There are many books on academic writing methods, but not many that look comprehensively at common phrases used in research writing. This University of Manchester (UK) website looks useful:

http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

The site ' aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological ‘nuts and bolts’ of writing organised according to the main sections of a research paper or dissertation'... and states that ' the items in the Academic Phrasebank are mostly content neutral and generic in nature'. 

Topic headings include: Being Critical, Being Cautious, and many more. Each topic is introduced by an overview of usage for the topic. I highly recommened reading these passages and also the main introduction here: About Academic Phrasebank .