158 Notes on Further Resources
Phillips, EM and Pugh, DS, How to Get a PhD: A Handbook for Students and their
Supervisors, 5th edn, Open University Press, Buckinghamshire, UK, 2010.
Rudestam, KE and Newton, RR, Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive
Guide to Content and Process, 3rd edn, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2007.
Rugg, G and Petre, M, The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research, Open University
Press, Berkshire, UK, 2004.
Silvia, PJ, How to Write a Lot, American Psychological Association, Washington,
DC, 2007.
There are of course many further books on these topics, some excellent, some not.
As a very general piece of guidance, I find that texts that advocate a ‘recipe’ ap-
proach to thesis writing (‘precisely follow these simple instructions and you cannot
fail’) are less successful than those that are more collegial and advisory in their
approach. They are also less successful than those whose aim is to simply explain
the components of a thesis, and leave the topic of the challenges of writing to texts
such as this one. I have also used a wide range of style guides and so on, which in
my view are best explored through a visit to your local library or bookshop; thus I
do not list them here.
Another place to look for advice is in journals such as Studies in Higher Educa-
tion, which has published papers such as Mullins, G and Kiley, M, ‘“It’s a PhD,
not a Nobel Prize”: How Experienced Examiners Assess Research Theses’, vol. 27,
no. 4, 2002, pp. 369–86, and Holbrook, A, Bourke, S, Fairbairn, H, and Lovat, T,
‘Examiner Comment on the Literature Review in PhD theses’, vol. 32, no. 3, 2007,
pp. 337–56. Other journals have similar scope. These are readily found with the
usual resources, such as the scholar-specific tools provided by web search engines
or the search tools at a typical university library.
To become strong at scholarly communication, you need to read widely. This
includes not just dissertations and papers in your field, but a range of perspectives
on topics such as strategies for research and communication skills. No one book,
not even this one, is sufficient by itself. I continue to develop my own skills through
such reading, and I encourage you to do the same.