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You would like to know how to conduct a literature search for your academic paper, but you just don’t know what steps to take exactly?

Bing, Bing, Bing – Jackpot!

You have just found the solution.

Because in this article, I will give you a complete guide – on how to systematically search through the libraries and literature databases of your university and the Internet.

After just a few hours, you will have a complete overview of relevant literature for your topic and you can finally start writing.

I have divided the process of the literature search into 3 steps, which you can easily follow in sequence.

After this video, searching for academic literature will be easier than searching on Google for a recipe for mushroom risotto – I promise!

Get an Overview of the Popular Discourse #1

Educate Yourself

At the beginning of your literature search for your academic paper, you should get a general overview.

• How is the topic of your term paper perceived in the media?
• What controversies exist around this topic?
• In which regions of the world is it particularly relevant?
• What does Wikipedia say about it?

The first baby steps towards an outstanding term paper require a basic understanding of your research subject. It is perfectly fine to look into popular science literature and casually read up on the topic.

Simply put, you just use Google and see what you can find.

You should understand this step on how to conduct a literature search more as some self-education for yourself rather than a gathering of sources that you can cite.

Save the links of some (online) newspaper articles that contain useful information in a list in case you need them later.

Collect some Numbers

Here are some helpful platforms that you can also search:

• statista.com
• census.gov
• data.gov
• Google Public Data
• United Nations Statistics Division

If your academic paper ends up with 2-3 internet sources, that’s perfectly fine. The introduction is particularly suitable for citing such sources. After all, the presence of a topic in the mass media or political agendas can prove its relevance.

To really proceed systematically, take notes. The more articles and statistics you read, the better you get a feel for the important terms related to your topic. Write them down and create a pool of keywords. These are particularly important for the next step.

Online Search in Academic Databases #2

Google Scholar

Now you are delving into academic literature. From your notes, extract (at least) the 3 most important keywords for your literature search.

A first point of reference for the literature search can be Google Scholar. Google’s database indexes almost all academic papers and books. However, sometimes it will also list articles that are a bit shady or have not been subject to peer review.

This is because if you use Google Scholar, you need a very good understanding of what constitutes a good academic journal and what is trash.

Nevertheless, if you find articles that have been cited a lot (think 100 or more citations) by reputable journals and authors, you can assume that it is a legitimate article.

But be careful, sometimes supervisors do not like it if their students use Google Scholar because of the reasons I just mentioned. Ask your supervisor how they feel about it – then you are on the safe side.

Scientific Databases

Now let’s move to the next step on how to conduct a literature search.

From the websites of your university library, your department, and an email to your supervisor (“Which 3 literature databases can you recommend for my academic paper?”), you now gather (at least) the 5 most important databases in your research discipline.

There you enter your keywords into the search bar and download anything that seems relevant to you. Use the keywords in different combinations and their synonyms.

Collect all research articles you find in a folder on your PC so that you don’t lose track. For even more overview, you can create subfolders for each keyword. For example, if you are writing a paper on employer branding of IT companies for Generation Y, your keywords would be “employer branding”, “Generation Y”, and “IT”, including possible variations of them.

It is very important that you create a list of the most important databases in your discipline.

Instructors are thrilled if you ask them about it. In addition, there are some overarching databases that contain articles from almost all disciplines:

https://link.springer.com

https://www.scopus.com

https://www.webofscience.com

To be able to access those databases, you need a license. Universities hold a variety of these licenses – you just need to be in the university WiFi.

If you want to conduct the literature search from home or anywhere else in the world, you will need a VPN access. Check the pages of your university to see how to install it on your computer, or go to the technology support department at your university in person.

Offline Search in your Library #3

Try Online First

While reviewing your electronic sources, you will come across some standard works that are cited repeatedly. Most likely, they are also relevant to your work. To keep the effort as minimal as possible, proceed as follows:

Create a list on which you collect book titles that seem relevant to you.

First, search the literature databases from step 2 to see if they are available there as a PDF version.

Go to your university library’s website and search the catalog. Many books have now been digitized or purchased by universities in electronic form. If this is the case, you can simply find them through the catalog search and download them as a PDF (on the university network).

If the corresponding books are not electronically available, then there is only one option:

a trip to the library.

Your Last Resort

Only after you have completely checked your book list for online availability is it worthwhile to visit the library. You should keep this effort as minimal as possible because the time at the counter, on the bus, and between the shelves can be better used.

During my studies, I may have borrowed a total of 10 books, had to pay around 50 euros in fees because I returned them late, and they did not bring great added value to my academic papers.

Another time-consuming task is excerpting, that is, creating text passages from books and then transferring them from handwriting to digital form. With electronic sources, everything runs smoothly with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

However, in some disciplines or subject areas, you simply can’t write your papers without standard works. In this case, I can only recommend that you finish your online literature search first and then borrow and return all the books (not too many) in one go.

The Right Mix of Sources

As we have seen, there are different types of sources available to you. Roughly, they can be divided into 3 groups:

• Internet sources (reports, newspaper articles, etc.)
• Research articles (journal or conference papers)
• Books (and book chapters)

It’s not possible to say which type of sources is best suited for your an academic paper, because each discipline has its own way of publishing research.

Ask your supervisor or lecturer about this (this question is also very well received).

Ask them: What proportion of internet sources, research articles, and books would you recommend?

My personal recommendation for an academic paper in a discipline of the social sciences would be:

5% internet sources 10% books 85% research articles (papers)

But as I said, it really depends on the discipline and topic. Someone who needs an 80-year-old sociological theory for their work will not be able to avoid a few more books.

However, someone who is investigating the influence of chatbots on customer service in online retail will not find a suitable book on the topic, because before a book about chatbots is published and ends up in your university library, we will all have a robot monkey on our shoulder and be zipping around in flying taxis.

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.

You would like to know how to read papers fast and effectively but you keep facing one of these challenges?

• The papers are hard to understand and only about 10% of the information sticks with you?
• You’re not sure what to look for in the papers to gather input for your own research paper?
• You have difficulty prioritizing which papers you should even read

Then be my guest for the next 10 minutes.

As a doctoral student, I deal with scientific papers every day. When I’m not writing one myself, I’m reading one. But not just any paper. I have a system.

If you read a scientific paper from beginning to end, it’s a rather suboptimal use of your time. Especially if you want to produce your own scientific work.

My system gives you 3 steps to follow on how to read scientific papers from now on – so that you can really make the most of your time and build knowledge pragmatically.

How to Read Papers Fast and Effectively

Every year, more than 2.5 million scientific papers are published worldwide (NCSES, 2019).

2.5 million!

There’s no time to read them all. That’s why it’s so important to approach the task with a plan.

You need to know exactly how to find the right scientific papers that are relevant to you and your work.

In addition, you need the right reading technique so that you don’t have to struggle through a scientific paper for hours just to extract a single definition.

And finally, you need a system to collect, process, and organize your knowledge so that you don’t forget everything a day later.

When you’re working on your scientific project, you’ll have a wealth of text passages, quotes, and results at your fingertips that you can use to beef up your current research or introduction.

Let’s go!

Step #1: Selecting relevant scientific papers

Okay, first of all, you need to accept that your time is limited – and so is the number of scientific papers you can read.

If you’re working on your thesis, you only have a couple of weeks or months, of which no more than one third should be spent on your literature review.

Let’s say you’re writing an undergraduate thesis and have the capacity to read 30 papers in addition to the method books you need to read. With these 3 steps, you can determine your top 30.

Create a reading list in the form of a table.

Conduct your literature search and collect all papers that appear relevant at first glance.

Abstract screening: Read all abstracts and decide which papers make it to the top 30 reading list based on the abstracts.

This step is also important in systematic literature reviews. Now you can start reading your top 30 reading list. The remaining papers will be neglected.

Step #2: The right reading technique to read papers fast

A (in my opinion) wrong approach on how to read papers fast and effectively would be to start with the first paper and work through it from beginning to end.

First, approach the paper with a paper screening:

Read the introduction, methods chapter, and conclusion.

Why?

These parts of a scientific paper are what I call meta-building blocks.

They are not purely content-based sections, but report one level higher, or “above” the contents. By reading these 3 sections, you will obtain the following information:

• Context
• Motivation
• Research problem
• The method that was used
• Main findings and contributions
• A summary of the most important results
• Contributions

If you now realize that you want to get more out of this paper, selectively decide to read additional chapters.

• For definitions: Read the literature review.
• For interest in theory: Read the theoretical background.
• To learn more about the scientific discourse on this topic: Read the discussion.
• For methodological questions and inspiration: Read the results.

Different papers can be useful in very different ways. You need to define the goal you have when reading a paper.

This is called selective reading.

You must allow yourself to skip large parts that do not contribute to you reaching your goal.

In a science podcast I regularly listen to, an author was recently a guest who had mathematically solved a theoretical problem in one of his papers. Since the reviewers wanted these elaborate calculations in the results section, he was now unsure whether this would deter many readers.

He himself then called on readers to simply skip the results section because it does not necessarily contribute to understanding the paper.

So even authors of papers want you to skip certain parts instead of loosing you as a reader somewhere in the middle.

Step #3: Create your own excerpt system

Creating an excerpt system is an important step in effectively managing and organizing the information you gather from scientific papers.

The basic goals of paper-reading are to understand the context, motivation, research problem, the method used, and the main results of the paper.

But you also want to have the contents ready to be cited or paraphrased for your own text.

To achieve this, you should create an entry in your excerpt document for each of the goals you have while reading papers.

Excerpts are extracts from scientific texts that you copy for direct quotes and paraphrase for indirect quotes. You can also add your own thoughts, notes, and interpretations to these extracts.

There are different ways to organize your excerpts:

• You can organize them within your reference management software. This has the advantage of having them readily available where you manage your references.
• Alternatively, you can create a system of individual tables and save them in a folder structure, e.g. in Google Drive, to organize your acquired knowledge by topic.
• Or you can create a huge Excel sheet with separate pages for each paper, so you have everything at your fingertips in one file.

Each system has its advantages and disadvantages, but the important thing is that you have a system that works for you.

It also depends on your working style and the software tools you use. Some people prefer to collect everything on paper and use pens and markers. This may not be as efficient, but it can be a good way to consolidate the information you gather.

#Bonus Tipp: Do not read papers on computer screens

Since we do most of our work on our computer, we also very likely read papers on our computer. If we believe the author Maryanne Wolf, who was a Professor for education at the University of California, we should immediately stop doing this.

In her work she explains that the way we read on screens is different from reading on paper or kindle. (By the way, reading on iPads counts as a computer screen). On those blue-light screens, our brain tends to skim read. Because that is what we do when we consume content on those devices.

Scientists found that, while reading on computer screens, our eyes follow z-patterns, jumping from one word to another while skipping large parts of the content. If you want to read papers effectively and retain the information, this is not good.

Reading on paper, in contrast, gives our brain the signal to focus on the text and avoid skim reading. So either you print your reading list on paper or, which would be a more sustainable option, get a large e-reader such as a kindle scribe* or a ReMarkable 2.

It makes reading papers much more fun!

*partner link

Your research paper or thesis is almost done – you just need a compelling title for it? Then you should definitely read on, because here you’ll get 7 tips on how to choose a title for a research paper and make the title of your term paper an irresistibly attractive magnet.

The title will burn itself into the mind of your professor and will give them no choice but to put your paper on top of their list.

#1 Create a draft of your title early on

Nailing down an unchanging title at the beginning of your paper journey makes no sense. Spend a few minutes formulating a halfway decent title that you can present to your professor in the first meeting or even in the first e-mail.

Your title doesn’t have to do be perfect. But a simple rule for a first draft of your title is the following:

Put the most important concepts of your paper in your title.

As a first step, write a list of the most important concepts of your paper and rank them. The best way to explain this technique is to use an example. For my fictitious paper I choose the concepts:

Digital Nomadism – Corporate Work – Employer Branding.

Okay… defining these key concepts will not only help you formulate your title. They are also the central keywords for your literature search and the structure of your background section.

Before you can define your key concepts, you should of course have thought about a topic for your term paper. If you need some inspiration for that, check out my article on how to find a research topic.

But now back to how to choose a title for a research paper. From the 3 key concepts, you now form a sentence that brings the words in a reasonably logical context. For example like this:

Digital Nomad Corporate Work as an Employer Branding Tool

Boom – the draft is done. That wasn’t all that difficult. Of course, it is not yet a perfect title. But we will work on that. However, to give your supervisor a clear idea of your work, this title draft is great.

Besides, we don’t want to reveal the perfectly painted final title yet. It should only be emblazoned on the cover page of your term paper when you hand it in and make your supervisor’s shoes come off.

If you reveal your final title only towards the end, then you will also show that you have put effort into revising and perfecting your research paper.

#2 Divide your title with a colon

Now we come to the linguistic nuances and tips on how to make a lasting impression with the title of your paper. You know all those sayings and wisdoms: First impressions count and so on…. and you know what? It’s true.

If your title triggers curiosity, polarizes, or stirs up expectations, then the reader (in most cases, your professor) will approach the matter with a completely different default setting (priming).

With an uninspired, boring title, that person will decide in the first few seconds that your work has lost its chance for an outstanding grade.

With an exceptional title, however, s/he will inwardly think “wow, the bar is set. I wonder if this work can meet my expectations?” And the foundation for your A-type grade is laid. Now all that’s left is for the rest of your work to deliver. But if you have seen all my other tutorials, that shouldn’t be a problem for you.

The next hack on how to choose a title for a research paper is the separation by a colon. This way you split your title into two parts and double your design possibilities. You can still name the most important terms in a reasonable way – and additionally throw in an existing or polarizing statement.

Let’s try the whole thing with my example:

Corporate Nomadism: Digital Nomad Work as an Employer Branding Tool

These two parts now allowed me to accommodate an additional notion (corporate nomadism), which makes the title of the paper even more interesting, because that terminology is not well-established and rather thought-provoking.

This title would be quite acceptable for a research paper. But it can be even better.

#3 Raise expectations with a counterintuitive statement

The idea of “corporate nomadism” is counterintuitive. Why? Because digital nomads hate corporations and have build a whole movement to escape the 9-to-5. Therefore, conflating the two worlds is a bit polarizing.

The thought-provoking statement should trigger the following thoughts in your professors’s mind: “Wait a minute, actually this is different…. how can that be!” In your paper, you will then enlighten him or her with the help of your unique argument.

A title that is really clear to everyone creates an effect you want to avoid: pure boredom. Is your title something like this:

Remote Work as a Challenge for Corporate Cultures

That’s… OK but to be honest, quite boring. It would have been an exciting title in 2015 maybe.

Anyway, if your key concepts are inherently not that exciting like business process management and automated workflows, then you can use another technique.

#4 Use magic words

What’s that supposed to be? Has he gone completely crazy?

No. Magic words are the missing icing on the cake when it comes to how to choose a title for a research paper.

Magic words aren’t meant to make you drift into fiction or make your title seem ridiculous. Rather, you can use them to make your title more interesting and striking – the way a title should be.

I thought for a while about how to incorporate a magic word into my example – and came to the following conclusion:

Corporate Nomadism: Digital Nomad Work as Disruptive Employer Branding Signals

My magic word (disruptive) polarizes, makes a statement, sounds good and thus rounds out the title in a worthy way. I replaced “Tools” with “Signals” as this hints to an interesting theoretical angle (Signaling Theory) that I am trying to pursue in my paper.

What do you think?

I am satisfied.

#5 Create clarity by using nouns

I have unintentionally used this tip in most of the example formulations. To help you understand what I mean, I’ll give you a negative example on how to choose a title for a research paper.

Digital Nomads working as Corporate Employees: How Companies are Improving their Employer Branding by Signaling Flexible Work Arrangements.

Haha. I guess I went a little overboard on that one. That title sounds really crappy for a change.

But it makes you realize what I mean by using nouns. Instead of using verbs (here: working, improve, signaling), you limit yourself exclusively to nouns. The meaning of both titles is essentially the same. But this one is not only longer but also not very compelling.

If we compare this title with the previous example, one thing becomes clear:

“Nouns, we need nouns.”

#6 Don’t commit until the end

To close the loop completely, let’s go back to the beginning. In the first tip we agreed to write a draft for your title first. Based on the examples, you have now seen how many different iterations the title of a paper can go through.

You can do the same. Do not decide on a title until your paper is finished. Your title should appropriately reflect the contents and core idea of your paper. In the writing process, a paper can quickly develop in a different direction, which requires you to adjust the title.

Therefore, it is not necessary that your title is perfect at the beginning. But be careful: Sometimes the administrative staff that oversees the submissions of theses might not like a change of the title as they have already put it in the submission systems. Give them a heads up in case you made changes without their knowledge.

#7 Optimize your title for (scholarly) search engines

This final tip is a bit advanced but it might still be helpful for you. Even some of the most accomplished researchers do not pay attention to this and miss out on a lot of potential of their papers.

For a scientific publication to thrive, its discoverability is key. And in this day and age, papers are discovered through search engines and databases such as Google Scholar, Scopus or the Web of Science. These platforms work with keywords and search algorithms.

This means that you can optimize your title for keywords. If you do, more people will discover the paper in case it is indexed in one of those databases.

And even if you think: “Well, I am just a student who needs to pass this class with a term paper…”, I can tell you that the closer you can get to the real practice of research and publishing, the more impressed your professor will be.

So, let us quickly analyze the search-optimization of our example.

Corporate Nomadism: Digital Nomad Work as Disruptive Employer Branding Signals

Even though I wanted to include the polarizing term “Corporate Nomadism”, I still kept “digital nomad” in there. This is because nobody will search for “corporate nomadism”, but many will search for “digital nomad”.

The second keyword is “Employer Branding”, which is also fully included in the title.

Lastly, the keyword about the theory (“Signals”) could be improved. Researchers might search for “signaling theory”. So one could change the title to something like this:

Digital Nomad Work for Employer Branding: A Signaling Theory Perspective

However, I still prefer the first version. Even though this one would be perfectly optimized for keywords.

What I then do is to make sure that the keyword “Signaling Theory” is included in the abstract of the paper. This is because the abstract is also indexed on those databases alongside the title.

What is the difference between a master’s thesis and a PhD thesis?

Essentially, both are scientific, but there are some important nuances you should know in order to get the best possible results for each type of thesis.

In this article, I will show you the 5 most important differences that you must pay attention to when writing your master’s or phd thesis.

By knowing these, you will not be surprised by the requirements of professors and examination offices, but will be perfectly prepared.

#1 Scope

The most obvious difference lies in the scope of the work. On average, a Master’s thesis is expected to have 60 to 150 pages of text, excluding bibliography and appendix.

A PhD thesis typically ranges from 200 to 400 pages. However, there are also outliers that lie outside of this spectrum. It all depends on the discipline you are in and the requirements of your research institution.

What is certain is that a PhD thesis should be more comprehensive than a Master’s thesis.

#2 Time spent

The second major difference lies in the temporal dimension.

Master’s Thesis

For a Master’s thesis, you usually have 3 to 6 months from the time of registering your topic.

If you’re worried that this time isn’t enough, you can also game thy system a little. In most cases, you have to write an extended abstract before registering your thesis. This is a 3-5 page summary of your research project. There is usually no deadline for submitting an exposé.

Consequently, if you want to maximize the time you have available for writing your thesis, you can already use the unlimited time you have for the extended abstract to work on your thesis.

In my view, registering your thesis is more of a bureaucratic formality. So why not start researching interview partners or reading more into the theory than necessary for the extended abstract before your timer counts?

Apart from that, you shouldn’t stress too much about time. If your priorities are clearly focused on your thesis and you divide your work into smart work packages, the time you have is completely sufficient.

It’s just part of the examination – are you capable of creating such a work within a defined period of time?

PhD Thesis

Writing a PhD thesis usually takes 3 to 5 years. It took me 4 and a half years to complete mine.

How long it takes you to write a PhD thesis depends on a lot of factors:

• The requirements of your supervisor(s)
• Whether you are part of a graduate school or some other fast track
• How you fund yourself
• Your teaching load
• The administrative work that is expected of you
• Whether your thesis is based on publications or a monography (more on this in a minute)

Here, I can give you the same advice as before. Do not stress out about the time.

Who cares if it takes you 4 years or 5 years. If you want to pursue and academic career, you can game the system here a little bit, too.

In academia, the clock starts ticking the moment you graduate from your PhD. Nobody care how long it takes you to finish your PhD but everybody cares about what you do in the time after that.

The best strategy here is to write up the thesis with a little effort as possible and put as much effort as possible into publishing papers.

It does not matter whether they are part of the story of your PhD thesis or not. The only thing that matters is having a lot of papers in your pipeline immediately after you graduate.

If you do your PhD to get two letters in front of your name and pursue a career in industry, then your strategy should be to write up your thesis as fast as possible. Let me know in the comments if you are interested in how I would do this.

#3 Originality

Originality can mean two things.

First, it can mean that you are pursuing a really unique idea. This could be bringing together different (theoretical) perspectives on an old topic or investigating an entirely new topic.

Second, originality can also mean to do “original” research. This means collecting unique empirical data that no one else has collected. In a master’s thesis, collecting original data is great, but it is not a must. For example, a great literature review could also make a great master’s thesis.

But for a PhD thesis it is almost inevitable that you collect or at least analyze a unique dataset. A PhD is only awarded if you can show that you have investigated a specific topic in more detail than anyone ever before.

Even if you do a PhD in let’s say English literature. You might not collect unique data, but you must deal with a specific question in so much detail that you can contribute to the current state of knowledge in your discipline.

#4 Theoretical Contribution

What often leads to question marks in the eyes of students is the role of theory within a thesis. Therefore, I would like to address this once again. Just because a PhD thesis requires added theoretical value doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use theory in your master’s thesis.

If you’re not clear on the difference between literature and theory, or you’ve previously assumed that the two are the same thing, watch a couple of more videos on my channel about what a theory is in social sciences. It’s really important to understand this difference. For other disciplines outside of the social sciences, it is not the quality of the theory but the degree of innovation you can achieve with your thesis.

In a master’s thesis, you’re not expected to independently develop or extend a theory. But anything you can contribute in this direction is very good! Approaches of new theory are for example inductively formed categories in a thematic analysis or the statistical verification of a theoretical relationship in a model.

For literature-based work, which can also constitute a thesis, the laws are always a little different, that’s clear. Here, it is most important that you not only summarize the literature descriptively, but that you analytically identify and reflect on patterns, themes, and contradictions. In the social sciences, you can also generate a theoretical contribution from synthesizing literature. Outside of the social sciences, a similar thing is possible, for example, with a meta analysis.

A good decision here would be to follow an established approach and do a systematic, narrative, or meta review. This way, you have a clear blueprint for your thesis and don’t have to come up with a structure for your literature review yourself.

#5 Assessment Criteria

Both master’s and PhD theses are scientific works. If, for example, you quote incorrectly or your illustrations are full of pixels, then this is not good in either case. In this respect, no differences can be made here.

Criteria for a Master’s Thesis

Of course, the bar for master’s theses is not so high in terms of the added value of the work for the general research landscape. If you write a master’s thesis that is formally and methodologically flawless, then you can’t really fail.

But you can earn a lot of goodwill by exceeding expectations. After all, no one says, “Oh, but 12 interviews are too much for a master’s thesis. That’s not good.” So if you really want to get the top grade, try to overdeliver in every category of a scientific study.

If you make the mistake of limiting yourself by the demands of a master’s thesis, then that would be a pity. At the same time, of course, there is no pressure at all to do that – but if you were to ask me, “What do I have to do to get the best grade?” – then overdelivering would be my answer. Surprise your referees by doing more than they are used to. This increases the chance that they will give you a better grade than usual.

Criteria for a PhD Thesis

For a PhD thesis, I can only give you the tip to team up with an early career researcher such a postdoctoral researcher or an assistant professor as your supervisors. This group of academics, to which I also belong, relies heavily on generating a high research output. If your PhD thesis can help with that and it answers a relevant research question or provides valuable data for that person’s research, then it will be reflected in your grade.

The more research output you can generate from the work on your PhD thesis, the better your grade will turn out to be.