Category Archives: Mentoring

Journal Impact Factor: why you should not care… too much

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I have been publishing scientific manuscripts for the past 22 years. My educated comments with regard to journal impact factor has always been the same (If you do not know what JIF is, please have a look at this Wikipedia entry). First order, you should publish in the most important journals for your field. If their JIF are low, who cares as long as your work is important to your field and well cited. For example, the scientific discovery of 2012 according to Science (very high JIF) is the publication of the experimental finding of the Higgs boson… in Phys Lett B (low JIF relative to Science)!

Do not forgot that from an historical perspective, we are awfully bad at predicting what will be the next important discovery down the road. A number of fundamental discoveries and early engineering feats were discarded at first. Similarly there are numerous example of scientists having had tremendous issues in getting those game-changing results published, even those ending up winning Nobel prizes. Karry Mullins’ PCR work is one of many examples of work was rejected by journals having top JIF but for which the application of this very technique was published in Science and Nature and the citations counts of these second generation papers also receiving higher numbers than the original, award-winning work!)

Now, you do not have to agree with this lone scientist opinion but certainly you should have a look at the The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment or DORA petition, which is supported by the “big boys” (no discrimination intended). The declaration statement is actually a very interesting read and it covers the historical origin of the JIF (which was not for evaluating researchers at all) and further call for dropping journal-based metrics in assessing scientific productivity for funding and promotion. Over 240 organizations and 6000 individuals have already signed the declaration.

In conclusion, do not loose a good night sleep over your favorite journals’ impact factors…

Talk with your thesis advisor on a regular basis

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Each research group has its own dynamics. In some, entering grad students get a very detailed “charge” list saying for example, there is a group meeting every week, so on and so forth.

What ever those dynamics are, as a graduate student you should learn quickly how busy is your thesis advisor and start planning regular meeting with him/her. Do not hesitate to initiate a request to meet. These, in my opinion after being involved in supervising or co-supervising over 45 graduate students, should happen:

  • At least once a year to discuss the general direction of your research project and, starting at the end of year 2 (PhD), to plan the necessary steps toward your thesis completion 😉
  • Every time you think you are ready to publish a manuscript (but before spending too much time writing it!).
  • Every time you have significant new results (if not presented at the group meeting or if your group does not have group meetings).
  • At least once a month to avoid getting “stuck” for too long (again regular group meetings really help in this regards).

Of course, thesis advisors are also busy peoples, won’t be available for you 24/7 and one of their goal is to get you on the road to become an independant researcher yourself. However as a grad student, you should know that most thesis advisors loved the interaction with students and are available on a regular basis to discuss with them.

The minority of advisors that are consistantly  “unavailable” are usually well-known within their University / Department. It is your task as a prospective grad student to gather this information, to ask your future advisor the tough questions before signing for this significant portion of your life.

“Planning Analog” – Presentation Zen

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One must give credit when due. Organizing Creativity’s Daniel Wessel pointed out to me on the previous blog post  “Time to go analog” that this concept of starting your presentation as an analog process gets a full chapter (Chapter 3) in a book entitled Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.

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Time to go analog!

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In the previous post, I touched on key questions to ask yourself before preparing a talk. This sets the general parameters (audience, length, …). At this point it would be easy to just fire up Powerpoint or Keynote, shuffle through your previous talks, pick, mix and make modifications.

Instead, I suggest you go analog.

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For whom are you presenting?

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This is scientific meetings season, at least for me. This means a bunch of PPT presentations to prepare. It would be so much easier to just reuse an older presentation or merge past presentations. In fact, sometimes I feel that this is what is happening more and more often in these meetings. While I do use previously prepared materials, I always start by asking myself a few question key questions before even opening PowerPoint (or Keynote):

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The gift of doctoral study is…

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“The gift of doctoral study is that you get the time and space to obsess about something you’re (hopefully) interested in…”

-Jeannie Holstein

The above is taken from the following link about returning to graduate school to tackle a PhD project and finding it fun. A very interesting read: ‘Academia is a very well kept secret’.