September is approaching, and while freshmen are stepping into campus, senior students are also preparing for their graduation theses and internships. Academic and graduation theses are mountains that undergraduate students cannot avoid. Here are some personal experiences and insights I have accumulated while writing my thesis in my senior year, hoping to be helpful to junior students in their thesis writing.
Electronic Resources#
Most students majoring in humanities in undergraduate stage are familiar with academic research using literature databases such as CNKI and Wanfang Data. Domestic university libraries also purchase the usage rights of literature databases for the convenience of faculty and students. By opening the library's website on the campus network, you can see the electronic databases purchased by the school in the electronic resources section. In addition to the electronic resources provided by the school, many local libraries provide electronic resources to the local public and readers, such as the National Library and Zhejiang Library, which can be used for free after registration.
Further reading: "Free access to papers? In addition to the school library, there are also..."
When searching for literature in a certain field, the database will return many articles. The quality of the articles varies. The role of reference literature is to help you understand the academic status quo, existing problems, solutions, etc. related to the research topic. Supervisors also emphasize the selection of "core journals" and "original literature" with newer publication dates as much as possible, focusing on the authority, professionalism, and timeliness of the literature. When searching the database, we can use the filtering function to select literature from "core journals", such as the Peking University Core, Nanjing University Core, SCI, EI, SSCI, and other journal directories.
Most of the literature I read and refer to is downloaded from Wanfang Data. PDF documents are convenient for reading and literature management in different software. Secondly, the PDF documents provided by Wanfang come with default tables of contents and text layers, while CNKI (Mainland China version) only provides CAJ format documents by default, which is really unethical.
Word Styles#
For many college students, the mainstream writing tool for "creating academic garbage" is Microsoft Word. The most headache-inducing part is not only the writing of the main text but also the formatting requirements of academic papers.
The structure of an academic paper can be roughly divided into four parts: cover page, table of contents, main text, and references.
Taking the "Graduation Thesis Document Printing and Formatting Requirements" of my university as an example, apart from page settings, writing specifications, word and symbol usage requirements, most of the content formatting involves font styles and paragraph styles in Word. Before starting to write, we can create common styles for different parts of the content in Word's style editor based on the paper format requirements, which is called "creating templates". Using Word styles can quickly add predetermined formats to text.
In Word, press Alt + Ctrl + Shift + S or click the ↘️ Expand icon in the Styles panel at the bottom right of the Home tab to open the style management pane, and click A+ New Style to enter the style editor.
First, we need to set the attributes of the style, such as the formatting requirements for the main text: Chinese characters use the SimSun font, English and numbers use the Times New Roman font, font size 12, left alignment, two-character indentation for the first line of the paragraph, line spacing 22 points, no space before and after the paragraph. These requirements only involve the font format and paragraph format of the text. Click Format - Font in the style editor to adjust the font format.
According to the format requirements, we only need to adjust the Chinese font, English font, and font size. After completing this, go to the paragraph format. Under the Indents and Spacing tab, the General, Indentation, and Spacing options respectively refer to the role of the text, the two requirements of the first-line indentation and the space before and after the paragraph. After completing the settings, click OK, and you can see the style named Paper_MainText in the style management pane. In addition to font and paragraph formats, the style editor also provides options for numbering and tab stops. For example, different levels of ordered numbering are used in the first-level and second-level heading styles in the main text.
When organizing the format requirements, I divided them into cover page, table of contents, abstract, main text, references, appendix, and acknowledgments based on the content structure of the paper, and then created styles for different parts. Then, according to the outline, fill in the corresponding styles to get a basic framework for future paper writing.
Reference Citation#
References are an important part of a paper. They provide support for the points you make in the paper and are a way to show respect to the authors of the referenced literature. Although Word provides a "References" management function, it lacks openness and convenience. It requires manual import of references, and the generated citations are not authentic enough—it does not support the GB/T 7714-2015 citation format.
There are two solutions to this problem. First, when downloading and citing literature, you can export the citation of the references from databases such as CNKI and Wanfang Data. Second, you can use reference management tools such as Zotero, EndNote, and CNKI Research to manage references. Because there are a large number of literature to read and refer to, I chose to use Zotero + Nutstore to assist in managing references. Zotero can directly generate citations in accordance with the GB/T 7714-2015 format. For tutorials on using Zotero, you can refer to some authors' tutorials on the website "少数派" (sspai). This article will not go into detail.
Even without using reference management tools, when writing the initial draft of the paper, you still need to mark the references (such as article titles + authors + page numbers) to reduce the workload of formatting during the final proofreading. I have witnessed my classmates having a lot of references piled up in the tabs of Edge, but they did not mark any of them in the text, and they failed to complete the references before the final draft.
After generating the citations, insert the reference list into the reference section, add automatic sequential numbering, and use the "cross-reference" function to add the citation number in the text, thus completing the marking of the references.
Version Control#
The file of a Word document is a compressed package based on OOXML (Office Open XML) format. According to Microsoft's statement, to implement version control, the Word document needs to be stored in OneDrive. The version control method of Git + Pandoc "pure text style" has a usage threshold for users without programming background. In March, when I was using GoodSync to back up my thesis, an accident happened. I accidentally overwrote the latest file on OneDrive with an old file on my external hard drive. After discovering this, I checked the version history of the thesis document on OneDrive, but I failed to restore it.
So I started to divide the document into daily versions. Before writing the thesis, I would copy and rename the document from the previous day. The naming format is based on "major version date + thesis draft X + editing date". With regular backups, it ensures that the thesis document will not be accidentally lost or damaged unless both OneDrive and the external hard drive "explode" at the same time.
Although this method can achieve simple version control, it also has its shortcomings. When reviewing and modifying, you need to review them one by one and cannot intuitively understand the differences between versions on different dates. You can record them by filling in a log, or choose a relatively complex version control tool such as Git/SVN.
In addition to version control, regular backups are also essential during the thesis writing process. The backup work follows the "3 + 2 + 1" principle—back up at least 3 copies, 2 copies on different local media, and 1 copy in a remote location. When writing the thesis, I took a shortcut and only backed up on OneDrive and the offline external hard drive. GoodSync automatically synchronizes the new files on OneDrive to the external hard drive, avoiding manual copying and the risk of accidental operation.
Plagiarism Check#
Plagiarism check is a difficult hurdle that cannot be avoided by undergraduate, master's, and doctoral graduates in China. Before the school conducts the check, students usually use online plagiarism check tools to check their "academic garbage". According to the ranking based on the number of literature databases, they can be divided into two categories:
Currently, CNKI, Wanfang, and VIP offer plagiarism check services to individual users, with prices ranging from 1.5 to 3 yuan per thousand characters. Considering the accuracy of the detection results, it is best to choose the same plagiarism check system as the school to conduct the initial check of your thesis. Due to differences in the detection resource library and institution's self-built library, the results of third-party plagiarism check systems may differ greatly from those of the school or have significant discrepancies. In addition, there is a risk of the thesis being leaked by third-party organizations.
Taking the "CNKI Personal Plagiarism Check Service" as an example, I uploaded my graduation thesis to the plagiarism check system for a check. After the check is completed, you can obtain a full-text report, a comparative report, and a concise report. The total text similarity ratio obtained is consistent with the school's detection results. According to the customer service of CNKI, the plagiarism check service for individuals (graduation design) uses the same comparison resource library as universities and institutions.
Conclusion#
There are also many people who use LaTeX to write papers online. For someone like me who is not familiar with coding, LaTeX is like a foreign language. The user experience of Word is not satisfactory, but by clarifying the logic between different functions and using handy tools, Word can also be very useful in your paper writing process.
