Since 2010 I've supervised MSc students in their fourth and final semester, where they design, research, write, and defend a Master's Thesis in Sustainability Science. Tomorrow I'll meet my new batch of students for the first time, and we'll make a plan for working together in the coming semester.
First meeting agenda:
Helpful resources for your thesis research: Here are guides I've written over the years that I hope can help you get started or make the thesis process a bit less overwhelming. Research design
Good luck, thesis writers! You can do it! 1. Align RQs + methodsAlign your research questions with the methods you will use to collect and analyze data to answer those questions, like Paula Kuss did for her 2021 LUMES thesis. 2. Align RQs + interview questionsMake a table aligning the questions you plan to ask in interviews with your thesis research questions. This will show how the answers to interview questions will add up to answering your thesis research question. Here's an example from Josh Darrach, LUMES thesis 2011. 3. Plan for coding qualitative data in NVivoInterviews generate text, which can be transcribed from recordings (plan for 4 hours transcription per 1 hr interview; consider automated alternatives). A practical option is to take detailed field notes immediately after your interview (book time between interviews to do this), and work with those initially, supplementing with recordings. Qualitative data can also include text or images from existing documents. You'll need a program like NVivo for qualitative analysis. Here's an example of using NVivo to code the 2014 IPCC Synthesis Report (Nicholas et al., 2015). Some of the codes were applied from existing categories, while others emerged from the coding process. The final codes are represented in the rainbow wheel below. Further readingHere are my lecture slides for the LUMES methodology course on designing and carrying out interview research and on analyzing qualitative data, with lots of practical examples.
Everything I needed to know about putting a commercial book out in the world, I learned from 20 years in academia... not!
Here's my guide to navigating the differences in norms and expectations between the worlds of scholarly articles and commercial books. Feel free to reuse with attribution. Click on the image below to download the full-resolution PDF with live links. Originally presented at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting, August 2021. Thanks to Emma Li Johansson of Lilustrations for design. Good luck writing! This is a tough and thankless job, but science depends on it! Here are a few principles I keep in mind when suggesting (to journals that ask for them) or soliciting (when I'm an editor) peer reviewers.
When identifying reviewers for a particular paper, I try to find a balance of:
Where to find reviewers?
(Along those lines- if you’re publishing make sure you’re giving back to the community by serving as a peer reviewer and/or editor yourself! Read my guide to writing a solid peer review or how to get started, and register as a potential reviewer with journals in your field). Ethics:
See guidelines for picking reviewers: https://methodsblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/preferred-reviewers/ For the PNAS guidelines see here: http://m.pnas.org/site/authors/coi.xhtml Springer, Conflict of Interest: http://www.springer.com/authors/manuscript+guidelines?SGWID=0-40162-6-795522-0 Article on COI in medicine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2246405/ I remember being confused about what was expected of scientific authorship in grad school. My mentor Pam Matson had a helpful rule of thumb: there are three things you can do to contribute to a scientific paper: (1) have the idea, (2) get the money, and (3) do the work. At least two of these three are required for authorship. (Thus, under this model, a PI who has an idea and gets funding to support a PhD student on that theme would be expected to be a coauthor on all resulting papers.) I appreciate having clear guidelines and expectations for authorship, so I was glad to come across the authorship guidelines from the Vancouver Convention. Basically, they recommend 4 criteria for authorship (all four criteria must be met for authorship): 1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND 2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND 3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. This is the model I aim to follow in my collaborations. Thus, I expect myself and all authors to make a substantial intellectual contribution (#1) and contribute to writing and editing the manuscript (#2). I interpret #3 above as the lead (first) author has responsibility to solicit and integrate input from all authors in making revisions, and obtain their approval before sending to the journal. I interpret this responsibility as applying at three stages: 1. During drafting of a manuscript, until all authors approve the MS being submitted to the journal; 2. During peer review, when the lead author takes primary responsibility for addressing comments from peer review, with input from all authors, and gets approval from all authors for the version to re-submit to the journal (this stage repeated as necessary if there is more than one round of peer review); and 3. During copyediting, when the lead author shares the typeset and corrected final proof with all authors for their approval before submitting for processing and publication. I think all three of these stages are important in order to ensure that the last round (approval before publication) is sufficiently met, so that all authors are in a position to take ethical responsibility for the work (#4). (See my tips on how to work with revisions suggested by reviewers here.) When working on revisions, and especially with large and diffuse author groups, the lead author has to herd the cats and balance between giving everyone opportunity for input, and making decisions about the most appropriate direction for the paper (especially when coauthors or reviewers may have contradictory suggestions). After giving all authors a chance for input, during revisions the lead author might send around a version that incorporates changes suggested and say something like, “Thanks for all your comments, which have been incorporated in the attached version. I had to balance between suggestions X and Y, which I did by Z; I hope everyone is satisfied with this approach. I would like to submit on X date (eg 1 week in the future). Please reply with either (a) any critical changes needed for accuracy or (b) your approval to submit. Thanks!” It's especially essential to receive positive affirmation (i.e., a verbal or written OK to submit) from each author for the final version to be published. So, you've chosen survey research to answer your research question, you've considered ethical issues and planned to obtain informed consent, and you're ready to write your survey questions! Here's how to make them make sense and avoid some common pitfalls.
Last October, I gave a Sunday morning talk to a group of early-career researchers attending the Earth Systems Governance conference. It was a day-long program on "Developing a career in earth system governance: opening up science." I enjoyed the chance to gather my thoughts and pass along some good advice I've been given (and some earned through experience!). Thanks very much to Ina Möller, who made a podcast from our conversation. You can have a listen here. Here's a condensed list and links to resources I've found helpful. Hope they're useful to others!
Science should be open. Duh.
Easier said than done. There are many reasons why this fails. Personally, I think mostly it's well-intentioned, busy people who don't follow best practices from the beginning, then don't want to spend the time cleaning up their Rube Goldberg-esque Excel sheets later. I've definitely been there. But I'm trying to get better, and trying to help those in my lab establish good habits. For my last lab meeting, we discussed best practices in open data, based on this paper by my friend and colleague Lizzie Wolkovich. Everyone in my lab is now working on curating our own data for a current project, including making a diagram of our workflow, and organizing our data cleanly, with good meta-data. This is a work in progress, but here are a few resources I've found helpful: 1. Lizzie's paper, "Advances in global change research require open science by individual researchers," gives a great motivation for why open data matters, what stands in its way, and how to design research to be open. 2. Ten simple tips for how to design a clean spreadsheet, by @robinhouston and @SeanClarke (hint: commas, asterisks, and color-coding don't belong). 3. Thirteen more elaborate but still simple and important tips for effective data management (what you wish you knew at the beginning of your research career, instead of learning the hard way, like always using full, consistent format for dates). 4. Lizzie's "Ze Template" for organizing project meta-data (what the study is about, what files it involves, where they're located), under Creative Commons license. Yay open science, and yay Lizzie! We're going to keep talking about this in my lab, including issues with open data in qualitative research (confidentiality, subjectivity of observations)- if you have any references on this, please let me know! Here are some tips I compiled with my friend and colleague Josh Goldstein when we were both finishing our PhDs and tackling the job market. Good luck, job seekers!
Here are some of my top tips, and a suggested template of a letter to contact a potential advisor at the end:
I came across your work through X (conference/paper/my professor X’s recommendation). I am very interested in your approach to (topic) using (method/specific thing they do that interests you). I’m writing to inquire if you are accepting PhD students in your lab for fall 2016? I am aiming to pursue a PhD dissertation focusing on X topic, specifically looking at the question of X puzzle in X case for X purpose. My background is in X bachelors from X university/Y masters from Y university. My research to date has focused on X, which I investigated most recently in my master’s thesis on X topic in X place, finding that X key highlight (please see attached thesis FYI). I have written about this work in a popular science blog here (link) and am currently preparing the manuscript for submission to the journal of X with my supervisor X. I also have experience in X business/NGO/policy/government, where I accomplished X. For more details, please see my attached CV. Regarding funding, I am currently applying for funding from X, X and X scholarship agencies to support the project I’ve outlined above. If there are any additional funding sources that you think might be a good fit to support this work, I would really appreciate any tips. And of course, if you have any currently funded projects that could support a PhD student, I would love to hear about them. Thank you very much for your time and I look forward to hearing from you. Best regards, You ---- If you don’t hear back from them in 2 weeks, resend your message with a polite note at the top: “Dear Dr. X, I thought my earlier message may have caught you at a busy time. I’m still very keen to pursue a PhD in your lab, and hoping you can let me know if you are accepting new students next fall. Thank you, X” If there’s someone you’re really excited about who hasn’t gotten back to you, consider picking up the phone to call them. Bold move, but it just might work! People get a bajillion emails, but few phone calls nowadays. Practice a shortened version of the text above to ask them. It’s smart to apply to at least several schools (I just checked and I applied to seven PhD programs, which now seems excessive- but at least three is good). You don’t know where you’ll get in, and you’ll have to consider personal factors about where you want to live, so it’s good to have options. Most advisors will be contacted by many students and will have many applicants for each open position in their lab. So, you both are on the lookout for the person who will be the best fit! Most advisors will understand this (some may even ask where else you are applying). That said, if you apply for external fellowships, you may have to specify your top choice for where you want to go and who you want to work with (depending on the fellowship). In this case, it’s important to share your plans with your potential advisor and get their agreement to support your application. In any case, if you really click with a potential advisor, consider asking them to give you feedback on your external fellowship application (for something like NSF GRFP, not for their own university applications where they would have a conflict of interest). Hopefully their comments can help you strengthen your proposal. In any case, good communication with a potential advisor is important, so ask them questions to clarify expectations or any points of confusion. Hope this helps- let me know if you have any comments! |
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