Category Archives: Writing tools

Impact Factors & Citations

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Impact factors are heavily criticized as measures of scientific quality. However, they still dominate every discussion about scientific excellence. They are still used to select candidates for positions as PhD student, postdoc and academic staff, to promote professors and to select grant proposals for funding. As a consequence, researchers tend to adapt their publication strategy to avoid negative impact on their careers.

The importance of high impact

Young researchers are well-advised to strive for publications in journals with high impact factors especially if they are not sure yet whether they want to pursue a career in academia or in the non-academic job market. Several funding organizations worldwide started to reduce the influence of this parameter on their strategy to fund excellent science.

One of the many critical points is that impact factors describe the average quality of a journal and should not be used for single publications.

Alternative metrics

Many alternatives for impact factors have been suggested for example the h-index (or h-factor) which are primarily based on citations and not on the impact factor of a journal where a paper is published.

Young researchers often wonder whether the impact factor or the number of citations is more relevant.  This question is difficult to answer, however citations become increasingly important with increasing maturity of the career of scientists. Young researchers often have only one or two publications which are pretty new, thus, the number of citations is limited. Therefore, for pragmatic reasons, funding institutions and universities will use the impact factor of the journal as a proxy of their scientific excellence. To evaluate the output of more mature scientists the h-index or the m-index may be used which are both based exclusively on citations and not on impact factors.

Thus, young researchers are confronted with the problem that their scientific quality will be judged based on the impact factors of their publications, especially in contexts which are highly relevant for their early careers.

Meeting the Word Count Rules for a Post-Graduate Essay

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One of the aspects that students have to keep in mind when they are working on their post-graduate essay is the word count. Whether it is too little or it is too much, it can cause trouble for the students either way. The colleges give what the correct word count should be in their regulatory documents. The students should read it religiously and make sure they follow it to the last letter.

Each department will have its own style guide rules. If the students are part of the history program then they should read the rules that have been laid down by the history department. One of the rules that some departments would laid down is that the word count should be written on the title page or the cover sheet.

The word length is calculated by including all the main text and footnotes. However, it is important to note that many universities do not insist that the title and the bibliography be included as part of the word length. In fact, the statement that describes the word length is also not part of the overall count. Quite a few departments have lain down that while images do not constitute a part of the overall word count, tables do.

Students include appendices in their dissertations. However, this content does not go as part of the overall word count if they are providing illustrative reference material. On the other hand if they are including substantive argument as part of the appendices then it is necessary that this content should be part of the word count.

Many students use the word check facility in MS Word to calculate their word count. When they are doing this, it is essential that they set it in a way that it calculates the words in the footnote as well.

On Line Bibliography Tools

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Bibliography is a list of sources referred by the author and needs to be listed in accordance with prescribed or chosen style of writing such as APA, MLA, Harvard etc. Bibliographies which run into several pages say more than ten can be especially difficult to compile, online tools not only compile bibliographies as per prescribed styles but also have tools for recording and identification of source and information. Some of these tools are equipped with features which can be used to create a bibliography library.

Some of the tools are:

Easy Bib: can be used for developing reference list, citations including parenthetical citations, footnotes and checking source credibility.

Citelighter: besides creating bibliography also enables select webpage sections and save them.

Refdot: enables quick recording of online sources in the bibliography, upon finding an online resource researcher needs to just click on the RefDot icon in the browser to create a bibliography, this tool also suggests inclusion of important information within the source.

Noodle Tools  : enables creation of bibliography from almost all sources, users need to fill a form to get their desired bibliography or citation style.

Google Docs Bibliography Templates: enables formatting of created bibliographies, there is no need for using a browser extension or signing up for an account or paying for the services, this tool however does not provide any prompter to the users.

BibMe:  can be used to create a bibliography, citation guide and also saves the created bibliographies, it is equipped with a prompting feature and when users enter the information they have they can get suggestions for the information they need for each type of citation.

Other tools available are citation machine, citefest, citelighter, Illionos Mathematics and Science Academy, citation wizard, Oregon Public Education Citation Maker, Recipes 4 Success, Zotero, End note etc.