No there's nothing in that category (any co-authored stuff we already have in library).

We have an urgent (ie by Friday) need to spend the last bit of library budget at work. We have £1500 for books to support staff research and only the Head of Dept and I have bought any. I have exhausted all the subject texts and even some that are near enough but there is still money in the pot and if we don't spend it we will get less next year. I'm running out of ideas. So if you had lots of money (there's at least several hundred left in the pot and maybe more) what would you buy?

I work in a Geography dept, my PhD is in geological tourism and I am using mixed methods (quant - visitor questionnaires, qual - observations, content analysis, interviews) - any suggestions of any good RM texts we can add to our list?

The last one seems to be only available in print copy - Don't know where you are but I know Liverpool Uni has it and I suspect others with medical schools do too. You can usually just go in and look at print copies or you can get a spcial card to use for borrowing. Depending on arrangements from your uni though it might be easier to get it on interlibrary loans - my PhD uni gives us PhDers free interlibrary loans (but no-one at my work uni knows how to claim the money spent on interlibrary loans back)

Do you still need them - I think I can get them for you - pm me if you need them (or if only some which ones)

I tend to write intro last as then you knwo what you real did rather than what you think you will do.
Hang in there.

Probably too late now for you but Bach Rescue Remedy is great for this sort of situaiton - (and it's now available in pastilles)

Fingers crossed for you

======= Date Modified 24 May 2010 07:41:57 =======
In what way am I being an arrogant a$$? On the contrary I think you are being somewhat arrogant (but I don't feel the need to hurl abuse) if you think that your supervisor will drop everything to read your work. Students have little understanding of all the other demands on academics' time - marking, designing new programmes, arranging fieldwork, the plethora of univeristy meetings we have to attend, aside from the pressure on us to publish or the hours most of us put in over and above what we are paid for (around about 20% extra). I have before now (usually the submission day) when undergrad dissertations have been due in been in my office at 6.30am to meet students because I have had 9-1 classes and the needed to see me and I don't think this is that unusual. We may also have to deal with matters in our home lives which would send students running for extensions but we can't say "I can't take that class this week as I have to take the cat to the vet / have got a hangover / need to put in hours at my waitressing job." I've worked around two funerals of immediate family and am currently trying to juggle an inquest (again immediate family) around my work - students don't need to know that though. They need to know that if they stick to their side of the deal (drafts in in good time) I will stick to mine (good feedback that they have time to work with). After all you say "he isn't busy as far as I know" - the fact is you don't know and are making assumptions.

My own supervisor expects me to turn things round in hours but then sits on them for days - I've accepted that I have to fit in with his deadlines not the other way round.

I'm really glad you got the abstract submitted and hope it gets accepted. If you have to submit a full paper then try to get the deadlines now and then work WITH your supervisor to agree a timescale for drafts / who will write which bits and so on, when you will get together to agree final submission etc so that you aren't in this position again.

You need to be more specific - people here are pretty helpful if you need help handling a situation with your supervisor or if you are looking for a journal article or if you can't understand somethign in SPSS. BUT it's your PhD - YOU need to do it. You will find generally that you don't get much help at uni - that's part of the process of learning to be independent.

If you have a specific question you'll get help or if not help at least encouragement but "I need help. I'm not getting enough at uni" isn't going to get you much help.

Speaking (writing) with my academic hat on it always amazes me that students think that they can send me a draft the day before the final version is due in and expect me to turn it round "but it won't take you long to read it" "no you are right but it is not at the top of my list of priorities and you need to allow enough time to act on the feedback" - I refuse to look at drafts if there is less than a week to go to the deadline. It amazes me that they think I will read their e-mail / draft/ whatever the instance it is sent (even at 2am) but it's fine for them to fail to even glance at their university e-mails account from one week to the next. I've had e-mails saying "I sent you an e-mail and you haven't replied" "yes you sent it at 9.45 pm and it is now 9.30 am and we are in a class that started at 9 - when did you think I would be able to read it? Contrary to popular opinion I do have a life outside these four walls"
I rarely get to send drafts to supervisors or colleagues as I work at the last minute but the lack of a review is the price I accept for leaving things to the last minute.

My university uses turnitin but I'm not sure whether you can only use if your uni is registered.
Yes they do keep copies of everything put through it (I had an embarassing moment when demonstrating it to students in a workshop - I had forgotten that I had previously uploaded my MSc dissertation when I was on a training course and reloaded it - sure enough it came up as 100% plagiarised!)

As far as word count is concerned - the uni I work at (and also those where I did my MA and MSc - can't remember BA as it was 22 years ago) use a +/- 10% reckoning for any work so so long as it is roughly within those you will be fine. My experience is that you would have to be really short to fail (and you fail on not having sufficient content not on not meeting the wordcount) so I would think if it was 8,500 or 15,000 you might be penalised (but not necessarily fail).

It is possible to write that amount in the time you have (but it will be difficult, you will have no time for sleep etc but you can do it). Try to break it down into sections - don't think of it as 10,000 words, think of the first 1,000 (or however long that section is) and then when you have done that the next section.

Have you got someone who could proof it (for grammar, spelling, typos etc) - if so can they do it as you go along so that you havne't got the whole thing to proof at the end; how is the reference list, could somone else type that up for you if it isn't done? Marks can be easily lost for poor reference list (things in that aren't in text and vice versa) and it is not cheating to get someone to help you with that. Can someone keep you fed and watered so you aren't wasting time on that? My husband made sure I ate and had cups of tea when I was finishing my MSc and it was really helpful.

Also don't underestimate the time it takes to print out - try to use a high speed printer (at uni or in a copy shop) rather than printing it at home - My MSc (23,000 words - way over) took me 4 hours to print the two copies (and the spare print cartridge was a dud so I had to go out to get a replacement).

Good Luck - keep at it - don't give up

I also asked a very experienced colleague about this (on facebook chat) whether you have to rewrite it if it has been previously been published and she said "no of course not" but then went off line - I will try to talk to her this week and if I get any advice on how we get round it will post an update.

Agree that it is not just the journal which matters but the article BUT the journal is open access, online (and is edited out of Eastern Europe by a friend of my Head of Department and it seems anything that comes via him gets accepted with no real evidence of peer review) - I just feel a bit like its a cop out not trying for a real journal first. It was his suggestion as an easy way to meet the univerisity publication target without diverting too much fomr PhD (in fact he told me not to waste the conference presentation work (which includes a proposed model) on the "friendly" journal but to save it for a real one). And in reality we all set more stall by articles in the top journals in our field than in new obscure ones.

I'm trying to write up for a journal some research that I presented at a conference in 2008 - the paper was included in the conference proceedings but there is a follow-up element (basically to see if a change in attitude which came about has translated to a change in bahaviour). I'm struggling with how to include the lit review element of the conference paper in the followup paper. Do I have to rewrite it all to avoid plagiarism or can I use relevant chunks of it as it is my work? I really don't want (even if I had the time) to do a completely new lit review and so far I have found very little new work in the area.

I work in a university (where like most I know of) there is significant pressure to publish. I have a target (well more than a target - there is a "naughty list" which I am on and which those of us had meetings in March when it was made clear that if we fail to meet our targets it would be the door) to submit an article to a journal by end June. I also have a target to write c10,000 words of part-time PhD (prob lit review) by end Dec (I registered in Dec 09). I have several options as far as the publication is concerned - I can write something related to my PhD for a fairly low level journal which my head of department is on the editorial board of (and which will undoubtedly get accepted), I can write a proper article for a serious peer reviewed journal, again related to PhD, or I can (and this has only just become a possibility this week) write up some research I have been doing over the past three years - the first year was written up as conference proceedings and I now have two more years of data - for a new serious journal which has a call for papers out, the editor of which has encouraged me to write up the research.

It seems that the pros and cons are:
Option 1 - it's fairly easy, it's related to PhD so work will not be wasted but it is a pretty low level journal with little credibility - do I want to put my first PhD related article in such a crummy place?
Option 2 - again related to PhD, I have a conference presentation I can start to write up but I don't think I can do it in a month (part-time esp as we have exam boards etc at the moment), no guarantee of acceptance (but does that matter - target is to submit not to get accepted)
Option 3 - fairly straightforward as I have a 5000 word conference proceedings paper as a basis, I can cite that in the references, the editor seemed really keen based on my abstract form the conference proceedings (" would certainly complete such challenging research and submit it for approval to our revisors. I believe it has potential!") (and people have told me that new journals are easier to get into) but the work will be stand alone - it is TOTALLY unrelated to PhD and so will not be contributing to the 10,000 word target (but is an area I am still interested in)

I just don't know what to do - I keep picking up one book / journal for one option then another and so on. At the moment I am edging towards Option 3 with the aim of completing Option 2 for submission in Jan (so that meets next year's target). Advice please.