Writing your thesis

Summary

If this is your first year as a postgraduate in UCC, welcome to the world of research. If you're returning after the summer, welcome back. This is a short note to bring you up to date on some tools you may need for your research, especially for writing your thesis.

This may sound like it's a long way away yet (unless you're just about to submit) but a little time and effort spent getting properly equipped now is going to save you a lot later on. Using the right software in the right way, you can cut up to 2–3 months off the writing time for the average 4–year PhD, and pro rata for other degrees—​like being given a free extension.

The two most important tools discussed here are your document preparation software (wordprocessor or other software) and your reference management software (bibliographic database). There may be other special software for your own discipline, but your supervisor will advise you on that.

There are translations of this page at http://students.studybay.com/?p=190 (Armenian, by Gajk Melikyan) and http://science.webhostinggeeks.com/latex (Serbo-Croat, by Anja Skrba).

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