Academia and grad school
Both of these classic papers are true!
- Stearns (1987) Some modest advice for graduate students. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 68: 145-150
- Huey (1987) Reply to Stearns: Some acynical advice for graduate students. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 68: 150-153.
- Binkley (1988) Some advice for graduate advisors. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 69: 10-13.
- Witz (1994) Some pragmatic advice to graduate students: A hybridization of Stearns, Huey, and Binkley. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 176-177.
Where to find Master's and PhD projects
* is for specific to Master's and PhD projects in Canada
- Ask your professors, instructors, teaching assistants
- * Nature Conservancy of Canada's Weston Family Conservation Science Fellowship
- Mailing lists, like ECOLOG-L (get daily or weekly digest version), UVic Ecology
- Professional society/association websites, e.g.,
- * Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution (CSEE)
- * Canadian Society of Zoologists (CSZ)
- Society for Conservation Biology (SCB)
- Ecological Society of America (ESA)
- The Wildlife Society (TWS) - *Canadian Section and regional chapters in most provinces
Make the most out of grad school
- 10 ways to make the most of your time as a PhD student (The Guardian 2014)
- How to Succeed in Graduate School: A Guide for Students and Advisors (desJardins 1994)
- PhD Students and the Cult of Busy by the EcoEvo@TCD blog
- Secrets to thriving in graduate school, in Science Careers
- The Individual Development Plan is a career-planning tool for grad students and postdocs (read Science article about it)
- Pitching project ideas to potential supervisor, by Kai Chan
But also...just say no to Academic FOMO
Before saying yes to a new commitment, ask yourself:
- What's my motivation for doing this?
- Is participating in this needed or nice?
- What will it take time away from?
Impostor syndrome
"But I am very poorly today and feel very stupid and hate everybody and everything. One lives only to make blunders."
Charles Darwin writing to Charles Lyell in 1861 (one year after he wrote On the Origin of Species) |
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Productivity vs. procrastination
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Academic authorship (who gets credit, and in what order?)
- Liboiron et al. 2017 Equity in Author Order: A Feminist Laboratory’s Approach by the CLEAR lab at Memorial University. This approach to determining author order "emphasizes process and equity rather than system and equality".
- A student's guide to determining academic author credit and order, by the American Psychological Association
- "Authorship in the Era of Big-Data: Part One and Part Two" was a Storifyed Twitter debate about authorship on meta-analyses, compiled by Brett Favaro (lots of great resources, like this Dropbox folder)
- Clement (2014) "Authorship Matrix: A Rational Approach to Quantify Individual Contributions and Responsibilities in Multi-Author Scientific Articles" Science & Engineering Ethics.
- Editorial (2014) "Coauthors gone bad; how to avoid publishing conflict and a proposed agreement for co-author teams" Biological Conservation
- Conventions of Scientific Authorship, from Science Careers
- Determining authorship for a peer-reviewed scientific publication, by Chris Buddle
- Hunt (1991). Trying an authorship index. Nature 352:187 offers an "Authorship Calculator"
- Tscharntke et al. (2007) Author Sequence and Credit for Contributions in Multiauthored Publications PLoS Biology
How to peer review a paper
- Advice: how to review a manuscript for a journal (from Dynamic Ecology über-blog, a must-read for ecologists)
- Nichols (2011) A Quick Guide to Writing a Solid Peer Review Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union
- Peer Review 101 by the American Physiological Society
- The nuts and bolts to peer review: A guide for early career scientists by Standing Up For Science
- Want to get experience reviewing papers? Sign up to be a peer-reviewer (specifically for early-career researchers).
Miscellaneous
- Eight things that are more important for success than intelligence, on Nature Jobs
- Package to prepare for tenure track research faculty interview (tips and questions for academic jobs), compiled by Alana Westwood
- Postdoc Mentorship Can Launch Careers. Check out some best practices in American Scientist
- Narrating your Professional Life: Writing the Academic Bio on Grad Hacker
- Bonding in the Lab: How to make your lab less like a factory and more like a family
- "It’s a PhD, not a Nobel Prize: How experienced examiners assess research theses" (2002) Studies in Higher Education (Australian)
- "Nature's guide for mentors" (2007) Nature - Describes exceptional academic mentors (and tips on how to be one!)
- The Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars
- The Chronicle of Higher Education is an all-around great resource about academia in general, based in the US
- Motivate Your Lab: How to run an efficient and creative lab without micromanaging
- Small Pond Science, a blog by Terry McGlynn about doing research at a teaching institution
- University Affairs is similar to The Chronicle, based in Canada
- Chris Buddle (McGill) writes a blog about academia (and lots of arachno-trivia)
- Elena Bennett (McGill) has some excellent resources about grad school
- Emily Bernhardt (Duke) has a whole bunch of resources about why grad school is hard, the "two-body problem", and scientific writing
- Marissa Baskett (UC Davis) has a huge list of grant, job, and ecology resources (a veritable TARDIS of information)
- Spencer Hall (Indiana U) famous Resources for Graduate Students and Postdocs
- Me write pretty one day (Wells 2004 Journal of Cell Biology)
- Unpleasant surprises: how the Introduction has wandered into the Discussion (Wells 2006 Journal of Cell Biology)
