Manage the authorship of your journal publications

Libraries are full of journals - but how is journal authorship defined?

One of my duties involves being a point of contact and support for PhD students who may have a problem that they cannot discuss with their supervisor. The most common issue that I'm approached about is journal authorship, and clarification on the conventions and guidance associated with who should be an author, and why. This post provides some guidance and resources on this topic.

Thinking about the end game: the last year of the PhD

At its heart, the key to success for many PhD students is their relationship with their supervisor or supervisors, which is of course a human relationship, just like any other.  Also like any other relationship, this one can have its ups and downs, and navigating these at key times, like the final stages of the PhD, is hugely important.  This is just one of the things which have to be managed just right to make sure the best thesis is submitted, on time, and with the least stress possible.

Positions in journal author lists- do they matter?

Here, I briefly focus on some of the conventions associated with the order of authors on journal articles, and discuss some of the interpretations and significance of these. Read on to find out how your authorship decisions now may affect your future career...

Seven secrets of successful students - report on training event

This post is a short report on a training event at which postgraduate research students and research supervisors at Teagasc attended a training day provided by Dr Hugh Kearns of Flinders University, Australia.  Hugh is an expert on procrastination (!), an internationally renowned speaker for his motivational seminars, and an accomplished educational researcher.

Here, I want to give an overview of some of the main messages from the day, and also provide further links to some of the resources that Hugh referred to. I aim to have a follow up post with some examples of practical lessons that I took from the event.

Hugh's consultancy provides a number of resources for PhD students and supervisors, and are well worth exploring.

The training focused on 'The Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Students'. A central focus of the day was the supervisory relationship, and the importance for students to write early and often. Whilst students and supervisors are often told this, there was a lot of practical advice on how to better ensure that this aspiration is realised. The table of contents of the accompanying book outlines the seven secrets:

• Care and maintenance of your supervisor

• Write and show as you go: This is show and tell not hide and seek

• Be realistic: It's not a Nobel Prize

• Say no to distractions: Even the fun ones and the ones you think you must do

• It's a job: That means working nine to five but you get holidays

• Get help: You are not an owner-operator single person business

• You can do it: A PhD is 90% persistence and 10% intelligence

Hugh's presentation is peppered with evidence-based analysis, relevant anecdotes and large doses of practical actions for both students and supervisors.
In the session for supervisors, the following questionnaire generated quite a deal of interest as a means of investigating the underlying beliefs of supervisors and students about the student-supervisor relationship:
Expectations in supervision questionnaire


Selected publications by Hugh Kearns
Gardiner, M. & Kearns, H. (2012). The ABCDE of Writing: Coaching high-quality high-quantity writing. International Coaching Psychology Review, 237-249.

Kearns, H. & Gardiner, M.L. (2011). Waiting for the motivation fairy. Nature, 472, 127.

Gardiner, M. & Kearns, H. (2011). Turbocharge your writing today. Nature, 475, 129.

Kearns, H. & Gardiner, M.L., (2011). The care and maintenance of your adviser. Nature, 469(7331), 570-570.


PhD Skill: learn how to improve your quantity and quality of writing and eliminate procrastination.

Training comes in many guises

Training helps to realise your potential.

The award of a PhD degree recognises your successful training to be an independent researcher. 

Therefore, it's not surprising that PhD research involves a lot of training and learning! Some of the usual training needs include project management, time management, statistics, research methods, reference management software, oral presentations, poster presentations, career development and many others. 

So when was the last time you had some training?

Unfortunately, some PhD students do not receive as many training courses as they expect. However, we often have more opportunities for training than we think. Training is not just something that happens when someone from somewhere else turns up and gives a course. 

A lot of training happens without courses. A few examples should make it clear how training and learning occur in many different forms: 

- attendance at departmental seminars

- discussions with your supervisor about research methods, ethics, publication practices etc.

- reading books about a specific topic

- learning by doing (even if it means making mistakes at first)

- receiving instruction on equipment or methods from a technician

- reading online material about a specific topic (this is how I first learned to create a blog)

- discussions with other researchers about your work or related research

- journal clubs

- receiving advice from other students about software packages

- presenting your work as a poster or seminar, and receiving feedback.

This variety of forms of training doesn't mean that courses are not important. But if you can't get to as many courses as you would like, there's still plenty of training that's available. 

PhD Skill: identify your training needs, some of which may require courses. Be aware of the training that you are receiving, in all its forms, and how it contributes to your professional development.  

photo credit: kevinpoh via photopin cc

Rejection of your work by a journal

 

Had your paper rejected? You're not the only one.

It's easy to think that everyone is publishing more than you are, and receiving far fewer rejections. Even experienced researchers feel some apprehension upon receipt of referees' comments and the decisions that journal editors make. Little wonder then that PhD researchers would also feel the same apprehension. And the same intense disappointment when the journal editor's response begins "I regret to inform you...".

I re-discovered an old paper about "Publication rejection among ecologists" by Phillip Cassey and Tim Blackburn. It asked successful ecologists (or at least those who had published a lot) about their experiences of rejection. Overall, the 61 respondents had experienced rejection of their papers - about a quarter of their combined total of 2907 publications (a prolific bunch...) had been rejected at least once. Their take-home message: if at first you don't succeed, try try again.

My very first submission to a journal was a co-authored manuscript with my PhD supervisor and a postdoc. It received glowing reviews, with one of the reviewers complimenting our work and recommending that it should be published without any changes. (Stay with me: I'm not bragging and will get my come-uppance...). The postdoc told me to frame the review. (Now I understand why - it took another fifteen years before I saw another review like it). My next (also co-authored) manuscript was submitted soon after. The first referee began their review by saying "I can't believe these people claim to be ecologists..."

In their paper, Cassey and Blackburn emphasised that "publication success and manuscript rejection are not strangers".

Thus, it seems a thick hide is another skill to develop. But how can PhD researchers improve their ability to address reviewers' comments and to cope with rejections? One way to manage your expectations about the refereeing process is to discuss your supervisor's previous reviews of their own work - they may even be willing to share some of these with you on a confidential basis. Other PhD researchers in your group may also be willing to share their reviews with you. And on the day that you do get a rejection, remember that you are in good company. Put away the reviews for a few days, let the dust settle, discuss with your supervisor and decide on the next action.

Update: another paper highlighting the widespread rejection of submissions, followed by their subsequent acceptance. For another quite sophisticated example of rejection rates and impact factors in ecology journals see this paper.

PhD Skill: persevere with the publication process.

Update: See great post on Statistical Horizons blog by Andrew Hayes: Rejected? Keep at it.


photo credit: howpinz via photopin cc

What questions are asked during a PhD viva?

"I'd like to know how much of this thesis is really yours - which chapters have the questions that weren't given to you by your supervisor?"

This was the opening question for one student in a PhD viva. Although we've all heard about the more unusual viva questions and behaviour, the one-to-one (or few-to-one) nature of most vivas makes it pretty tough for other PhD students to get a good insight into what happens. How to learn about what kinds of questions crop up, and avoid the biases of individual student accounts?

One way is to read the results of a survey of PhD vivas, published by Vernon Trafford and Shosh Leshem in a 2002 paper in Higher Education Review. It provides a list of questions that give an overview of questions asked across a sample of 25 doctoral vivas. This work achieves a generalisation across multiple vivas that few supervisors could hope to achieve, let alone doctoral candidates. An important point is that these issues are not only relevant to those researchers who are just a few months or weeks from their viva - these issues are of high relevance to students just beginning their PhD research. What better way for a new PhD researcher to know the standards expected of a PhD degree other than to know the questions posed by the examiners in their reading of the thesis (a topic for another day), and in the viva?

The research results showed that the broad categories of examiners' questions ranged from the choice of topic, conceptual issues being addressed, the choice and justification of methodology, the selection of instruments/materials/respondents/, the contribution to knowledge made by the work, and candidate's critique of their own work. Each category had about five questions associated with it. These questions will be very useful for any PhD student. 

As an example of the topic 'being critical' (of your own work), the questions are: 

- How else might you have undertaken your research? 

- What are the strengths and weaknesses of your research? 

- What would you do differently if you repeated your research?

Other questions include: 

- How did you use your conceptual framework to design your research analyse your findings?

- How generalisable are your findings - and why?

I was so impressed by this work that I asked for permission to reproduce the list of questions in 'Getting a PhD', and ensure that all  of my students have addressed these questions before their viva. They have all found the questions to be extremely helpful in preparing for the external examiners' questions, and in reassuring them ahead of their own viva. I have even known these questions to be read in advance of the viva by a number of colleagues acting as PhD external examiners! 

Of course, these specific questions may not be asked during your PhD viva in the exact same way as presented in the paper. Nevertheless, the questions in the paper reflect broad categories of questions that test 'doctorateness', and PhD candidates can be certain that variants of these will be prominent in the viva. And although it doesn't appear in Trafford and Leshem's (2002), it's also a good idea to know which of your chapters have the questions that weren't given to you by your supervisor!

PhD Skill: prepare for the PhD viva by considering the questions in Trafford and Leshem's (2002) paper, and how they may be applied to your work 

Update: See related blog post on Doctoral Writing SIG by Susan Carter: Defending research choices in doctoral writing: getting the habit at the start of the research

Update: Ten Tips for getting through your PhD Viva

Trafford, V. and Leshem, S. 2002. Starting at the end to undertake doctoral research: predictable questions as stepping stones. Higher Education Review 35 (1): 31-49.

These same authors published a book in 2008 'Stepping Stones to Achieving your Doctorate: By focusing on your viva from the start.'

If you have some great questions from a PhD viva, I 'd love to hear about them, and share them in another post - I will accredit all contributions. 

photo credit: mnadi via photopin cc