If you want to be successful when writing an academic paper you should avoid some common mistakes. I see them again and again in student assignments but also in paper submissions at academic conferences.
Imagine spending weeks or even months writing your academic paper. You put in all your effort and work late nights to deliver a good result. And on the day you receive your feedback, you get the bad news:
The outcome does not meet your expectations because you simply did not know that you should not have made that one mistake. You just didn’t know. How could you?
But this cannot happen to you anymore. Because in this video, I will show you the 7 most common mistakes that you should definitely avoid when writing your academic paper.
With this knowledge, you will come a lot closer to producing an outstanding academic paper. There are no secrets to it. There is only information that you do not yet know.
But we’re going to change that now.
#1 Not using a proven structure
Many academic papers that I read are incredibly extensive, use a lot of literature, and are linguistically top-notch. But is that enough for a paper to be outstanding?
No.
One of the biggest mistakes in writing academic papers is ignoring how papers in your field are expected to look like.
In particular, I am referring to the structure of your paper. This does not mean the titles you give each section (although they can sometimes be related to it). It means the logical structure of an academic paper.
If you just write freely and tell a story – that may be interesting, but research works differently.
An experienced researcher always expects a certain outline. A clear introduction, some literature background, a research design section, findings, discussion, and conclusion.
For a conceptual paper that does not include empirical data, you can replace the research design section with a clear explanation about how you are going the structure your argument but do so at the end of the introduction.
The structure of a paper always follows a certain logic. At the beginning, there is a relevant phenomenon or topic. You then motivate the need for doing research on this thing by identifying an interesting research problem. Stating a clear research objective also helps (introduction)
You then show what has been found previously and what this means for your own study (background).
You then explain how you aim to accomplish your research objectives (research design).
After taking the reader through the results of your analysis (findings) you interpret them and bring them in relation to what has been found previously (discussion).
Finally, you summarize your study, show in what ways it was subject to limitations and what you would recommend other research should focus on (conclusion).
What I just explained is the thought process in 90% of all academic papers.
And this very same structure is what your supervisor or reviewer expects from your paper.
A big mistake is trying to reinvent the wheel and not using this proven structure for your own papers.
#2 Insufficient use of citations
The next common mistake is not using citations correctly. There are two things that can go wrong.
First, you might not use enough references to support your argument.
I often see papers where (in the literature section or introduction) a paragraph of text is written that contains statements that require a citation but none is provided.
In other cases, there might be a whole paragraph with one citation at the end. While this is better than the first example, you can do better.
In your paper, you should show that you can craft your own argument instead of indirectly citing the argument of someone else. The trick is to collect multiple pieces of evidence from other studies and combine them to form your own argument. This might require several citations in a single sentence or train of thought.
Moreover, your supervisor or reviewer will pay attention to the following three points when assessing your paper:
Completeness: Were you able to identify the most important references and authors for your particular topic?
Depth: Did your literature review go beyond mere description and showed what the body of literature means in relation to the research problem?
Quality: Are the cited references from established outlets (books, journals, conferences) of your research discipline?
Can you actually use too much literature? Yes, of course. That’s why papers often have a page limit that includes the bibliography.
Rule of thumb: 15 pages = 30 scientific (!) references. (Exception: Systematic literature reviews can have longer bibliographies)
#3 Conceptual overload
The research objectives of an academic paper are often narrower than you might think. Even if the topic is a niche phenomenon, hundreds of pages could still be written about it. Take a look at some doctoral dissertations from your university (they are available in every library).
PhD students spend three to five years on a very tiny aspect within a tiny tiny topic and end up writing 400 pages about it.
Again and again, students make the mistake of writing their academic papers without enough focus.
You cannot narrow down your topic enough.
If you think you have already narrowed down your topic, then narrow it down even further. And then again.
At the beginning, you will wonder how on earth 15 pages could be written about it. At the end, you will be amazed how on earth 15 pages could be enough!
A good exercise to narrow down your topic is to articulate a clear research question.
In this question, you will only use 2 or 3 key concepts. The same concepts will then reappear in the background sections.
If you want to make your text more appealing to the reader by mixing up the language and using synonyms, stop doing it.
This is not how writing an academic paper works. Once a concept is defined you need to stick to it. This avoids confusion, because if you use synonym, the reader does not know if the definition still applies to this other term.
Unfortunately, researchers are very anal about those things. Therefore, it is best to stick to your key concepts and use them consistently throughout your paper.
#4 You do not arrive at an original contribution
Common mistake number four happens when your academic paper does not succeed in selling a unique contribution to the reader.
This problem occurs particularly in both empirical and literature-based papers.
In an empirical paper, it is not enough to just let the results of your data analysis speak for themselves. You need to explain to the reader why those results are interesting and provide something novel to the literature or theory.
Keep in mind that literature and theory are two different things. Refer to my other videos if you are not sure what the difference is.
But what if the data of your paper is simply other literature?
Here, the common mistake students often make is to provide a descriptive summary of what has been done.
Author A has found this and author B has found that.
This is not enough. You need to go beyond mere description at some point and get into an analytical mode. Find similarities, contradictions, or problems in the literature and interpret them.
Come up with your own interpretation of what the contents of all this literature means in relation to your research objective.
At the end of your introduction, you give a preview about why your paper is important and what contribution the reader can expect. In the discussion, you explain the contribution in detail. Finally, the conclusion summarizes it one more time.
You can also use numbers to emphasize your contributions. First, Second, Third, and so on.
#5 Sloppy figures
Common Mistake Number Five:
Blurred Figures!
Did you copy your figure from a book, downloaded it from a Google search at 200×150 pixels, or draw it up by hand?
Not good.
Figures in academic papers must be razor sharp. Anything else is unacceptable. If you can even see one pixel, then recreate the image yourself in PowerPoint or Canva. Save it as a PDF or as a truly high-resolution image file.
If you are unsure, make a test print of the image and check the quality on paper. Trust me, the little extra effort is really necessary.
Don’t be the person who uses blurry figures in their academic paper.
This is how you show that you are a professional.
#6 Careless Grammar and Spelling Mistakes
The mother of all mistakes when writing an academic paper: linguistic clumsiness.
One or two typos will be forgiven.
However, if you allow spelling errors and incorrect grammar to be found on every page, then the reviewer will not even bother to assess the contents of your paper in detail.
Your supervisor won’t even blink an eye and will give you a bad grade.
Correct grammar and spelling is the absolute minimum that you must meet.
Therefore, follow my advice and have your work proofread. If you don’t want to spend money on it, then ask friends or family or a large language model that you trust.
Four eyes and a machine see more than just your two.
But seriously. I would argue that I have a certain level of linguistic skill. And yet, I make mistakes all the time.
I proofread scientific papers and job applications for other people – and find every single mistake – but my own texts are still not error-free.
You don’t see your own mistakes, no matter how good you are. Get help, then you’re on the safe side.
#7 Unintended plagiarism
Obviously, the worst mistake you can make when writing an academic paper is plagiarism. You have probably heard in the media that politicians or other important people have had their doctorates revoked for this reason.
Even a term paper can quickly become plagiarism, even if it was not intentionally planned.
An accusation of plagiarism can be made if individual text passages are taken literally without a citation of the original work.
If you are caught, you risk failing. Therefore, this mistake is quite fatal.
To definitely avoid plagiarism, you should become a specialist in paraphrasing and citing correctly.
As long as you pursue the good practice of academic work with the best intentions, nothing can go wrong, really.
Everything you learn at university and on this channel is plagiarism-proof.
Check out my video on ChatGPT Plagiarism to get a better idea of what plagiarism is and what it is not.