Overview

As an academic in whatever subject (mathematics, history, literature, engineering, psychology, sociology, biology, computational, ...) in whatever setting (college, university, corporate, private, ...) you will be expected to share your research with the world according to important rules that separate you from other popular writers (journalists, bloggers, fiction authors, polemicists, reporters, ...).

These rules can be generalized as:

• Authentic - Unless cited in a clear way, every sentence you write is a claim to your audience that you that invented that sentence. It was inspired and created from your brain an nowhere else. This forbids plagiarism, such as patchwriting, cut-n-paste ChatGPT or any reference, copying images, etc.

• Cited - You CAN use other people's brains when writing your paper, but you MUST NOT pretend that it is your brain that did it. This is pretentious dishonesty and can greatly ruin your reputation, branding you as a fake, egotistical cheat. It's okay to be bad at writing as long as you are honest and improving overtime. Portraying yourself as better than you really are is down-right deplorable. In the world of the Internet (which never forgets), your long-term career could be flounder. BUT, there is a specific way you can use other "works" - just say so in a clear way. Put another author's words in quotes and add a citation, footnote, or endnote so that others can verify that the other author actually said that.

• Verifiable - Unlike other writers, who hope their readers will "believe" them, you (the academic writer) must hope your readers will be skeptical and critical, looking for any flaw in your argument, fact checking you at every step. So you must give your readers all the ammunition they need to prove you wrong and be happy if they succeed or fail. Buy them a coffee and thank them profusely if they find any errors in your paper -- for they have saved you embarrassment in the long term, made you a better person, and perhaps improved your paper. Be very skeptical if they claim that your paper is wonderful and "not to change a thing." They probably didn't read it seriously. Put a few deliberate mistakes in your paper and ask them to see if they find them all.

• Collaborative - The world has gotten very complicated. Most likely than not, any paper will require multiple writers. Even if you start out on your own, you will probably enlist help along the way, such as graphic designers, illustrators, editors, advisors, and researchers. So today, one of the most popular ways to have many people work on any written artifact (computer application, book, web site, ...) is to use Github to track and merge the changes as they evolve in a distributed manner.

This document will show how to:

• Use markdown and a processor to generate your final paper
• Use Bibtex to keep track of all your references, citations, and bibliography.
• Generate a final professional PDF of your works.

Bibtex

There is a Firefox plugin called "Bib it now" where you can go to any web page or PDF

CITATION.cff file