PhD support group?

Joe_Bloggs

Well said misskool !
I have great sympathy for those writing up a thesis in which nothing new or exceptional was found. Even worse when no results are possible because the setalite caught fire and hit the planet etc. The null experiment has been a crucial point in the science of the past.

J_B.(Don't leave anything out in the abstract !)

cupid_s

I am at the end of my second year. I have everything planned virtually to the end of my PhD and know what experiments I'm going to do. However there is no real way that I can make my work stretch to any more than one paper!
This is really worrying me. Especially with DrFluffy's comment.
Any advice for me?
I am contributing to another paper and when a different set of experiments works they'll go towards another. But 3 papers is not very much

ffeindadifyr

I wouldn't worry about it too much - plenty of people I know wouldn't have been able to get more than 1 paper out of their research (it can depend on your research to begin with, as some experiments have a fast turn around and can lead to a vast number of shortish papers being published).

To pass your PhD viva you will have to show that your work is of significance to the field and advances the research in your field - the fact that you've published a single paper ( - depending on where publiehed) should back this up.

Another thing you have to show is that the work you have presented is all yours (i.e. 2 people in the group trying to present the same work twice - it has been known!!!)

And lastly some examiners like to see that you've done your 3 years worth of work.

talksalot81

cupid_stunt wrote:

I am at the end of my second year. I have everything planned virtually to the end of my PhD and know what experiments I'm going to do. However there is no real way that I can make my work stretch to any more than one paper!
This is really worrying me. Especially with DrFluffy's comment.
Any advice for me?
I am contributing to another paper and when a different set of experiments works they'll go towards another. But 3 papers is not very much

Dont worry at all. Some people will be lucky to be part of a group and have a whole load of papers, but an educated employer will soon spot this. Certainly within physics, it is your first post-doc when you worry about hammering out papers. My thesis will go in with only 3 papers submitted (and one other directly related to be done later). People realise the situation with students and the student is unlikely to be judged on their publications in most cases.

cupid_s

The thanks buttons aren't working but thank you to ffeindadifyr and talksalot81 for making me feel slightly less useless

Joe_Bloggs

They do take a bit of pressing. Perhaps there is an oxide layer.There you go!
J_B.

melancholly

ffeindadifyr wrote:

You can still write up a thesis in the "old style" and publish papers - I had a list of publications (10 in all - although only 3 as first author) in the front of my thesis and the thesis included research from most of them but repackaged into results chapters.

completely - it's just that with the new format you don't have to do any repackaging. i guess with the evil RAE due in 2008, there's a huge amount of pressure to submit papers right now so that they'll be reviewed and in print in time.... and this will entirely vary on the subject being done and of course, on how much work in the first year of the phd was truely independent versus people who are effectively research assistants for a year! if you're working entirely alone then you wouldn't be expected to have so much.

cupid_stunt - about 9 months of my work in stimuli development will only ever be a paragraph in a paper, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't vital to the phd! it is a bit annoying that i haven't got a list of separate experiments that all fit nicely into a series of publications, but hopefully it will mean that when/if it is published, it will go to a better journal.....that's what i'm clinging to anyway!

ffeindadifyr

Most of the preperation work that myself and a collegue did to get a clean, with a certain orientation, semiconductor surface was deemed too trivial for a paper we wrote - so we have had to disguise it in other papers that we have published.

I believe the paper would have led on to a number of future PhD students not having to mess around with the procedure for 6 months... but there we go!

misskool

cupid stunt: I won't get more than 2 papers out of my thesis and that's with doing extra work if I can be bothered to do it. each field has differences in the number of papers that one person can publish.
I know someone in computing science who's published 5 papers and a chapter in a book by the end of his phd (I don't think he's worried about his viva )
on the other end of the spectrum, one of the postdocs in my lab hasn't even published anything yet.
And can I just say, it took me one year to calibrate and prepare an assay because no one has ever done it and it will now consist of TWO lines in my thesis or half a sentence in a paper.

Joe_Bloggs

I am all for a 'How to Get Started Guide' for those that try to follow. It might be a worthwhile project to keep your PhD alive by publishing it on the web. Many contributers say they have published works. Unfortunately the journals in question have a very restricted readerships. A wider readership could appreciate and make use of the information.
Wikipedia may be an outlet for those wishing for readers.
J_B.