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Tag: references

Nathan

Citing Examiners

Daily Post

You might cite them, you might not. It depends on lots of factors:

  • What work you’ve done;
  • The shape of your field and the number of people working in it;
  • Who your examiners are;
  • When they were suggested as potential examiners;
  • How the work they do intersects with the work you’ve done;
  • And many, many more reasons…

It’s neither intrinsically good or intrinsically bad for you to cite them. It’s not a requirement to cite publications by your examiners.

But if you have: make sure you check those papers again before your viva. Be sure you’re familiar with why you used them, how you used them and what they did for your thesis.

Nathan

The Bones Of Your Research

Daily Post

Remember Newton: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Your work comes from somewhere. Whatever your contribution, it stands on the shoulders of other researchers. How many papers are in your bibliography? How many more have you read, which didn’t make it into your bibliography but which informed your development or your work’s development?

By the end it might be almost impossible to remember every paper that has helped or influenced you. But you can reflect on your thesis and think about the meaningful fraction that makes up the core of what you’ve done. If you have 200 papers, what’s the top 10? The top 20?

Your thesis is built on a great body of work. What makes up the skeleton?