writing – Alexander Vondrous

What is a PhD Thesis?

20. May 2014 by sasa Leave a Comment

A PhD thesis is a written scientific work between 9 [source] and 2000 [source] pages. The average page count varies for different scientific fields as depicted in this nice diagram from Robert T. Gonzalez Blog

The question what a phd is, should be of interest for a phd student. If you cannot find or formulate your definition of a phd, then it will be hard for you to perform well as a phd student. How can you do something if you do not know what you are doing or for what you are doing it for?

You have to find your definition of a PhD thesis. A search leads very fast to 2 great blogs about what a PhD is and what the difficulties in academia are:

James Hayton: http://jameshaytonphd.com/
Matt Might: http://matt.might.net/

A must see talk of James Hayton is http://youtu.be/4MkRMp3roKQ . He’s not only explaining how you do not go insane, he also provides you with the big picture. Another must see is The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. of Matt Might.

I hope you find some of the provided information and links helpful for your decisions.

How to write a paper?

24. January 2014 by sasa Leave a Comment

This is a collection of some documents about how-to-write-a-paper. Just google it an you will find much more. The important thing is, that you have to find your definition of what science is and how communication between scientists should work. It has to be your own definition, which makes writing much easier.

What you should do is to read some of the content behind the provided links to see the very different interpretations of scientific communication.

One thing that worked for me is the advice in source one. Grab a coffee or beer and start to think about the structure and ideas of the paper by writing down everything on a A3 page in landscape alignment.