Academic writing and communication skills

Effective writing and communication skills are essential for your studies and your future.

Stay in touch with workshop opportunities on the Researcher Development Portal.

English language help

If you need specific help with your writing skills, we provide a range of opportunities:

Writing programs

There are many opportunities to hone your academic writing. Workshops, programs and resources include:

  • Re:Cite is the Library’s guide to citing and managing references in your writing
  • The Academic Skills online resources provide courses on developing graduate academic writing
  • Shut Up & Write: A group writing session that helps to overcome procrastination and write your thesis

iThenticate Similarity Report

In preparation for your confirmation, you must use the text matching tool iThenticate for any substantial piece of writing (eg a thesis chapter, a section of a chapter, or the written progress report). This will provide you with a solid understanding of scholarly norms and citation requirements in your discipline early in your studies. Avoiding plagiarism is crucial for academic and professional success.  You will also be required to submit an iThenticate for your full thesis when you submit for examination.

iThenticate is a text-matching tool that enables researchers and graduate researchers to compare their traditional research writing drafts with an extensive database of research literature. Using iThenticate throughout the writing process can help to identify and address potential instances of problematic matching text and weak writing practices. All Graduate Researchers have iThenticate accounts created for them and will receive an activation email from noreply@ithenticate.com with login instructions (for those enrolled prior to February 2019, the email will have been sent during the week of 4 February 2019).

Please note that iThenticate does not judge plagiarism. It only identifies areas of writing that match text from existing literature within its database. It is then your and/or your supervisor's responsibility to inspect the matched text and identify whether it has been correctly referenced, if there are issues for further discussion, or if they can be safely ignored as 'false positives'.

If you're having trouble, submit a request for assistance for assistance in ServiceNow via Student Services.

Communicating my research

Effective communication is essential to your studies and your career.

You will find workshops on the Researcher Development Portal.

Resources

  • University powerpoint and poster templates for your presentations and conferences
  • Speaking and Presenting: Resources for presenting your research, using PowerPoint to your advantage, presenting at conferences and helpful videos on presenting effectively
  • Effective Storytelling for Researchers: Digital storytelling is a powerful way to communicate research and engage broad audiences. Learn key concepts for developing research narratives and understanding production principles to create engaging videos to reach your audience.
  • Research Impact Library Advisory Service (RILAS): Helps you to determine the impact of your publications and other research outputs for academic promotions and grant applications
  • Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT): Research communication competition that requires you to deliver a compelling oration on your thesis topic and its significance in just three minutes or less.
  • Visualise your Thesis Competition: Helping graduate researchers develop essential digital communication skills to effectively convey their complex research to a general audience. Using a pre-supplied template, entrants are tasked with developing a striking, audio-visual presentation that presents their research project via a short and engaging digital narrative.