Research answers
Answers to the questions researchers actually ask
Short answers to the problems that stop a literature review, a chapter, or a submission.
Literature reviews and synthesis
Turning a pile of sources into a chapter that argues something, and knowing when the searching is done.
- How do I know if my literature review is synthesis or just a summary?
- What do I write when two studies on the same question reach opposite conclusions?
- How do I organize a literature review by argument instead of by paper?
- How do I know when to stop searching for papers for a literature review?
- How do I build a synthesis matrix when my themes keep changing as I read?
- How do I turn a synthesis matrix into literature review paragraphs?
- What does it mean when a supervisor says a literature review is too descriptive?
- How do I keep a literature review current over a multi-year PhD?
- What is the difference between a narrative literature review and a systematic review?
- How do I build a search strategy for a systematic review?
- How do I screen hundreds of abstracts for a systematic review?
- How do I write a literature review that leads logically to my research question?
Research gaps and research questions
Finding a gap that is real, phrasing it so it holds, and shaping a question you can still answer in year three.
- How do I identify a research gap in the literature?
- How do I know if my research gap is original?
- How do I write a research gap statement?
- How do I turn a research topic into a research question?
- What makes a good research question in a PhD thesis?
- What is the difference between a research question and a hypothesis?
- Can a research question change during a PhD?
- How do I narrow down a research question that is too broad?
- How do I choose a theoretical framework for my thesis?
Reading papers and keeping track
Reading at the volume research actually demands, and remembering what you read six months later.
- How do I organize and extract information from more than 100 papers?
- How do I triage 200 PDFs before deciding which ones to read in full?
- How many papers can a PhD student realistically read in a day?
- How do I remember what was in papers I read months ago?
- How do I find a paper when I only remember the argument it made?
- What do I do when my note-taking system takes longer than reading the papers?
- Why can I never find my PDF highlights again?
- How do I keep track of connections between papers?
- How do I read research papers efficiently when English is my second language?
- How do I include non-English studies in a literature review?
- How do I keep up with new papers without reading everything?
- How do I get back into a research project after months away?
Citing, referencing, and checking sources
The rulings you need mid-sentence: what to cite, where the marker goes, and whether the source really says it.
- Do I need to cite absolutely everything in a thesis?
- Where should a citation go when only one clause in a sentence needs support?
- Should I cite the paper I read or the original study it references?
- Can I cite a paper I cannot get hold of?
- Is citing a review instead of the original research bad practice?
- What do I do when a paper's cited source does not support its claim?
- How do I check that every claim in my thesis is supported by its citation?
- How do I fix a sentence that describes a study's result too broadly?
- Do I use the journal page number or the PDF page number in a citation?
- How do I quote a source in another language in an English thesis?
- How much self-citation is acceptable?
- Should I use Zotero or Mendeley for a PhD?
AI in academic research
What the rules are, what the evidence shows, and where these tools genuinely help or quietly mislead.
- Why does ChatGPT make up references?
- Can I use AI for a literature review?
- Is using ChatGPT for academic writing plagiarism?
- Do I need to disclose AI use in a research paper?
- Can an AI tool be listed as an author on a paper?
- Are AI detectors reliable?
- How do I cite ChatGPT in APA 7?
- How do I check whether AI-generated citations are real?
- Can I trust AI summaries of research papers?
- Can I use AI in a PhD thesis?
- Can I use AI for screening in a systematic review?
- Why does an AI answer better when it reads my own PDFs?
- Can I use AI to help write a peer review?
Thesis and paper writing
Structure for the chapters everyone gets stuck on, and habits that produce pages instead of guilt.
- How do I structure a PhD thesis chapter by chapter?
- How do I write a thesis introduction?
- How do I write a discussion section without repeating the results?
- How do I write an abstract for a research paper?
- How do I paraphrase a source without plagiarizing?
- How do I write a methodology chapter?
- How do I draft when I keep stopping to look up citations?
- How do I write consistently during a PhD?
- Should I do a thesis by publication or a monograph?
- How long should a literature review chapter be?
Research methods
Choices you will have to justify in a viva, explained the way you will need to write them down.
- How do I do thematic analysis step by step?
- How many interviews are enough for a qualitative study?
- What is the difference between inductive and deductive thematic analysis?
- How do I show rigour in qualitative research?
- How do I choose which statistical test to use?
- How do I calculate the sample size for a study?
- What does a p value actually mean?
- How do I integrate qualitative and quantitative data in a mixed methods study?
Publishing and peer review
What editors and reviewers are actually doing, and how to get through the process with your paper intact.
- How do I choose a journal for my paper?
- How do I tell if a journal is predatory?
- How do I respond to peer reviewer comments?
- Why was my paper desk rejected?
- How does journal peer review actually work?
- How do I write a cover letter for a journal submission?
- Should I post my paper as a preprint?
- How do I cite a preprint?
- Do I have to pay to publish open access?
- How is author order decided on a paper?
Research data and reproducibility
The documents funders ask for, and the file habits that stop future you from losing an experiment.
Surviving and finishing the PhD
Supervision, momentum, the viva, and what comes after. The parts nobody puts in the handbook.
- How do I prepare for a PhD viva?
- How do I defend my methodology in a viva?
- What happens if you fail a PhD viva?
- How do I deal with imposter syndrome during a PhD?
- How do I stop procrastinating on my PhD?
- What do I do when my PhD supervisor is not supportive?
- How do I plan a realistic PhD timeline?
- How do I write an academic CV for a postdoc application?
- Should I do a postdoc or go to industry after my PhD?