A Short Treatise on Academic Writing

Any student in education is required to do some academic writing in your student career. Any academic writing starts with a strong literature review, whether you are working on a position paper, an editorial, a conference presentation, or a grant proposal.

I was recently asked the questions: What is the difference between an editorial, a position paper, and a literature review. Well here are some internet resources to help you make sense of this:

Editorial:
http://www.snn-rdr.ca/snn/nr_reporterstoolbox/writingeditorials.html

Position Papers:
http://homepages.uhwo.hawaii.edu/~writing/position.htm
http://www.ceu.hu/writing/position.htm
http://www.tcc.edu/students/resources/writcent/HANDOUTS/writing/pospaper.htm

Literature Reviews:
http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/literaturereview.html
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/litrev.html
http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html

As I said - any academic writing has to come from a base of kowledge, and you gain this knowledge by doing a literature review. The way I approach a new subject I want to know or write about is:

1. I do a search in the article database through the University website, and google scholar. many research articles are now available online in fulltext.

2. I find an article by a person whose name I recognize as an expert in the field.
If I don’t know who the expert is, I try to find the person who has the most articles written about the topic or I look for a person who has written a book about the topic. Usually, that way you can get a fair start.

4. I scan the article, and I pay particular attention to the headings, so that I can see what issues are discussed around the topic.

5. I make a note of those issues and sub-topics.

6. Then (and this is very important), I look at the reference list at the end of the article. This way I can find other authors and other issues related to the topic.

7. I find some of those articles, and repeat steps 4 - 6 with them.

In this way, I start to build up a database of authors and important issues around the topic. In fact, I make a folder on my computer and download the pdfs or doc files of the articles into that folder. If there are enough articles about specific sub-topics, I make sub folders. You could of course make actual paper folders if you prefer to work that way, but I find the electronic stuff easier. Before you know it, you have the basis for a good lit review.

Just remember to back up your hard drive regularly. You don't want to lose all that research!

You really cannot do much writing before you have done this. When you have a grasp of the issues, you can build your outline, whether you are planning to write a complete lit review, an editorial, an article, a research proposal, or whatever else you want to write.

Happy researching!