with international colleagues for research projects.


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