This workshop required students to work with their supervisors on a publication plan for their candidature and to bring it along for discussion and feedback. The seminar session was conducted by Professor David Green and Professor Frada Burstein. The workshop session was conducted by Julie Holden.
Date: Thursday 26 May & 9 June 2016
Time: 3pm – 5pm
Location: Room 7.84, Caulfield Campus.
The workshop allowed us to answer some key questions in relation to having publishing strategy in our research journey. As a HDR student, I was able to identify 5 key questions which we normally avoid to ask in the early part of the candidature (esp. when the supervisor also suggests its too early to think of publishing when no experiment has been done) These questions are:
- What can you publish?
- For this this could be the results of my pilot study in a conference, results of complete study in a journal and other interesting insights in the form of seminars and posters. Also, I should aim for high quality publication as it builds your research profile.
- When to publish?
- To determine this, having a project plan is very important. One would not want these dates to clash with other key dates such as milestone reviews of the research etc. Also, if the outlet targeted is a conference, then the experiments and analysis should be concluded in time before the conference submission deadline.
- Where can you publish?
- For me, in my discipline, the common outlets for publishing are conference and journals. It is important, however, to carefully identify which conference or journal to submit your work to? The timeline the conferences and sometimes of these journals have in place? How reputable they are? How often do they publish? The procedure they have to submit the work? What kind of audience or readership does it have? should all be carefully considered.
- Identifying plan for research training
- There is always some specialised skill required in any research project. This should also be factored in the PhD plan. In my discipline, this are usually in the form of Summer Schools or workshops.
- Putting it all together
- In this final task, all information generated in 1-4 above should be put along a calendar schedule or as a gantt chart.
This is how my PhD Plan turned out during Part B of the workshop:
Overall, I really enjoyed the workshop as I strongly believe that.. ” In order to be successful in anything, it is always important to have a good plan “.
