Not at all, it's definitely relevant, and interesting to hear other people's plights! I'm afraid I can't help with theoretical papers, it's primarily empirical papers I've been looking at. Hopefully someone else can help.

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Hi, I personally swear by Mendeley. It's free and it sounds like it's similar to your Papers App. I love that I can easily search all the PDF papers in my collection to find papers with keywords etc. It also lets you do the bibliography stuff :)

In terms of organising what I need to do I use Remember the Milk.com It lets you create lists, and assign them due dates. Works for me anyway :)

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Hi Button,

I'm not sure if your funding is similar to mines. I get funding from the EPSRC through a Doctoral Training Account at my university. So the money actually comes from the university each month. If I finish earlier than the time I have been provided funding for, my funding stops immediately (unfortunately!). If you're getting funded in advance, then perhaps it's different. Maybe your University might be able to find out for you?

Walminskipeas... Thanks, I didn't think I was being bitchy. :-( I honestly thought I was just pointing out areas where things could have been improved. I said in several places "it could have been useful to see X, Y or Z". I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of bitchy comments through peer reviewed papers, and it's unpleasant. I wouldn't knowingly do that to someone else. I haven't really included work that I didn't find interesting and beneficial, I think I need to make that clearer.

Satchi : I remember being like that too. Can I ask what field you study in? I found it easier to spot limitations of work by reading much more about how to design and report experiments, and also by reading up on statistics. I also found it easier to spot weaknesses as well as strengths as I progressed through my PhD, which stage are you at in your PhD?

Thanks, that's helpful. I particularly like the summary of language in the URL you posted. Very nice! :)

Excellent point :)

Thanks, that clarifies things. I thought I'd written it in such a way which represented the benefits of the research, but perhaps it's not as obvious as I thought :)

Hi,

I'm currently revising my thesis in Computer Security and have recently had a lecturer tell me my lit review is "too critical" of others work. For example, I say in reference to several papers that there was a lack of statistical analysis of the data and so it was difficult to establish how effective the reported approach was. Has anyone else experienced this? Any tips on how to be critical enough without being overly critical?

Thanks

Hi, this is my first post, I decided to join to see if I could help as I understand your plight. You can take or leave what I say, it is based on my experiences and feelings but perhaps there may be something helpful.

My first reaction is, have you asked your supervisor if they feel you have completed enough experiments? This depends on your supervisor giving you sound advice, which may not be the case.
You mentioned 'blind alleyways', perhaps these are not failures as you see them. In my experience, work which doesn't go as planned is an important part of getting you to where you are. For example, my final experiment involved human participants and failed quite spectacularly. However, I have to put this into my thesis as it explains why I took the approach I finally did, partially because I tried this other approach and it didn't work. Perhaps some of your blind alleyways are the same?

As for your writing, have you written any papers? I find the process of writing a paper (even if it doesn't get accepted anywhere) a good way of really ironing out my ideas, forcing me to write them down in a clear and logical layout which highlights areas where I require further analysis. I've finished my experiments and am now writing up (/editing the writing I had) and I have about 6 months till my 3 years are up, which I am told is a normal amount of time to be writing up in. My point being that you still have six months to do further analysis of your work.

Also remember a hypothesis is to be proven or disproved, you shouldn't really be going in with an experiment which you believe will result in a specific outcome. Have you got a research hypothesis? When I got confused over what I was doing, the end goal and contributions to research I did a "take stock" exercise, where I wrote out on a page of A4 what experiments I'd done and what I'd achieved from them. I then matched that up to my research hypothesis, and tried to see where the gaps in my work were and what I could do to fill them.

I think if I were in your position, the first thing I'd do would be the "take stock" exercise I described above, then I'd make sure I was clear on what my goals were and whether my analysis supported them (paying particular attention to the scientific method if your subject is scientific). I'd then write a list of all the different things I needed to do to answer my research question and estimate time scales for completing them. If at this point I didn't think I could complete them within 6 or so months, I'd maybe approach my supervisor and see what they thought and whether you could get an extension due to emotional difficulties?

I hope this has been helpful, and not just incoherent rambling.

Best of luck