Student Questions 3 - How do you get your research published?

In this series, I respond to questions that I was asked as part of "I'm a Researcher, get me out of here". See my earlier post on the event for more detail on the event as a whole. Students in secondary schools asked questions about my research, experiences, and researcher life. There was much less time and space to talk about these questions / issues than needed to give a full picture. So, this series has more of my thoughts and reflections on those questions. I'll keep the editing to a minimum, so that this is a more organic process, maybe I'll even get a podcast or two recorded on this topic. Comment or contact me directly to pose new questions, and I'll aim to answer them!

Today's question;

How do you get your research published?

Let me just say first that I am definitely not an expert in academic publishing. I currently have one published theoretical paper (A cognitive model of psychological resilience, which you can find here). Technically, I have no publication record for my empirical research. Fingers crossed that will change soon, when one or more of the around 6 or 7 papers that I have either submitted or are very close to submission with colleagues are published. Here, I'll talk about the research publishing cycle. Next time, I'll complain about it to show how it can be better.

So, you've completed a piece of research. The data have been analysed and the paper has been written in a format that will help others understand; what you did, how you did it, where it fits with other research in the field, and why people should care. Congrats! you have written a research paper. Now, how about we try to publish it?

Maybe you already have an idea of which journal you would like to see your paper published in. If not, then picking a journal comes next. You might ask yourself which journals are "good" in your area (I'm trying to save discussing journal metrics and other arbitrary judgements about quality for another post). Maybe your paper picks up where another one left off, and publishing in the same journal makes sense. In all likelihood, your supervisor will have an idea of which journal might make a good fit for your paper.

Now, you've picked a journal. You'll then head to the submissions page, probably find that you need to reformat a figure or something similar, eventually you'll fill in some information about the author(s) and the paper itself. You'll declare that it's your own work, and any conflicts of interest that would interfere with the research being conducted in a rigorous and objective way. Finally, you'll hit "submit" (and then "Yes, I agree to submit"). Apparently, this is where people tend to find/remember a typo. But, lets ignore little things like that.

Congratulations on submitting your paper. Party time.

small piece of advice - celebrate submitting, not just getting accepted. That's where you have most control. 

What comes next? Here's a super quick overview

The editor, or a handling editor will decide whether to send your manuscript to reviewers. They will gauge whether the paper might be a good fit for the journal itself. "Why did you submit a Psych paper to the Journal Of Kinetic Epistemology?" (to my knowledge not an actual journal, I just wanted to spell JOKE, because I am a child). If the paper is a good fit based on whatever the editors feel is important, they'll send it out to reviewers. Otherwise, they will usually get back to you fairly quickly with a reject decision letter.

Now the paper is out to reviewers. The number of reviewers depends on the journal/editor. Let's say your paper has two reviewers that kindly agreed to review the paper. Good reviewers will carefully read through the paper, give solid critical feedback, and make a recommendation to the editor on whether the paper should be published. (look up @YourPaperSucks for amazingly cruel responses to papers.

probably reviewer 2

The editor aggregates the reviews with their own review and emails you to give you their (hopefully good) decision on the paper. you'll likely get one of the following decisions.

• Accepted with no revisions (unlikely for a first submission) - Amazing! pretty soon the paper will be out there for some to see
• Accepted with major/minor revisions - still amazing! there's some work to do based on the feedback from reviewers, but the paper has been accepted. What more could you ask for?
• Revise and resubmit - great! there's a blurred line between a revise and resubmit and accepted with revisions that I don't fully understand. But, importantly, it's not a "no, get away from me" response, which is always nice
• Somewhere in between a R&R and a rejection is a grey area which amounts to "yes you can resubmit, but you have loads of work to fix this paper". At least it's not a rejection.
• Reject - unfortunately the editor has decided based on the reviewers comments that the paper will not be published in this journal. This sucks, and can be based on loads of different factors. It's not just a case of whether the research / paper is good enough, it may still not be a good fit. 

There are still a few things still to happen after the paper is accepted (especially if there are additional rounds of revisions and re-submissions needed). There's typesetting, copyright statements and other bits and pieces. If the journal has a good set-up, the paper will be accessible online well in advance of the print version. This is great for getting things 'out there' quickly, before the paper gets put onto a bunch of dead trees for people to hold and love. Eventually, people will read your research and know your greatness

There you go, a super quick overview of getting your research published. Of course, there are loads of finer points that go into getting a paper published, and things can differ quite a bit from field to field and journal to journal. Next time, I'll complain about some parts of the publication cycle and talk about registered reports, a much better way of running and reporting research projects.

- SP

Student Questions pt 2 - How many hours do you work?

In this series, I respond to questions that I was asked as part of "I'm a Researcher, get me out of here". See my earlier post on the event for more detail on the event as a whole. Students in secondary schools asked questions about my research, experiences, and researcher life. There was much less time and space to talk about these questions / issues than needed to give a full picture. So, this series has more of my thoughts and reflections on those questions. I'll keep the editing to a minimum, so that this is a more organic process, maybe I'll even get a podcast or two recorded on this topic. Comment or contact me directly to pose new questions, and I'll aim to answer them!

Today's question;

How much time do you spend working on research in a typical week?

This came up pretty commonly during I'm a Researcher. I didn't feel too strongly to talk about it in more detail until this morning. The short answer is that I try to work roughly on a 9-5 Monday-Friday kind of schedule, to fit with family life. When there are deadlines or revisions that need to be completed, or when there are applications to get ready I'll of course put in weekend and evening hours to get things done. But, I try to draw the distinction between home and work life where I can.

That's the short answer specific to me. But, what I want to write (rant) about is the expectations in academia to work excessive hours. I came across the below tweet yesterday, which riled me up for the reasons that I'll explain next (and hopefully give some information about working life in academia as well). The tweet was a higher response to a Times Higher Education survey which asked academics how many hours they work each weekend. If its not immediately apparent why lots of people (myself included) chimed in with less than positive reactions, maybe the problem needs elaboration.

this annoys me less now, but still, c'mon dude

 First, I should say that I am completely fine with the idea that if you love your work and want to spend time on it that's great; whether weekend, evening, or whatever. Its also fair to say that sometimes in academia we just have to put in some weekend time, perhaps there's a grant application deadline upcoming, or you really want to get a paper finished, or the problem is playing on your mind anyway. On a positive note, if this post was only a passionate statement about how this person loves their research that that's literally all they want to do with their time, great. That passion is great and in many ways something to be appreciated.

There are loads of good reasons for putting extra time in outside of the standard 9-5 Monday to Friday. There are also a hoard of bad ones, which is why this particular tweeter hacked me off, because they managed to hit most of them. This kind of statement rings true with the joke that 'one of the best things about academia is that you get to pick the 60/80/100 hours you work each week'.

Most of my objection comes from the "real academics" phrase. This adds a judgement that I despise and my honest opinion is that throw away comments like this contribute towards junior researchers hardships, impostor syndrome, and perpetrates a harmful work/life balance.

Lets talk impostor syndrome. I'm pretty sure most of us have felt like this at some point, and it seems particularly common in academia. That feeling that, despite your own achievements, that everybody else is better qualified and able to do the job. That you will get found out for being a fraud and not being good enough to be where you are now. You can google impostor syndrome for a huge collection that suggests how pervasive this problem is. Part of the problem is that we intrinsically compare ourselves and our achievements to others, and this is magnified when we are in a competitive job market like academia. This part is not entirely unavoidable, but makes sense, and we can do things to combat it.

One thing that the opinion that more hours = better work or a better academic lead to is burnout. Trust me, burnout sucks. The feeling that you cant function and actually get things completed, the constant mental fatigue, and if we are frank high-functioning depression and anxiety, suck so hard. Nobody should expect that to be the norm in any field. What makes it worse is people like the tweeter above putting out there that we should expect people to do nothing, or have nothing else important, but work. Add this to impostor syndrome and job insecurities and you have a recipe for disaster.

But, statements like this, which basically amount to "to be a real academic, you need to work weekends" to early career researchers (like myself) is a bigger part of the problem. It places a stigma on those who have other aspects of their lives (i.e. most of us). Family are important, in case that was not immediately obvious. I'm not going to miss spending time with my wife on the weekend so that some jumped up "real" academic on his/her ivory tower can look at me more positively. Even worse, to say to people wanting to work in research that their work is their life now is a reprehensible contribution to the public discourse around academic work/life balance (super trying not to swear lots and screaming into pillows).

be excited - not knowing something is an opportunity to learn something new

The take home message

Before I get into full ranting mode, I want to swing this back to the students that asked this question. If you want to work in academia, you will probably need to put in hours outside of the 9-5 schedule that many people work in. In the same way as having homework and exams means that you have stuff to do in your own time; you might have access to the lab equipment only on a Saturday for awhile, or there might be a few big deadlines close together so you don't have too much free time for a few weeks.

In all honesty, it isn't predictable, and will affect some people more than others. But, if somebody tells you (for any job) that you aren't allowed a life outside of that job you need to do one of two things. First, tell that person where to get off. Second, consider whether that advice is accurate (probably not) and whether it is worth it to you. If you truly love the work great, but don't sacrifice the other things that are important to you.

This is the important bit. You do not need to work weekends to be a "real" academic. You do not need to work yourself until you burnout to be good at your job. You should not be made to feel like you are not working enough (obviously unless you're super lazy). If you need help to get work done in fewer hours and not work every weekend, then you should be able to ask for help. Academia is awesome and I want to work in research for a long time. So, ignore statements like this particular tweet, you do not deserve to feel like you do not deserve your place as a "real academic".

What are your thoughts? happy to answer comments :)

Student Questions pt 1: barriers I've faced

In this series, I respond to questions that I was asked as part of "I'm a Researcher, get me out of here". See my earlier post on the event for more detail on the event as a whole. Students in secondary schools asked questions about my research, experiences, and researcher life. There was much less time and space to talk about these questions / issues than needed to give a full picture. So, this series has more of my thoughts and reflections on those questions. I'll keep the editing to a minimum, so that this is a more organic process, maybe I'll even get a podcast or two recorded on this topic. Comment or contact me directly to pose new questions, and I'll aim to answer them!

Today's question;

what is the biggest barrier you have had to overcome in your research in order to get where you are today?

First, this is a great question. It bypasses a much easier one about what I don't like or what is difficult about research, though I'll cover this in a future post. It also captures one thing that I think is often missed when we talk about research careers, and even going to university more broadly. I suspect, that these kinds of realities are well known to us already along the research career path (however junior I might be), but, are not communicated well (or at all) to the future generations of researchers. 

That aside, I can break down my answer into a few different areas. In my 'official' answer to the question, posed to all of the researchers (here), I talked a bit about how I can be my own barrier. In particular, I am so guilty of taking on extra projects and always saying "yes", that I am left with way too much to get on with. Add my general disposition to want to work on things at the ideas and development stage, with less drive to get the final write up finished, and this creates a general barrier to progressing my career further. This is something that I am working on, and I am better at getting projects finished and papers submitted, before moving on to the next goal or project. We can all hold ourselves back, and I am beginning to see that good self-management is the best remedy. Planning in such a way that projects get the final push that they need to check them off completely, rather than going on a two week tangent into a barely-started project, is a really good strategy. 

I'm super lucky to be where I am today. I don't mean that I have overcome some massive obstacle to get where I am, but more that I was lucky to not have any of the disadvantages that would have prevented me pursuing a research career. I do think that I have earned the skills that I have developed and I earned my place where I am. But, I didn't have to deal with any of the major issues that I know some have struggled with to work in academia. Whether it is sexism, racism, lots of other -ism's, inability to afford University costs, or the other hundreds of reasons that would make it more difficult to reach the near-end of my DPhil where I am today. I admit that this doesn't actually answer the question, because these are exactly the barriers that I did not have to overcome. But, it is worth mentioning, if only to highlight that everybody has a very different experience and set of challenges to begin, continue, and succeed in a research career. I'm hopeful that each of the barriers that any of the students that read this (if any do) are surmountable, we need their talent to move our fields forward. 

How about the barriers that I still need to overcome? I'll cover the academic job landscape in more detail some time in the future. But, for now, the biggest barrier is that I am on a knife edge between being 'too junior' (I haven't submitted my thesis yet, or having too few published papers) and desperately needing to progress into a postdoctoral researcher position. There are way more PhDs than there are postdoctoral researcher positions, that is a simple fact of academia. So, the biggest barrier is how to stand out from the crowd and knowing what skills or experience that actually entails. Knowing what skills would be best to develop is the first barrier. I could spend a few months learning a specific technique or analysis for example, only to find that if I had spent that time teaching, or getting a paper submitted sooner would have been the thing that tipped me from "we regret to inform you..." to "come along for an interview, you seem like an awesome dude". Another barrier is that I have what I've heard referred to as a 'two-body' problem. It is basically expected that early career researchers will be super-mobile and move from country to country every few years. Last year I married my wife and the year before that we bought our first home. At the very least I need to carefully consider where and when I apply for research positions, as it affects us both. This has the potential to narrow my search for research positions considerably. Because of this, I need to be in a much more competitive position for the job market in order to maximise my chances of being able to work where I want to, rather than wherever I can find work. This is a difficulty shared, I think, by many and unfortunately the academic system can make this difficult. Though, I do know of positive stories and that some universities are very supporting, so its not all bad news. 

Putting this together, every prospective researcher will face some hurdles to overcome, at some stage in their careers. Some of these (race, gender, and so on) should not be a barrier in the first place, but unfortunately people will have to deal with them. I am so lucky to have not been held back early on to get to where I am now, and I was very fortunate that my current supervisor posted the DPhil advert when she did, or else I could have easily missed out on the awesome opportunity that I am enjoying now. I also have some significant barriers to overcome now. So to summarise, its not easy and you will have to persist through some barriers at some point. But, if research is your thing, then it's totally worth it. 

I hope that I've hit this question better than before. It is my first post of this type, so be gentle in your comments and critiques. I'd love to hear your feedback though, and any more questions about research life, my own research, academia, and so on. I want this to be a platform for students thinking about what studying at university and working in research to ask questions that they may not have a chance to otherwise. Throw me some more questions either in the comments, or contact me directly. 

Happy studies!

I'm a Researcher: Thoughts, reflections, and more questions

On Friday I became a runner-up in the Curiosity Carnival's "I'm a Researcher; Get me out of here" event (check out my profile page for this here). I'm a Researcher was a collection of interactions between Researchers from a range of areas and backgrounds and secondary school students in the Oxfordshire area. There were three kinds of interactions between the researchers, and the students. ASK questions, in which students were able to ask questions directly to one or more of the 22 researchers that were involved over a three week period. There were fast-paced live chats, where a small group of the researchers would be involved in a live chat with a full class of students. These 30 minute chats passed by in what felt like seconds with the speed that questions were posted and the wide scope of questions asked to each of us. Finally, on Friday we had the live final. I was super excited to have been voted in to the final, where five of the researchers got to speak a little about themselves and their work, and answer questions from the live audience. Congratulations to Priyanka Dhopade who took the win, and donated the winnings to a charity that works to get girls into STEM subjects. It was a well deserved win, and I love the charity of choice. I also love my lego runner-up prize!

My runner-up prize. I've named him gReg the R jester. He judges me on my R scripts. Look at that smug face, mocking me.

The range of questions (in each of the formats) was inspiring, ranging from simple "how long have you been a researcher?" or "what's your thesis about?", to the more difficult "What part of your research can improve mental health to make people happier?" or "what do you hope to achieve with your research?". The latter questions took some time for me to consider, and I do feel like some required a much more in-depth response. Sadly, in a chat room, writing a long post to fully address all angles of a question is somewhat challenging.

The whole event was an eye-opening experience, and now that I have had some time to process what started as 'just' a public engagement exercise for me. Now, I am fully convinced in the importance of these events as an additional avenue to interact with the next generation of researchers. They deserve to know more about what research and being a researcher entails. Also, for those of them considering university and research more broadly, they should know what they might be getting themselves in for.

"Umm, my name is Sam and I, er, try to do science..."

An example; "what is the best thing about being a researcher?". The answers cover so many aspects that make working in research an awesome thing to have as a career. But, by the nature of the question itself, it completely misses what are the bad things about being a researcher. 

So, are we giving potential future researchers an accurate picture of research life? I don't think so.

What I am planning to do therefore, is to take a selection of the questions that I have recorded and spend some more time answering them from my current perspective. These are questions from teenagers interested at the very least in a direct answer. But, at the most, these questions might come from someone who is interested in pursuing a career in psychological research. I'm not coming from any privileged perspective on what things are like for everyone, but I can give an honest account of my experiences.

Watch this space for blog posts and maybe a podcast or two (if I can figure out recording one and don't hate my voice too much). Feel free to comment with questions you wish you had an answer to before heading into research or University. Also, post them to my twitter so we can discuss them more broadly!