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如何确定研究方向
1 Q: As a student specialized in humanity subject. I often feel my research is useless to the world. In other words, I don't see how I can put my research result into practical use. So how should I find my research direction? Now I am on my first year of graduate study. Thank you in advance.
A: Do not be discouraged! Your first years of graduate school are the toughest, but you will begin to see your project more clearly over time. The humanities are very important to society, but often the impact is very different than in engineering and sciences. I would suggest talking with your advisor and trying to think about what topics are meaningful to you. Good luck!
2 Q: Dr. Nicholas, I just begin my subject a few month ago, I am a mechanical engineering graduate, but now my tutor’s research area is composites manufacturing. I don't know how to know this area quickly? And how to find my research theme? Could you give me some suggestions? A: Modern research is very interdisciplinary, and this will be a great opportunity for you to branch out into a new field, which will make you a more attractive job candidate after your education. While it may be difficult to begin thinking in terms of your new project, I believe most graduate students’ projects are on topics that they are initially unfamiliar with (this was the case for me and most of my colleagues). Try to read as much as possible about the topic. Start with simple sources (even reading very low level things online) before jumping into the technical literature, and don’t be shy to ask questions!
3 Q: Dear Nicolas, I would want to know, as a fresh graduate student, how to get a good idea in our field? Or where are the good ideas come from? Thank you! A: Again, I wish I knew the answer to this! Reading papers and going to conferences are great ways to get ideas. Interact with people in different fields whenever you can, because they might have some projects or techniques that align with your work and can lead to some new and exciting techniques. I think a lot of the best new work is interdisciplinary.
4 Q: Hi Nicolas, China's economy is different from other countries, especially the western countries, and a lot of western theories are not suitable for China's current situation. I would like to ask that when we want to do social and economic research, the starting is from the theory or the practice experience. A: Wow. This question is pretty far outside my area of training, but this sounds like a very interesting topic. In my field, theory and practice are often done iteratively to try to understand things better and improve our control over things. If you are having trouble trying to submit work to journals in the west because you are working with such a different system, you might consider taking an in depth look at what is different between your system (China) and those of the people who are reviewing your papers (people from USA and Europe). If you can clearly express the differences to your readers, they will likely be more open to your work whether you approach it from theory or practice.
动笔之前：试验的设计与无奈 5 Q: How to begin scientific work with poor experimental conditions?
A: Hi. This is a little bit of a mysterious sounding question, but you sound frustrated. If you are in an unsafe environment, you should have some way to have this fixed through your institution (I am not sure of the policies where you work), but I hope you are safe! Some experiments are not as clean as we like, and we often just have to do our best. In some cases this is acceptable and in others it is not (a dirty cleanroom would not work...). I hope this helped.
6 Q: Hi Nicolas, writing is the last step of the cycle. Usually the research quality already determines the paper quality. Any tips on how to carry out good research too? A: I wish I knew the way to come up with great research ideas! This is very challenging. I think using the Heilmeier catechism can be very helpful for pinpointing research problems that will be impactful and that better journals will be interested in.
7 Q: What should be drawn attention during the research or experiment process given that the output will be a scientific paper? A: When you are doing an experiment, try to understand how it will fit into the context of the paper you plan to write. Sometimes you might get in the habit of spending all our time in the lab running experiments without making sure that are properly designed to give you meaningful information. After weeks or months of this work, you will have data that does not lend itself to presentation in publication. This can be as simple as making sure you are running control experiments under the same conditions as your other tests. I am a big fan of starting with a sketch of the figure I want to make before I do an exhaustive round of experimentation.
8 Q: Hi Nicolas, great talk but most of the things are well known. Any secret weapons? A: Thank you. The main secret weapon is to try to follow some of this planning advice rather than sort of jumping in at the writing process.
9 Q: Generally, how many methods you use to prove your idea, 2 or 3? Is that too many? A: This is very subject specific. One very well established method might be adequate. Sometimes only one method is available. If possible, it is great to verify your results with another measurement. The proper control experiments might be more important than the number of methods used.
文章撰写时的疑问 10 Q: When I do not know which journal that I can submit, how could I write my paper in a more general way?
A: This is a great question, because this is how most people start writing (I have done this most of the time in my work). Choosing a journal before you start writing can help you to target the work to that audience and will help you to have the correct length/formatting from day 1. However, it is very common to prepare a more general paper that you might submit to several similar journals. In this case, I would suggest using the generic formatting presented in slides 10 and 11 as a starting point.
11 Q: Also I have a question on how to write the citation of paper even you do not read them but maybe they are relative to your topic. A: I believe you are asking about citing papers without reading them. Unfortunately, this is very common because we have too much work and not enough time to read all of the papers we should. I think you should understand the paper you cite well enough to have a short summary of it. You definitely want to be sure it is about what you think it is about. Otherwise, your citation will not make sense.
12 Q: What to do if my field is relatively new and I can hardly find the article? A: This puts you in a great position to publish your work! However, it might be more challenging for you to choose a journal to submit to, and it will be tough to find previous work to reference in the Introduction. I suggest citing the work of all the other people in the field if there are only a few other groups working on your topic. Make sure to point out why this new topic is important, because readers will not be familiar with it and may not get the point of your work immediately. Ultimately, I think this puts you in a great place to publish in good journals!
13 Q: I have done research on my topic for two years, but when I write the paper, it appears that all my sentences are very simple. What should we pay attention on the words when we write? A: This is a difficult question to answer without seeing an example of what you mean by “simple”. In general, it is better to make the language simple and to the point (concise), but you can take this too far, and your writing will sound strange. Many times two related sentences can be connected. If there is a cause and effect relationship use words like “since” and “because” (e.g., “The cat ran away, because it saw a dog” is better than “The cat saw a dog. The cat ran away.”). Do not worry too much about trying to use large words. Instead focus on using language to connect related ideas, making the arguments made in your paper easier to follow.
14 Q: Are short sentences more required in a manuscript? A: Short sentences are not required, but short sentences are more likely to be correctly presented (in terms of English grammar). Many authors that I have edited for try to create long sentences that become almost impossible to understand, because they are not following the appropriate grammatical rules for constructing such sentences. To be more easily understood and to be more likely to pass the review process, it might be better to avoid very long sentences if you are not sure that they are correctly written.
15 Q：My experiment is establishing the detection method, each method is corresponds to an article, but the problem is, when you write, repetition rate of word is very high, I want to know how to do it. A: This can be very challenging if your papers are very similar. Try to approach the Introduction section through a slightly different perspective in each paper and the language will naturally have more variation. In the Experimental section, it will be impossible to have great variety, but you should still not use the same words from a previous paper. Consider referencing your own work so that you do not need to provide the full details in each paper. If possible, you could even consider combining methods into a single paper if they are appropriately similar. This will cut down on your total publication count, but you might be able to submit to a higher impact journal.
16 Q: Dear Nicholas, I would like to know about how to select topic of paper? Which one is more important: useful (have practicability for society) or just hot topic that people like? A: This depends much on what kind of research is funded in your lab. I think both of these things are interesting to publishers (and ideally the hot topics should have some perceived usefulness). Try to look at your work subjectively and present it honestly. If you try to oversell the usefulness of your work, the reviewers will catch this and you will struggle to publish. Small incremental steps are still valuable, but you will need to choose a lower impact factor journal. I think if you choose a journal where people are most interested in your topic, you can still be well cited even if you go with a lower impact journal.
目标期刊的选择及要求 17 Q: Dear Nicholas, I have one question. I know that you have papers published on JACS and now I am preparing a paper which I want to submit to JASC. So I want to know that the requirement of JASC in these aspects: the importance, whether the hypotheses supported by the data, whether the experimental section sufficiently detailed. Moreover, how many reviewers in JACS? And whether a single “reject” proposed by a reviewer is sufficient for them to reject your manuscript?
A: Hi! Thanks for the question. JACS is a challenging place to publish. All of these aspects are very important. The data needs to support the conclusions you are drawing from them, and like I said they should be able to replicate the study using your experimental description. Usually you will have 3 reviewers, but I believe you might sometimes have only 2 if it is tough to get reviewers. If the reviews are mixed (1 reject, 2 accept), you still might be rejected, but it is at the editor's discretion (This has happened to me).
18 Q: Dear Nicholas, thank you for your advice. You know that the requirements of different journals are very distinct. For instance, the "importance" is not very important for some journals and even the novelty of your work is not sufficient , your paper could also be accepted such as Plos one versus JACS. A: Thank you. This is a good point. Different journals are certainly looking for different kinds of work. You need to understand what journals expect before submitting to them. Many journals also publish different styles of papers, full papers and communications. The shorter communications are generally more novel, but do not need to be as extensively understood. These usually contain only 2-3 figures.
19 Q: So I hope to know more about the requirement of novelty, hypothesis supported by the data, and detailed description of your experiments about JACS. A: JACS is a high impact journal and has petty high expectations in terms of your study being significantly different than previous similar work. For this journal, a small step forward is generally not enough. I think the hypothesis being supported by the data and the detailed description of experiments is common to all journals. Because of their high expectations, JACS reviewers might ask for more experimental results if they see a gap in your data interpretation.
20 Q: Dear Nicholas. In your opinion, do you think the ACS’s journal is superior to RSC’s journals? A: This is a tough question. Overall, I think both have very high quality journals and are pretty evenly matched. They both have very good reputations and would be a great place to submit your work.
21 Q: Dear Nicolas, whether the reviewers of the ACS's journal are commonly in North America? And whether the boss of North America generally asks their PhD students to review these papers? A: I believe they use international reviewers. The reviewers are the people who are publishing in the journal. Some bosses will have PhD students do a first round of their review to give them experience in this practice, but I have not heard of any that do not also review the paper themselves also.
投稿之后的疑问 22 Q: Dear Nicholas, I have one question. I find my paper having some mistakes after accepted, what should I do?
A: It is possible to send corrections to the journal. If the mistakes are small language errors you should likely not make changes. If the change is significant, you should check the publishers’ website to see how to submit revisions. In some cases, you might have done more experiments and found that your conclusions were incorrect. This is not really something that needs a revision, because our understanding is constantly evolving (and much good work not ends up to be 100% correct as we learn more).
23 Q: I have a paper. The first reviewer says it needs minor revision, and the second says it needs moderate revision. I do not know the reason. And what if it means it will be rejected? Can you give me some methods about the paper to revise? A: It is difficult to say without knowing more, but generally it is a good sign if they are asking for revisions (be happy!). If they plan to reject your work, they will reject it and not bother asking for revisions. You should pinpoint whether you are missing some results and need more lab work (or whatever work you do) or if the language has too many errors to be readable by the audience. You might ask a colleague to help review your paper. I wish you luck, and I'm sure you will get it published.
24 Q: The response to reviewers, can you give us some specific ideas? A: You should give specific responses to each comment they make. Use language like "We appreciate the reviewer's comment" and "following the reviewer's suggestion, we changed x". You want the reviewer to feel listened to.
综述类文章撰写的注意事项 25 Q: Thank you for your presentation! I am wondering what the requirement of a review paper is.
A: This is a great question. A review paper is very different in terms of its structure and content than a scientific paper, but many of the same ideas apply. I think the planning section is VERY important, because you need to have a very clear idea of what your review is focused on (and how it is different than the many other reviews out there!) Also many reviews are invited. So you will have to navigate the politics of getting a review accepted or getting an invite.
26 Q: Would you please tell more about good planning the review papers? I have the problem of finding the main story line from a large budget of history literatures? My boss said my draft is just a summary. This makes me sad. Can you give more suggestions? A: I am actually planning a review paper now, and it is a challenging project (don’t be sad!). Try to think of common themes in the papers, and create different sections. The first section should be an introduction with a broad summary of the literature. This section should end with a subsection that clearly defines the scope of your review compared to other reviews. Then create other sections (with subsections possibly) that address different themes. It is difficult to give a relevant example, but one section might be “Types of systems studied”. Another might be “Techniques used for the studies”. As you plan this out, you will likely change your mind about what is best several times. Keep at it and try not to get discouraged!
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发表于 2016-4-19 09:15
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