Fighting Against Gatekeeping in Academia: Academic Writing Resources I Wish I Knew About Sooner

As a first-generation university student, the journey of constantly seeking out hidden knowledge within academia has been exhausting. There is a wealth of resources available, but due to a culture of gatekeeping and the perpetuation of hidden knowledge within academia, these resources are often not readily shared. Throughout my time as a postgraduate student, and now, PhD Candidate, I have compiled a list of resources that have been important to my success. Additionally, this list has been built upon during my experiences as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Glasgow. As part of my positions with the Student Learning and Development team and the School of Education, I offer one-to-one academic writing advice appointments and host reading, discussion, and academic advice groups. Through discussion and feedback from the students I work with, I have added additional resources that have been helpful to them. This post will discuss online literature mapping tools, reference managers, and effective writing and grammar resources.

Literature Mapping

Often, I find that the early stages of academic writing are the hardest parts. Deciding on a topic, constructing an outline, developing your argument, and writing the literature review to provide context and justification. While these are all big steps in the process, delving into the literature review is the most daunting for me. Specifically, the challenge lies in wading through the sea of literature to find relevant articles to my topic. I would often spend hours manually searching for relevant literature using online databases. Additionally, I often encounter this challenge in one-to-one writing advice appointments with students. I am consistently asked how to find more relevant literature on their topics.

Luckily, during the first year of my PhD, I discovered online literature mapping tools. Online literature mapping tools allow you to discover relevant academic articles by investigating connections between different publications. Relevant literature is often connected via authors, citations, keywords, themes, etc. These tools have significantly reduced the hours I would normally spend looking for relevant literature, and I believe are integral to my successful academic writing routine. I use them regularly to not only find relevant literature but to stay up to date with current research in my field.

An example of Research Rabbit mapping literature based on a prompt

Some popular online literature mapping tools:

• Connected Papers (www.connectedpapers.com/)

• Inciteful (www.inciteful.xyz/)

• Research Rabbit (www.researchrabbit.ai/)

Reference Managers

Another challenge I faced early on in my academic journey was navigating and organising the relevant literature once located. Originally, I would store all of the identified articles in a folder on my computer, where I would attempt to make notes in a Word document to accompany each piece of literature. Within the first few months of my PhD, I quickly realised I was amassing too much literature for my current system to be feasible. I felt there had to be an easier way. Upon doing some more research, I came across what is known as a reference manager, and I don't know how I ever lived without one.

Reference management applications allow you to:

• collect references and store them in a library on your computer or a web account

• organise references with folders and tags

• sort them by topic, project, author, etc.

• add notes to your references - for example, to remind yourself of particular quotes to use

• store full-text PDFs and links to material with references

• cite your references and create bibliographies in your chosen citation style

• share your references with others and create collaborative libraries of references

I wish I would have been aware of the power of reference managers as early as my undergraduate. These could have saved me so much time, energy, and hassle in attempting to wrangle the amount of literature needed for academic writing. I recommend all higher education students look into using them.

An example of Mendeley being used as a reference manager

Some popular reference managers and links to their how-to guides:

• Mendeley (www.mendeley.com/guides)

• Zotero (www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide)

• EndNote (www.endnote.com/wp-content/uploads/m/pdf/en-online-qrc.pdf)

Effective Writing and Grammar

Through my own academic writing needs, as well as those of the students that I work with, I have compiled a list of helpful resources related to effective academic writing and grammar.

• Grammarly (www.grammarly.com/)

• Phrase Bank (www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/)

• My English Pages (www.myenglishpages.com/english/exercises.php)

• Quick and Dirty Tips - Grammar Girl (www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl/)

• Using English for Academic Purposes For Students in Higher Education (www.uefap.net/)

• The Academic Word List (www.eapfoundation.com/vocab/academic/awllists/

While this is by no means an exhaustive list of resources, I hope others find them helpful in making their academic writing journey easier. It is important to say that these resources are shared with every student and group that I work with in an attempt to fight against gatekeeping and perpetuating the hidden curriculum. Additionally, when these resources are shared, I encourage students to ask questions and spread the word to their fellow peers. I am of the firm belief that we, as academics, are much better off with a culture that prioritises a sense of openness, fairness, and accessibility, and I strive to embody this in the work that I do.

Written by Haley Sneed, GTA for SLD