Ade mitenand - Goodbye for now
The blog is going on hiatus
Image: canva.com
This Friday one of our blog team authors, Jennifer Schultz, will be leaving QSR to pursue a new opportunity. Until a replacement is found, we’ve decided to put the Planned Accidents blog on hiatus. If and when the blog returns, it will likely be in a different format and have a different style and focus than has been the case up until now.
When Planned Accidents was first conceived, we worried that no one would be interested. But the blog has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. We now have over 6,000 regular subscribers – not bad for a blog for a reference management program! Many thanks to all of you who have accompanied us these last three years. Thank you for reading our posts and for sharing your comments, critique and ideas for new posts with us. We quite literally would not have been able to publish the blog for this long without you.
We’ve loved bringing you a mix of posts that hopefully have taught you new things, helped you improve your workflow, or entertained you. For both of us, writing the blog has been a high point of our time first at Swiss Academic Software and now QSR. We poured a lot of our heart and soul into it.
For this last Planned Accidents post, we’re looking back on some of our own individual favorite blog concepts, posts, moments and memories. We hope you’ll enjoy taking a look back with us!
Jennifer’s highlights:
- Spring cleaning for your citation software
This was a blog post that never got much attention, but it’s still one that always had a special place in my heart, since anyone who works with a reference manager for a while will eventually need to go through it and do some maintenance work. In addition to writing the blog post, I enjoyed designing and putting together the PDF checklist with the ten tips.
The pictures of the messy and clean closet were actual photos of my closet and my partner’s. If only I could use Citavi to keep my clothes as organized as my sources!
Read the post: https://www.citavi.com/en/planned-accidents/articles/spring-cleaning-for-your-citation-software
- Convergent vs. Divergent Thinking
Regular readers will know that we write a lot about convergent and divergent thinking. I must admit that it’s one of my favorite concepts since I’ve found it so useful in my own writing process – especially when writing the blog. I always try to get into a divergent frame of mind when first working on the shape of a new blog post. Once I’ve hit upon something I want to write about and get my thoughts down on paper, I then put on my analytical hat to bring all the pieces into a logical flow. I’m a much more efficient writer now that I separate the idea generation phase from the structured writing and editing phases – if you’re someone who is a bit of a perfectionist, I can’t recommend enough taking this approach!
This blog post on the Oblique Strategies was the first time we talked about the two modes of thinking. It remains one of my favorite posts since I still find the oblique strategies creativity technique so interesting because of its history – it even inspired the blog being named “Planned Accidents”.
Read the post: https://www.citavi.com/en/planned-accidents/articles/using-the-oblique-strategies-technique-for-more-creativity-in-your-academic-work - Can getting better at how you learn help you master subjects more quickly?
One of my favorite blog posts to research and write was the one on metacognition and metalearning. I had taken the MOOC course “Learning how to learn” a while back, and I really enjoyed getting to know more about how the brain remembers information. So, when starting the research for this post, I was curious to see what new techniques I would discover. One main takeaway is that the simple act of thinking about how you learn helps you learn better!
I still often return to the more concrete tips in the article as well: for information I need to memorize, I test my retrieval abilities by quizzing myself. When learning a more hands-on skill, I now try to directly try it rather than just reading about it. I do still struggle to incorporate spaced repetition, though, since it requires a regular commitment and often feels like a chore. So that’s one I’m still working on.
Read the post: https://www.citavi.com/en/planned-accidents/articles/can-getting-better-at-how-you-learn-help-you-master-subjects-more-quickly
- APA – The most popular citation style in the world?
One of the great things about writing the blog was how even very dry topics could often end up being really interesting. This post started with me wondering how APA had ended up being such a popular citation style, and that formed the basis of the research that followed. It was fascinating to learn about how traditional footnote citation styles ended up giving way to the new “Harvard” approach, and I hope I could relay some of that interest in my post. The research for this post definitely gave me a newfound appreciation for citation styles, that’s for sure.
Read the post: https://www.citavi.com/en/planned-accidents/articles/apa-the-most-popular-citation-style-in-the-world
These are just a few highlights, but I have to say that I’ve enjoyed writing each post, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them, too! If you’d like to keep in touch, feel free to add me on LinkedIn or write to me at schultz.jenniferl(at)gmail.com. In the future I’ll be using some of my blogging skills in my free time for my new side project, Swisstified, a YouTube channel on Swiss culture and history from an American perspective. Check it out if you’re interested in that topic!
Jana’s highlights:
- Channel your inner librarian
This is one of my favorite posts since I would send it to a user at least once a week as part of the support team. It comes directly from my experience! I often notice how unsure users are when selecting a reference type in Citavi, especially when they have an unusual reference type for which there’s not already a template in Citavi.
The most important tip from this post is that you should think about the reader when adding the reference to your project. As long as the information you provide is sufficient for them to be able to find the source you cited and check it, you’ve achieved your goal.
Read the post: https://www.citavi.com/en/planned-accidents/articles/channel-your-inner-librarian - The perfect fit
Our first blog post definitely needs to be in this list! I can especially remember this one, since so many of my colleagues took a look at it before it was published. As the first post, we wanted to make sure that it was especially good.
I got the idea for the post from my own experience: for my Master’s thesis I had a lot of difficulty finding good sources for my project – until I finally found one source that fit perfectly.
At the same time as writing the post draft I was invited to a few different weddings. So, I knew the feeling you get when you finally find exactly what you need – whether it’s a book or a dress.
You might have already realized that the question at the beginning of the first blog post is actually from me. I used the pseudonym Lisa from our "Citavi in a Nutshell” video.
Read the post: https://www.citavi.com/en/planned-accidents/articles/the-perfect-fit-5-steps-for-finding-academic-sources-without-frustration - Three studying tips
This post is included because of the story behind it. Our readers only know the two blog authors Jennifer and Jana, but in reality, the rest of the Citavi team often influenced the topics we would choose. We often relied on them for tips and inspiration. This was the case with this post – one of my colleagues’ video recommendations led to this post on how to study smarter.
Read the post: https://www.citavi.com/en/planned-accidents/articles/three-studying-tips - What’s up with in-house citation styles?
With this blog post I wanted to clear up a big misconception that our users often have: there is no one right way to cite, especially not at German universities. I never understood why German universities, departments, and individual professors go to the trouble of creating their own citation style guidelines when so many already exist. In this post I think you can feel my frustration and that I still haven’t found an answer to this question.
Read the post: https://www.citavi.com/en/planned-accidents/articles/in-house-citation-styles
We hope you found this list interesting, and we’d love to hear about some of your favorite insights from reading the blog or posts that you especially liked. Let us know at blog@citavi.com or by commenting on the Facebook post for this post.
Also, if you would like to help shape the future of the blog as a guest contributor or if you have other ideas for the blog, please write to us at blog@citavi.com. We would love to hear your ideas!
Uf wiederluege,
The blog team
