As an academic or researcher you are the top of a pyramid of human knowledge stretching back thousands of years. Your knowledge is the result of a litany of people before you building one small piece of the very large puzzle that you are now solving. Now, whether you are Read more…
“Dear Applicant” or “Dear Author” is at any stage of your career a terrifying thing to see in your email account. Just those words instil near paralysing fear that could only be worse if the opening lines also included a clown face and a balloon.
When I was in school, I was often told that I had to practice essay writing because I’ll need to do it later in life. When I was about 10, it honestly sounded like the sort of thing your teachers tell you so that you’ll actually keep doing something that Read more…
On Monday the Royal Society of Chemistry had their annual Twitter conference. The conference is simple – anyone can attend, anyone can submit a poster, there are no registration fees and it goes on for 24 hours. You simply follow the hashtag #RSCPoster and get chatting to people about their work. Read more…
When I had my first research job I was hired for my ability to hold pipettes the right way up and not complain too loudly at the end of a long day of doing repetitive and dull experiments. Eventually I proved I could be trusted with tasks that involved reading and Read more…
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been helping my boss out with a review paper. Mercifully I’m not actually writing much of it, I’m mostly just helping out around the edges by sorting out references and digging through them for useful metrics by which we can compare techniques. This has led Read more…
So if you’ve followed all the directions from last month, you’ll now be in an excellent position to start actually sitting down and writing. You should be a couple of weeks ahead of your deadline, with plenty of time to spare. So you can start writing. Well, maybe… I mean Read more…
Update: By popular demand this blog post is now available as a downloadable PDF. Last week, I had the always very enjoyable experience of marking MSc theses. This year I had 5 to mark in a week – which was about all I could manage without burning out. But as I Read more…
So you’ve just done some amazing research that is going to change the landscape of your particular field. What you need to do now is publish a paper and share this with the world. You could share it other ways e.g. sky writing or on the side of a blimp; Read more…
