As a favour to a long-standing collaborator of mine, I recently (over the course of the past 18 months or so) acted as Associate Editor for a special issue of a peer reviewed journal which focussed on one of his projects with which I was not involved. This issue contained only 8 papers, but they involved virtually all active research groups across Europe on one particular research area. It was therefore extremely hard to find reviewers. For one paper, I ended up doing the review myself. The issue has now appeared, and in the editorial/acknowledgements I see the phrase "We would like
to thank Prof. X (me) who acted with extreme professionalism as associate editor for this Special Section".
A colleague mentioned that he was trying to work out whether this was a compliment or not and I confess I am not sure myself what is meant. I was thorough in tracking down reviewers and reading all their comments and making decisions appropriately and justifying these fully (even though this meant that the special issue took longer to appear than it might otherwise have done). I was also thorough in making sure the reviewers had no conflicts of interest. However, I'm not sure how much more professional I was than any others would have been. IN fact, since I am currently a co-editor of a different journal, and going through a heavy phase of reviewing articles, it made me feel slightly odd!
Recently I have seen two excellent guides to writing a peer-review, which made me feel guilty about the quality of peer reviews I have sometimes provided, and frequently seen. One is published by Elsevier.com and available at www.elseview.com/reviewers. Another is an article in the membership newsletter of the American Geophysical Union. The latter suggests 3 readings of the manuscript in total, but that a review can be written after then first one if the material is not publishable or has a major flaw which could be addressed. I wish I had time to read things that many times (although I often skim a manuscript before doing a detailed review). On occasion I have resorted to filling the review with structural and grammatical comments rather than deeply considering the science.
I resolve to treat others manuscripts as I would have someone treat my own in the future. If this means accepting less requests to review in order to do them more thoroughly, this will be ethical.
Monday, 22 August 2011
Conference confidence
In the last post I talked about my difficulties in selecting material for a 15 minute overview talk. Well, I'm back from the conference and can report that I managed to raise enough interesting points for people to ask good questions, and to come and seek me out after my talk for further conversation. And I only over-ran by 1 minute (whilst I realise this is bad manners, in the context of everyone else in the session I was a full 5 minutes relatively well behaved!!!). The interesting thing is that this is the first time I can remember people being so enthusiastic about coming and talking to me. Perhaps it's because I haven't been to an international conference for around 4 years (child-raising issues), or perhaps it's a different group of people at this particular conference now. I didn't advertise my new Professorial title at all in the talk so it's not that directly. I've also had a follow up email from someone I talked with requesting details of any publications we produce on a certain topic, and a request from another (admittedly someone I have collaborated with in the past) for a letter of support for a grant proposal. So why the difference?
I put it down to two things. I do think that I have a certain amount of additional confidence that derives from my recent promotion in the sense that I feel like "I'm a professor so I don't need to prove anything to you" Or, hopefully it could be that I am finally either talking on the right subject, or, since I have been talking about the same theme for several years, people have finally caught on to it.
However, outside of the formal session, I started to fall back into my old ways of self-doubt. I didn't know many people at this conference, and although not shy as such, I am not very good at networking, and have tended to be less than pro-active in the past. This time, I was only there for one evening and had no dinner plans. At the end of the session I was talking to someone I do know, when a colleague of his came up with dinner plans. Originally they didn't involve me, but the invitation was extended to me as I was standing there. I felt a bit like they felt they had to invite me. I contemplated staying in my hotel for room service, but in the end I went to meet them at a bar/restaurant. Of the 5 men there, I knew one reasonably well, one slightly, and didn't know the others at all. We had a good evening, topics covering work, but also funding in our 4 different country bases, politics in all 4 countries, and many other things. I came away glad that I went but concious that I had yet again contributed very little to the work discussions and this only fed my paranoia. Now I just have to figure out how to translate the confidence from the formal session to confidence in less formal, but still professionally focussed interactions.
I put it down to two things. I do think that I have a certain amount of additional confidence that derives from my recent promotion in the sense that I feel like "I'm a professor so I don't need to prove anything to you" Or, hopefully it could be that I am finally either talking on the right subject, or, since I have been talking about the same theme for several years, people have finally caught on to it.
However, outside of the formal session, I started to fall back into my old ways of self-doubt. I didn't know many people at this conference, and although not shy as such, I am not very good at networking, and have tended to be less than pro-active in the past. This time, I was only there for one evening and had no dinner plans. At the end of the session I was talking to someone I do know, when a colleague of his came up with dinner plans. Originally they didn't involve me, but the invitation was extended to me as I was standing there. I felt a bit like they felt they had to invite me. I contemplated staying in my hotel for room service, but in the end I went to meet them at a bar/restaurant. Of the 5 men there, I knew one reasonably well, one slightly, and didn't know the others at all. We had a good evening, topics covering work, but also funding in our 4 different country bases, politics in all 4 countries, and many other things. I came away glad that I went but concious that I had yet again contributed very little to the work discussions and this only fed my paranoia. Now I just have to figure out how to translate the confidence from the formal session to confidence in less formal, but still professionally focussed interactions.
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
What can you say in 15 mins
I have just sat down to write the presentation for a talk I have been invited to give at an international conference next week. I am an invited speaker, and was asked to give an overview of my subject area. The conference is a wide-ranging one, although it is likely that most of the people in the session itself will be more familiar with the topic I am discussing. Today I double-checked the programme and found that my talk is scheduled for 15 minutes! 15 minutes! How can I give an overview in 15 minutes (or 12 mins and 3 mins discussion!!!)???
Moral of the story: Ask more questions before agreeing to give an invited talk....
Moral of the story: Ask more questions before agreeing to give an invited talk....
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
De-valuing the Professor
I mentioned to my partner (not an academic) that we had a lot of young professors in our department. His immediate comment was " do you worry that having a lot of young professors somehow devalues the title?" In recent years, we have seen the public derision of the two main school exams in the UK - additional grades have been added to the top end of both GCSE (16) and A-level (18) to discriminate, and there is anecdotal evidence that students gaining a C in maths a-level in recent years would have failed the maths a-level 20 years ago. It is certainly true that at university we have to spend longer teaching basic maths concepts that I studied at A-level. So, does having more people at any given level (including being named Professor) automatically devalue that level of attainment?
Our discussion also included whether potential business partners would prefer to collaborate with older professors on the grounds that they fit the stereotype better. At the moment, the UK has a "celebrity physicist" in Prof Brian Cox who "looks like an ex-boyband member and way too young to be a real professor" (quote from various members of my family). Does being a young and female professor reduce my chances of being taken seriously? If anyone has experienced this, how did they respond?
Our discussion also included whether potential business partners would prefer to collaborate with older professors on the grounds that they fit the stereotype better. At the moment, the UK has a "celebrity physicist" in Prof Brian Cox who "looks like an ex-boyband member and way too young to be a real professor" (quote from various members of my family). Does being a young and female professor reduce my chances of being taken seriously? If anyone has experienced this, how did they respond?
Mirror mirror
I am in reflective mood. The combination of my recent promotion, my annual staff development review and the relative quiet of the university summer vacation have conspired to promote thoughts about questions such as "What kind of professor am I?","What legacy will I leave?", "What do I aim for now?" .
I would say that I am generally on the more reflective side of the population anyway, but some specific circumstances make significant personal development necessary now.
My department has a somewhat unusual demographic. As well as several what you might call "old school" professorial staff, we have a rapidly growing number of professors (myself included) who have been promoted in the past few years and were under the age of 40 at the time of promotion. This means that instead of the traditional view of promotion to Professor being something obtained at the end of a long and distinguished career, we have 25+ years of "Professor-hood" to maintain and manage. In addition to this, the role of Head of Department rotates through eligible staff every few years, so it is more than likely that we will each take at least one or more turns before we retire. In addition, much of the activity I have undertaken until recently has been targetted at not only advancing scientific understanding in my field, but also at building my CV to get to this point. Whilst there are "zones" for professors with different skills and experiences, and therefore some career progression goals laid out, these are opaque and in some circumstances virtually impossible to plan for (e.g. making it to zone 3 is only possible if you are made a Fellow of the Royal Society).
To assist with answering these questions I am embarking on "project me", which will define (or rather re-examine) my core values and activities in my new role. My line manager (who thankfully is on the same wavelength) suggested reading biographies of a wide range of scientists and academics and identifying desirable traits and potential role models from amongst their ranks, as well as looking at my peers with "role model" glasses on. I am still slightly uncomfortable with looking at "real live" people in this way so intend to start with the biographies. I am re-reading Georgina Ferry's biography of Dorothy Hodgkin which I first read many years ago. This will be followed by Brenda Maddox's biography of Rosalind Franklin, and biographies of Ada Lovelace and Rosalyn Yallow. I am also interested in the new biography of Mary Somerville. However, I fear this concentration on female scientists is too exclusive - there is absolutely no reason why the traits that I might discover that I value should only be found in women. So this is an appeal for suggestions of biographies of male scientists - preferably those more interested in collaborative work than sole endeavour. I'd love to hear of any that you have found useful.
I would say that I am generally on the more reflective side of the population anyway, but some specific circumstances make significant personal development necessary now.
My department has a somewhat unusual demographic. As well as several what you might call "old school" professorial staff, we have a rapidly growing number of professors (myself included) who have been promoted in the past few years and were under the age of 40 at the time of promotion. This means that instead of the traditional view of promotion to Professor being something obtained at the end of a long and distinguished career, we have 25+ years of "Professor-hood" to maintain and manage. In addition to this, the role of Head of Department rotates through eligible staff every few years, so it is more than likely that we will each take at least one or more turns before we retire. In addition, much of the activity I have undertaken until recently has been targetted at not only advancing scientific understanding in my field, but also at building my CV to get to this point. Whilst there are "zones" for professors with different skills and experiences, and therefore some career progression goals laid out, these are opaque and in some circumstances virtually impossible to plan for (e.g. making it to zone 3 is only possible if you are made a Fellow of the Royal Society).
To assist with answering these questions I am embarking on "project me", which will define (or rather re-examine) my core values and activities in my new role. My line manager (who thankfully is on the same wavelength) suggested reading biographies of a wide range of scientists and academics and identifying desirable traits and potential role models from amongst their ranks, as well as looking at my peers with "role model" glasses on. I am still slightly uncomfortable with looking at "real live" people in this way so intend to start with the biographies. I am re-reading Georgina Ferry's biography of Dorothy Hodgkin which I first read many years ago. This will be followed by Brenda Maddox's biography of Rosalind Franklin, and biographies of Ada Lovelace and Rosalyn Yallow. I am also interested in the new biography of Mary Somerville. However, I fear this concentration on female scientists is too exclusive - there is absolutely no reason why the traits that I might discover that I value should only be found in women. So this is an appeal for suggestions of biographies of male scientists - preferably those more interested in collaborative work than sole endeavour. I'd love to hear of any that you have found useful.
Monday, 11 July 2011
Happy Holidays...
Well, that's it. One week off and no more leave in the diary until the University closes for a few days at Christmas. That's depressing.
My fellow blogger FSP writes that her summer season is frantic with travels and work. Mine is more stay-at-usual-desk-and-work. Admittedly campus is a very different place during the summer, but I can't quite work out whether I like it or not. Our term finished 2 weeks ago, and I was on a "British = cool (temperature)" beach last week, so this is the first real week of "quiet". Campus seems to have exhaled and collapsed as the students left. Some departments are empty - although mine is just quieter than normal. We still have MSc students and grad students to supervise. I still have some teaching admin to do since we have a fieldcourse running in September that needs organising. However it is undoubtedly true that there are less interruptions to the working day, and there is a chance that I can tick some long term goals off the to-do list. However, this opportunity merely reveals that I excel in procrastination and somehow manage not to acheive my "personal scholarship" list even in the summer. There is also the nagging feeling that a university without the vast majority of its students is somehow less of a university. Perhaps all those years of explaining the lack of a summer break when people assume we are like school teachers (OK, I know many of them work in the holidays too but...) are finally getting to me.
My fellow blogger FSP writes that her summer season is frantic with travels and work. Mine is more stay-at-usual-desk-and-work. Admittedly campus is a very different place during the summer, but I can't quite work out whether I like it or not. Our term finished 2 weeks ago, and I was on a "British = cool (temperature)" beach last week, so this is the first real week of "quiet". Campus seems to have exhaled and collapsed as the students left. Some departments are empty - although mine is just quieter than normal. We still have MSc students and grad students to supervise. I still have some teaching admin to do since we have a fieldcourse running in September that needs organising. However it is undoubtedly true that there are less interruptions to the working day, and there is a chance that I can tick some long term goals off the to-do list. However, this opportunity merely reveals that I excel in procrastination and somehow manage not to acheive my "personal scholarship" list even in the summer. There is also the nagging feeling that a university without the vast majority of its students is somehow less of a university. Perhaps all those years of explaining the lack of a summer break when people assume we are like school teachers (OK, I know many of them work in the holidays too but...) are finally getting to me.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Q2. When is a PhD student like a 3 year old?
My 3 year old is going through a phase where he will argue about everything - insisting that he is right about everything, even when demonstrably wrong (e.g. your brother is smaller than you.. "no, I'm smaller than him", or "it's tuesday today" -"no, it's thursday", or "I won that game" when mummy clearly has all the pieces on the board and he has none". Whilst friends reassure me he's only "being 3", it struck me that I have come across this before in one of my grad students.
This student hangs on to a theory or hypothesis that they have proved to be wrong via experiment and observation, just because they can't conceive of being wrong. How long do I go on helping the student devise ways of proving himself right, knowing that they, and acres of past literature will prove him wrong and that he won't accept the answer?
And who will grow out of the exasperating phase first????
This student hangs on to a theory or hypothesis that they have proved to be wrong via experiment and observation, just because they can't conceive of being wrong. How long do I go on helping the student devise ways of proving himself right, knowing that they, and acres of past literature will prove him wrong and that he won't accept the answer?
And who will grow out of the exasperating phase first????
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