PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: 20 gift ideas for academics

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Today, I present you the Christmas-edition of the PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer posts. With the holidays around the corner, you may wonder what to give to an academic, or you may wonder which gift to suggest your family buys for you.

Here are 20 ideas of gifts that can make your favorite academic happy.

1. Notebooks
In need of a nice notebook for your notes for the laboratory, for a course you will be teaching, or for a new research project you are setting up? A beautiful notebook with sturdy paper can often make your favorite academic friend happy.

2. Paper planner
Do you want to help an academic to get more organized in the next year? Then a paper planner may be a good choice for a gift. While most of us use our digital calendars, a paper planner can help writing down priorities, tracking progress on habits, or keep a visual overview of the year.

3. Pens
Academics and stationary, it's a love story. Who doesn't like a new set of pens for all the writing and sketching we do on a daily basis? A nice fountain pen or a box of colored pens can always be useful.

4. Colored pencils
For highlighting text in coursebooks, for improving sketches, or simply for doodling and de-stressing - colored pencils are useful for a number of applications.

5. Noise-cancelling headphones
Noise-cancelling headphones are great for you need to work in concentration as they help you block out all external noise. They are also very helpful when traveling by airplane, as the noise of the engines is muted by the headphones.

6. Newspaper or magazine subscription
To relax a bit and read something different than research papers, you can give a newspaper or magazine subscription.

7. A weekend away
For the academic who tends to work through the weekends, a voucher for a weekend getaway may be just what the doctor prescribes. Just make sure your academic friend actually books a trip and goes away - preferably without laptop.

8. Fiction books
Another gift that has the reader in mind who has been reading too much academic work and not enough for pleasure. You can give a classic fiction novel or the latest bestseller (or a book that has received an award recently).

9. Books for academic success
Besides fiction books, nonfiction books with advice for academic success can be an excellent gift. There's plenty of great advice books for academics, PhD students, for those who struggle with writing... If you are interested in buying or requesting a book for academic success, check out my book "The A-Z of the PhD Trajectory."

10. Coffee and/or tea
Identify the favorite hot beverage of your academic friend, and then buy nice coffee or tea for him/her. An added bonus is that nice coffee or tea in a nice package looks so nice on your desk.

11. Mug
A funny mug for coffee or tea is another gift idea. You can use this mug for drinking tea or coffee in your office, for taking it to the coffee/tea vendors to reduce the number of single-use packages, or to hold your favorite pens.

12. Poster or calendar for office wall
Another gift idea to brighten up your office. A few years ago I received a calendar of yoga cats, and seeing these cats in silly positions brightened up my day every time I saw them in my office.

13. Massage vouchers
Long hours in front of the computer? Many academics complain about a stiff back or a painful neck. A massage to loosen up these problematic areas of the body may bring some much-needed relief.

14. Snacks for the office
Long hours in front of the computer also require something for snacking. A gift idea is then a basket of snacks for the office (preferably healthy snacks of course) for when the munchies attach during the day.

15. Concert or theater entrance
To boost creativity, or simply to take your mind away from your research question, tickets for a concert or theater performance can be lovely. An evening away can bring some fresh energy.

16. Laser pointer
While most conference venues have laser pointers available in the rooms, for smaller meetings you may be struggling to point out what you want your audience to see on your slides. A personal laser point can be very useful for such occasions.

17. Conference clothes
If you usually work in the lab and live in a hoodie and your old jeans, you may need some more dressed-up clothes for conferences. You can ask for a nice blouse/shirt, or -depending on the budget- even help in purchasing a suit.

18. Wireless headphones
If you talk through videoconferencing often, or if you like running with music, bluetooth headphones can be a lifesaver. There also exist wireless noise-cancelling headphones, which are even better.

19. Travel toiletries
A small bag with toiletry essentials for traveling can be very useful. Many cosmetic stores sell such toiletry bags in a gift box, so it is quite easy to find and purchase this gift.

20. Sturdy suitcase or carry-on bag
For those who travel a lot, a sturdy, robust, and reliable suitcase is necessary. I used to make the mistake of buying the cheapest suitcase on the market, only to learn that the wheels would come off before I'd even reach the metro station. A good suitcase or carry-on bag will make your life much easier.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to start a new research topic as a post-doc

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

As a post doctoral researcher, you can be hired on a project for 1 or 2 years, on a topic that is different from the topic you worked on during your PhD years. It may feel daunting to start all over again, and do it in less than half of the time you needed to do your PhD. As I've worked on a number of different topics during my post-doc years in Delft (including my "new" research line on load testing), I'm here to demystify the process.

First of all: remember that you are trained to do research. Your PhD years were the years in which you learned how to do research. Writing your dissertation and/or first journal articles were the training you needed to grapple with your writing style, find your identity as a scholar through writing, and learn the ropes.

Does that mean that when you start a post-doc, you can make a plan from start to finish of the post-doc project and simply execute? No - research is never a straight line. You will get stuck, you will struggle with your scholarly identity in writing about a new topic, and you will have to start over new when something doesn't lead you to discovery. Just as for the PhD trajectory, it is difficult to plan a research project - but allowing for plenty of buffer time in your planning and having an overall idea of what is expected from you, should help you draw a blueprint for your planning.

Since the general steps of a post-doc project are similar to a PhD trajectory, I will here discuss the particularities only of a post-doc project.

1. Topic description
A post-doc project usually comes with a more specific description that a PhD research project, since for the PhD it is expected from the candidate that he/she comes up with a significant novel contribution. This contribution is often required to be in the form of a new theory - and many supervisors will leave it open to the candidate to see how he/she will develop such a theory.
For a post-doc project, there is often a more specific description of the problem, as well as of the expected deliverables and their deadlines. The topic description is a good starting point to define your research question for the post-doc project.

2. Literature review
A post-doc project doesn't give you the time to spend a year exploring the literature, as you may have done during your PhD years. You'll need to be able to set up the literature review in a reasonable amount of time. If the post-doc project is part of a larger research project, you can collaborate with the other researchers (post-doc and/or PhD) to develop your literature review. If not, you can take the topic description as a starting point (this description will typically have literature references that can help to get you started).
As a post-doc with a limited amount of time, you need to delve into the literature with a purpose. While I generally encourage reading broadly for your general interest, you won't be able to read and reread all interesting articles on your topic and then decide what you want to do with these. You will need to start turning the literature directly into elements for your deliverables. If you need to study a new theory, take the seminal papers on the topic, and work your way through these by taking plenty of notes and/or deriving the formulas yourself. Document this work in a background document for yourself. If you'll need the formulas later, program them in a spreadsheet. If you need to set up a database of experiments, start developing this database while you read the articles - don't make the mistake of reading all the articles first, and then processing the information. Similarly, start drafting your literature review report right as you are reading the articles. Take screenshots of interesting information, type discussions of what you read, and place this information within a report that has an outline which you can either shape as you read or set up from the beginning.

3. Planning
During your PhD years, you may have been able to devote 80% or more of your time to your research project. As a post-doc, you can be balancing your new research project with writing papers about your dissertation, taking on service appointments, supervising students, and perhaps you help with some of the teaching in your department. Planning is more important than ever. If you need to balance a number of responsibilities, try out using a weekly template.
Your long-term planning should focus on the deliverables of your project - make sure you plan towards them and leave plenty of time for dealing with setbacks in your research.

4. Research
As I mentioned earlier, research doesn't become "easier" as you move through your research career. The very essence of research is dealing with the unknown, so just as during your PhD trajectory, you will iterate towards a solution. You may be expected to handle the same amount of experimental data as during your PhD in a shorter amount of time. If you have a number of responsibilities, make sure you can carve out the time you need to think and do deep work. Your PhD credentials already show that you can do research - now make sure you make the time and have the headspace to crunch numbers and do the work.

5. Publications and deliverables
Post-doc projects typically require you to submit a certain amount of reports to the funding body, or submit a certain amount of papers for review by a certain date. Besides the publications from this project, your post-doc years also can be the right time to turn your thesis into journal articles. Make sure you put writing on your calendar to move your publications forward - these are incredibly important for your future career.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Failure in academia

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Failure is part of life in academia - yet we are terrified to talk about our failures. In today's post, we'll explore the topic of failure in academia, we'll see how some academics are breaking the taboo, and we have a look at what you can do when failure has you bogged down.

The reality of failure in academia
When we see the curriculum vitae of a fellow academic, we only see all their achievements. We don't see the sweat, heartbreak, and rejection behind all these successes. We see the outcomes of funded projects - the papers that were accepted for publication. We don't see the positions we applied for but didn't get, the grants that were rejected, or the papers that were rejected.

And rejection there is plenty. Depending on the journal, the acceptance rate of papers is somewhere between 15% to 35%. Elsevier has a neat feature on their website where you can use your paper title and abstract as input and find the suitable journal* - the journal finder. One of the metrics you can see through this journal finder is the acceptance rate of a journal. I used the title and abstract of a paper I am working on, and found that my target journals have an acceptance rate between 18% - 36% (with one outlier, a journal with a 98% acceptance rate).

Another way to get insight in the acceptance rate, is by exploring profiles of reviewers on Publons and check published review reports. Reading more review reports will make you more accustomed to the sometimes stern language used by reviewers (although the reviewers who chose to make their review reports will typically watch their language a bit more).

Breaking the taboo
Over the past few years, more academics have started to share their shadow CV - a list of "failures": rejected positions, rejected grants, rejected papers... Since its introduction, more scholars have posted their shadow CV on their website as a contrast to their actual CV. Slowly but surely, the taboo of rejection is being torn down.

Along the same lines we find the series of interviews "How I Fail" by Dr. Cheplygina. I personally find this series very fascinating, and love how junior and senior academics openly share their experience with failure. You can find my own participation in the series here.

Dealing with failure
We all deal with failure in a different way - and I do think it gets easier to move on after a rejection as you get more used to rejection. I also think sharing our frustrations and sadness over rejection with fellow academics can have a healing effect.

With that said, here are a few ideas on how to deal with rejection. First of all, acknowledge yourself and your feelings. Do you feel angry? Do you feel misunderstood, sad, frustrated, upset...? All your emotions are valid. Stop for a moment to acknowledge how you feel - and then ask yourself what you want to do next. Do you want to keep working so that your minds stays busy? Do you want to take the rest of the day off and hole up in your room with a fiction book? Do you want a piece of chocolate? Listen to what would be right for yourself, right now, and honor yourself.

Then, once you've dealt with your emotions and given yourself the time and space to feel your feelings and do what feels good, and when you feel ready to face the rejection in a rational way, you can think about your next step.
Did you get rejected for a job? Which other jobs can you apply for? How can you improve your application documents?
Did you get rejected for a grant? Do you want to pursue funding for the research topic from another source? Do you want to instead apply for funding for another research topic?
Did you get a rejection for a paper? Which comments from the reviewers are particularly helpful? How can you improve your manuscript? Can you submit your paper to another journal?
Once you know what's next, you can take a deep breath, gather your troops, and prepare for the next battle - win or lose!

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*Not an endorsement for Elsevier - but just referring to their little neat feature.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Manage your energy, not your time

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Here is Auntie Eva again with a post about planning or time management, I can hear you say with a sigh. But today, I'll focus on one specific element of time management: you need to learn how to manage your energy (essentially, yourself - your raw material) if you want to be able to manage your time.

Why is this so important, you ask me. Because knowing yourself and being able to figure out what works for you is an incredibly important skill to learn. And you need to do the work yourself - nobody can come and tell you what your optimal way of managing your time and energy looks like.

If you've read some of the interviews on my "How I Work" series, you will find that there are no two academics with a similar way of working and managing their time. Of course, there are similarities between the answers. Some people work similar hours. Some people focus on the same priority (such as writing) first thing in the morning. But finding our optimal way of working depends on ourselves and our boundary conditions.

To explore how you can better manage your energy, I invite you to reflect on the following questions:

At what time during the day do I find it more difficult to concentrate?
Schedule lighter activities for the times of the day when your energy levels plummet. If your schedule allows, don't work during those hours, but run errands or exercise instead. You'll be able to return to work with a fresh mind. Try this method to see if it works for you. If your boundary conditions (for example, daycare hours) do not allow such experimentation, then schedule easy tasks for the time of the day when you are low on energy.

If you find it difficult to tell when your energy levels drop during the day, write down when you get distracted more easily, when you feel like reaching for coffee or something sweet, or when you simply are progressing more slowly.

Which amount of time is optimal for you to work on a task?
Some people prefer to dedicate the entire workday to one specific task, others like to use time slots during the day to juggle different tasks. See what works best for you. Try out different methods to evaluate these, and try them out for long enough time to have a fair comparison. If chunks of time work for you, figure out the ideal amount of time. For me, around 2 hours of time blocked in my planning, which often results in effectively 1,5 hours of time on the task, is what works best for writing. For other tasks, the length of the ideal time slot is different.

Do you prefer early mornings or late nights?
If your institution allows you to set your own schedule, see which schedule suits you and your energy best. Does getting up early and making a head start to the day work for you? Do you prefer to work late into the night if necessary? Of course, here you need to consider your boundary conditions again. If it isn't safe for you to return from the lab in the middle of the night, then don't do this. If you want to work late at night, arrange your tasks so that you can perhaps work from home.

When are you forcing yourself?
I like the idea of working a split shift (adding a few hours in the evening after my baby is sleeping). However, I'm often too tired to do any useful work at night. I've spent a lot of time with my laptop on my lap, not achieving much at all. If this sounds familiar to you, then admit that what you are trying to do is not working for you, that you are forcing yourself, and that you should find another solution.

What energizes you?
If you hit a difficult moment during the day, what works for you to recharge? Do you feel better and refreshed after a chat with your colleagues, or just the opposite? Have you tried going out for 15 minutes to walk around to a juice bar for some fresh green juice (Instagram-worthy, but not something I do)? Have you tried doing a few exercises (say, a few pushups or squats) to get your blood flowing?

What drains your energy?
Which activities distract you and drain your energy even more? How do you feel after scrolling through your social media accounts on your phone - with a head full of chatter or ready to return to your task? Is there a time during the year or day when the working conditions in your office are not ideal (noise levels, heat/cold...), and can you arrange your activities around this limiting boundary? Can you concentrate after a long meeting and return to your task, or do you need to "air" out your brain first?

Once you've been able to reflect on these questions and try out some different approaches to your day, you'll have a better understanding of what works for you, and ultimately of yourself. Remember that what works for you changes as you change and as your boundary conditions change. Never stop making course corrections and adjust your way of working as you find it necessary. Consider this skill similar to learning how to find your voice in your writing - find your voice and what makes you unique in the way you work best and manage your time.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Drawing your roadmap for life after the PhD

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

A topic that we've discussed a number of times on this blog is "life after the PhD." We have discussed career options after the PhD, I've given advice on what a reader should do after the PhD, moving around the world for your career after the PhD, working as a scholar in the gulf region, the job interview, the benefit of your academic skills for future employers, how to frame your mind for a job after the PhD, how to find a job outside of academia, how to plan an academic career, and how to figure out which career path may be good for you.

Today, I am showing you a possible roadmap on how to prepare yourself for your career after your PhD. This roadmap is not set in stone, of course. It is a collection of ideas and questions to help you frame your mind. If early on during your PhD, you feel like you'd like to stay in academia, that doesn't mean that your decision is made and that you can't change your mind. Thinking about your next steps, and exploring options is a better way to prepare yourself than writing your thesis and then waiting for a job to magically be offered to you.

1,5 years into your PhD

It's never too early to start thinking about what you'd like to do after your PhD. After 1,5 years in your program, you probably have a good impression of what working in academia means, and what type of (strange?) beast the academic is. You don't have to decide on anything yet, but you can start thinking about your options after your PhD, and make some choices based on your interests. If you are interested in the industry, plan to attend career fairs in the future to learn about possible employers, and visit the exhibition hall at conferences.

When you start to think about your options, think about what would work for you and your family. Would it work for you and your family to move to the other side of the world for a post-doc position? Are you willing to move away from your home at all? Can you gamble on a short-term contract, perhaps with low pay, or does your family need your income? Consider your ideal conditions first.

If you find it difficult to answer these questions, then write for yourself what your ideal work looks like. Which tasks do you do? Do you travel? Do you commute? How does your ideal day look like? Do you want to work part-time perhaps to spend time with your kids in the afternoon? Define for yourself what you want, and start making it happen.

1,5 years before graduating

Now is a good time to start thinking more seriously about your plans for after your PhD. If you can't define a direction you want to focus on for after your PhD, see if you can get help from a career counselor. Most universities offer some sort of support for their students. If possible, get one-on-one coaching with a career counselor, or stop by to brainstorm with one of them or with a trusted person within HR, so that you can get the ideas from an outsider. If your university offers workshops around the topic of finding employment after the PhD, sign up to such a workshop or series of workshops.

Discuss with your supervisor and colleagues about your options. Catch up with recent graduates from your PhD program to learn from their experience. At conferences, talk to recent PhD graduates. If a conference is organized through a professional organization, they often have a career center (sometimes available as a booth at the conference) - visit them and learn from them.

1 year before graduating

Hopefully, you've been able to do some good thinking for yourself over the past few months, and have been able to exchange ideas with HR professionals as well as with recent PhD graduates in your field. If you've identified for yourself which career paths call your attention, start to work more actively towards getting a job.

Don't just scroll through job openings online. Mention to your friends and colleagues that you will be graduating soon, and that you are exploring options. If you are looking for an opportunity in a certain sector, see if you can meet with an acquaintance from this sector for coffee to learn from his/her/their experience, and ask for advice. Don't list somebody as a reference on your resume unless you have a good working relationship - so don't try to make your contact in this sector your reference right away.

Send your resume to companies and institutions of your interest. See how you can get a foot in the door by volunteering at industry events, going for a short research exchange, or do some case studies for a public institution. Just don't think that, because you've shown your face, you are entitled to a job - but show up, and show what you can bring to the table.

6 months before graduating

Interview time! Have you heard from anybody to whom you sent your resume? If not, don't panic (and don't start stalking people). If necessary, make another appointment with a career counselor to revise your resume and give you extra advice. If you seem to find it hard to get noticed by employers, work with a recruiter.

If you're invited for an interview, go prepared. Do your "homework." Learn about the company,its people, and identify for yourself what you can bring to the table. At the same time, define for yourself what you want. Return to your description of your ideal job: which tasks excite you? What do you expect in return from your employer? What is non-negotiable for you? Would you opt for more salary or for more holidays?

when finishing your dissertation

Time to celebrate! If you finish and publish your dissertation before your defend, and you are looking for a job, then use your dissertation to do a bit of shameless self-promotion. Send your finished dissertation to anybody who may be interested in your work, and who perhaps may be having a job opening. You never know what good it may bring. Take your printed thesis copies to conferences, and mention at the end of your presentation to you can give away a few copies (bring a stack with you).

Upon graduating

If you are graduated and don't have a job yet - don't panic. Decide for yourself if you want more advice from a career counselor and/or recruiter, and see if you can survive financially until you land a job, or if you need to take on some "emergency" employment, or raid your savings.

Don't let the fact that you haven't found a job yet overshadow the success of finishing your PhD. Celebrate in style, take time to appreciate yourself and your effort, and then throw yourself back into the job-seeking activities, now with all your energy. Let your entire network know you are graduated and available. Don't spam the entire world, but send personal emails to possible interesting contacts, and use LinkedIn to your advantage.

After your PhD

If you've taken a first job after your PhD, know that you have your entire career in front of you. If after some time, you find that the job is not what you thought it to be at first, then take that lesson and learn from it: what is good for your? Which new skills did you learn? What did you not like - something related to the contents of the job, or is the commute making your miserable? Go back to the drawing board, reshape your ideal job, and start looking for something that more closely parallels your vision.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Measuring your service efforts as a reviewer through Publons

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

As you reach the end of your PhD years, you may be invited as a reviewer for scientific journals for the first time. If you have never been asked to review a paper, and feel ready to take on the task, you can follow the recommendations of Dr. Cheplygina in this post. Once you are invited to write the review, you can follow the procedure that I recommend for writing a review of a paper.

But what do you do after you have finished reviewing a paper? How can you keep track of your efforts as a reviewer?

The first thing you can do, is list on your full curriculum vitae which journals you are reviewing for. You can add this information in the section with your service appointments. But then again, there are a few drawbacks to this approach. First of all, by simply listing the journals, somebody reviewing your CV may not know if you reviewed one paper ever for the journal you mentioned, or if you review one paper monthly for this journal. Some journals send you a certificate with the number of papers you reviewed for them in the last year as a token of their appreciation, but for many journals it may even be difficult to prove that you review for them. And since nowadays in some cases you need to be able to provide proof of every single element on your CV, you may need a good system to confirm that you reviewed for a certain journal, and to keep track of the journals you review for and the number of papers you reviewed for them.

Enter Publons!

Publons is a service you can use to get an overview of your service efforts as a reviewer. Here-s a list of a few cool features of Publons:
1. It's super easy to track your reviews. You just forward the "Thank you" email from the editor confirming that you reviewed a paper, and Publons will take care of it.
2. Depending on the journal and editor, Publons will either automatically confirm your review as "real", or contact the editor to confirm that you really reviewed for them.
3. You can export a verified reviewer record, which you can use as a proof of your service as a reviewer.
4. Publons produces a number of stats. It shows when you review, how much you review as compared to others, and how long your reviews are as compared to others in your field and at your institution.
5. If you review rather frequently, you may be getting an award for your efforts.
6. Editors can give you extra credit if you write a review they find particularly good, and these kudos get displayed on your profile as well.
7. As you increase the number of reviews, you will get more reviewer credit, which shows up on the side bar of your profile.
8. If you decide to make your reviews public, other researchers can endorse your reviews. You can also endorse the reviews of other researchers.

Publons is part of the Clarivate analytics empire, so they use Publons data for further processing. One of the cool outcomes of this data analysis is "Your year in peer review", the Clarivate list of highly cited researchers, and the Publons Hall of fame for "productive" reviewers.

Here are some examples of what you can do with Publons:

Year in review

Part of the stats Publons makes of your profile

Getting credit and awards

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: What reviewers look for in your submission

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

In the past, we've mostly looked at the topic of academic writing from the perspective of the authors. From working on a writing habit, sustaining writing habits, working on several papers at the same time, writing academic books, setting the scene for deep work and writing and focused flow, and using a template for planning your time that facilitates writing and plan a semester accordingly.

Today, we are looking at academic writing from a different perspective. As a journal paper reviewer (see my Publons profile here), what do I look for in a submission?

The elements that I look for in a review fall into two categories:

1. General aspects of the scientific method and paper presentation.
2. Technical and editorial details of the paper.

Therefore, I usually compose my reviews in two parts: a few paragraphs discussing the general aspects, and then a table with pages and line numbers of specific elements that I want to discuss.

The specific elements, of course, change from paper to paper, and I can't give you recommendations on that. On the other hand, the general aspects are things you can check for yourself before submission. Ask yourself the following questions before you submit your manuscript to increase your chances of success at acceptance (after review or rounds of review):

• Who is my audience? Who are you writing your paper for? If you are writing for researchers only, are you including all relevant details so that an interested researcher can continue your work? If you are writing (as well) for industry practitioners and/or government officials and policy makers, have you included recommendations for practice? Are you submitting your manuscript to the right journal in terms of audience?
• Is my abstract written correctly? An abstract follows a specific style (see my post on how to write an abstract). Make sure your abstract complies with these elements.
• Does the introduction explain the broader context of the study? Why are you studying a certain topic? What is its broader relevance and impact on society? This information should be contained in your introduction paragraph. Do not mix your introduction paragraph with your literature review - it tends to result in sloppy structure.
• Did you include a literature review? Have you presented your literature review in the right way, and not as an annotated bibliography? Did you cover all relevant references? If you did the work some time ago, did you check the current literature to see if any recent papers were published on your topic that may need to be included?
• Did you describe your methods in sufficient detail? Which methods did you use to address your research question? If you used experiments, have you described all the relevant details of your experiment? If you used a model, have you shown all characteristics and assumptions used in your model? If you derived a theory, have you included all relevant steps? Why did you study certain parameters? Can you place your work within the existing literature?
• Have you discussed your results properly? Don't make the mistake of only reporting your results. Make sure you provide interpretation for your results. How do your results fit within the available body of knowledge? Are your results as expected? If not, can you explain what happened? Can you discuss your results in comparison to existing theories?
• What are the direct implications of your work? Can you formulate recommendations for practice and/or for policy makers? Do you need to do more experiments?
• Is your summary and conclusions section written in the right form? Did you summarize the contents of your paper? Did you highlight the main findings and conclusions from your work? Make sure you don't introduce new contents in this section. Are all conclusions supported by the material presented in the paper?
• How is your writing? Did you ask colleagues and/or native English speakers to read your work? Did you proofread thoroughly for grammar, style, and punctuation? Poor writing will make it difficult for the reviewer to understand the message you want to convey.
• Did you check your figures and tables? Are all references to figures and tables done correctly in the text? Are the figures and tables in the correct style and format? Have you submitted your figures with sufficient resolution? Are your figures and tables clear, and do they contain all relevant information?
• If relevant, did you add a list of notations? If you are using parameters and formulas, you should include a list of notations for easy reference.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to develop soft skills during your PhD studies

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Let me start today with some sobering news. PhD completion rates are low. Too low. There are numerous reasons why candidates leave their PhD programs. Personal problems, financial issues,... the (bad ) stuff of life. Lack of supervision and guidance can be a problem.

If we leave out all the external causes for leaving a PhD program, we are left with internal causes. In some cases, a candidate has the analytical skills to do the research, but lacks the soft skills to deliver a dissertation and defend. A good technical student can perhaps still need to do some effort to manage his/her project, or to write a sound conference paper.

The good news is: you can learn these soft skills. Universities are realizing more and more that actively encouraging doctoral students to learn soft skills is of mutual benefit. An added plus is that these soft skills are useful for any career path after the PhD, and can be desirable in the industry.

If your university does not provide courses to train your soft skills, you can teach yourself. Just like you can teach yourself to code in another language, you can teach yourself the soft skills you need to manage your research, and present and publish your results. Let's go step-by-step:

1. Analyze your workflow processes
Have an honest conversation with yourself. How are you currently working? What work do you get done, and what stays behind?

If you find it hard to reply these questions, use the monthly progress monitor, originally introduced by Gosling and Noordam. Set goals for a month, subdivide these into tasks per week, and then evaluate at the end of the month what you accomplished and what not, and identify why you deviated from your planning. Keep doing this exercise on monthly basis (even weekly in the beginning) to learn which type of tasks you struggle with, and to improve your planning. Use your research diary to write your observations.

2. Identify your weaknesses
Based on the previous exercise, you may know which tasks cause you difficulties. Now, go one step deeper: which precise skills are you lacking to carry out these tasks? Analyze this question in your research diary.

For example: say that you struggle to deliver reports or papers by a given deadline. There are many different possible causes for this problem: you can have difficulties with the writing of the text, you can lack the skills to draw the figures, your planning skills may be poor, or you may have a hard time asking your supervisor for help. Be honest with yourself and identify your weakness.

3. Find your learning method
Now that we have identified the problem, let's look for a solution. How are we going to solve this problem? In order to answer this question, you need to know your preferred learning method. How do you learn soft skills best: through a course (workshop, offline course, online course,...), with the help of a coach, by practicing with the support of your supervisor or peers, or by reading a book? The answer to this question also depends on the type of skill you need to improve - improving your networking skills will require you to practice in real-life situations, and you can only use learning with a book as a supporting method for this case.

Once you know your preferred learning method, see what is available. Carry out a targeted search, book your course, contact a coach, and get your materials ready for studying.

4. Plan your study time
You know what you need to study, and you know how you are going to study. Next step, is planning when you are going to study. Take your planning (even if planning is a skill you are struggling with), and identify when you will devote time to working on this skill. Treat learning this new skill in the same way as you would treat learning an analytical skill required for your research - in the long run, both are equally important!

5. Evaluate yourself
At the end of the time you have devoted to mastering your new soft skill, evaluate yourself. If you have worked on improving your presentation skills, plan to give a presentation to your research group, and ask your peers for feedback, If you worked on improving your networking skills, go to an industry event and try to make a contact with a previously determined number of people. Afterwards, write in your research diary to evaluate how you did and to identify what you can improve even further.

6. Repeat
There is more than one soft skill to learn during your PhD. Repeat the learning process for another skill that you need to improve. Additionally, keep improving the skill you worked on by practicing at every possible occasion. You are now your own teacher - you need to find how to learn a new skill, when to reserve time for learning, and how to take your own exams. Use your research diary to reflect on your progress, see how far you've come, and determine what you can improve further.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Fifteen budgeting tips for graduate students

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

In graduate school, you typically need to get buy on a small budget. If you are hired as an employee for your PhD, you will be earning a small salary and have social security and other benefits. If you are on a scholarship, your finances may be very tight. In the past, I have shared some quick fixes that I used to save money while I was in graduate school and I discussed the importance of logging and analyzing your budget

Today, we are looking at changes you can make to cut your expenses and help you save money while you are in graduate school. I'm sharing my 15 best practices with you:

1. Track your expenses
Before you can develop budgets and save money, you need to know how much money you currently are spending. Start tracking all your expenses (every cent you are spending) in a spreadsheet. Log your expenses in different categories (groceries, bills, going out, sports, books, music, ...) to see how much you currently are spending and how your expenses are distributed across different categories.

2. Set budgets for different categories
Now that you know how much you are spending on each category, see what you can eliminate, and determine how much you want to spend maximum per category. For some people, having their budgets as cash money in different envelopes can help if you tend to overspend on your bank cards. Such an approach is a quick fix, and does not address the underlying problem (the overspending itself). Try to be conscious about what you really need to survive, and what is superfluous.

3. Shop on fixed days
I used to only spend money on Tuesdays and Saturdays. On Tuesdays I'd do my food groceries and on Saturdays other pending items. If I ran out of a certain item, it simply would have to wait until the next day of shopping. The less often you enter a store, the less tempted you are to spend on things that you feel like eating or that look good, but that you don't really need.

4. Save for a rainy day
Whenever you have an income, you should save part of it. Even if you can only save 25 or 50 USD a month, make sure you save something from your salary each month so that you have some buffer for a rainy day. You want to avoid to go in debt over car repairs, home maintenance, or your health. You may also need to live off your savings after your graduation, while you are applying for jobs.

5. Plan your meals around the weekly sales
I recommend you think about the meals you will be eating (and perhaps write them down on a planning) before you enter the store. Check what is on sale this week, and plan your meals around these discounted items. Some grocery stores have recurring discounts (i.e. 15% of all fruit and vegetables on Wednesdays). If that's the case where you shop, take advantage of these extra savings.

6. Buy bulk
Buy grains and beans in bulk - they last a long time. Buy discounted vegetables in bulk, cook them all, and then freeze portions. When the laundry detergent or the soap you use is on sale, take advantage of this offer and buy ahead for a few months.

7. Thrift
Furniture, household items, and clothing - you can find everything you need in the thrift store. Most of the clothes I wore during my PhD were hand-me-downs from my mom and sister or items bought in the thrift store. I still wear a lot of thrifted clothes. Alternatively, you can look online for second-hand items when you need to buy something (a bike, a fridge, ...).

8. Invest in quality items
When it comes down to items you use frequently, then go for quality instead of for the cheapest product. Don't try to save money on a laptop, but invest in a good machine. The items that you splurge on because they are important to you are of course highly personal. For me, a quality blender, a good mattress, and a good stereo are important. Find out which of your items get a lot of usage, and make a smart choice when you replace or acquire them.

9. Cancel subscriptions
Three euros here, twelve euros there,... and before you know it you are spending over 100 euros a month in subscriptions. When you analyze your expenses, list all your subscriptions as recurring bills. What do you really need? Should you cancel Netflix and watch YouTube videos instead? Do you really need a landline and a cell phone? Sometimes, temporary discounts automatically revert to a high cost subscription after a trial period. Always be aware of when trial periods end, and cancel or revise your subscription prior to the hike in price.

10. Protect and insure your valuables
If you spent a fair amount of money on a good laptop, then protect it with a lock, a surge protector, and a good cover. Insure your most valuable items, such as your laptop and your bike. Invest in the highest-grade lock for your bike.

11. Be minimalist
Don't buy lots of nick-knacks. Especially if you are doing your PhD abroad, you probably won't be able to drag all your belongings back to your home country after graduation. Focus on the essentials, a capsule wardrobe, a pocket kitchen, and don't buy things you won't be keeping later.

12. Look for online deals
If you are planning time away from your work or time to relax, look for deals online. If you want to go away for a weekend, look for discounted deals. If you feel like getting a massage, see if you can use a group coupon or other type of deal to get a lower price. Don't get the first thing you see, but explore different options.

13. Bike or walk your commute
Save on gas or your bus fare, and walk or bike your commute (provided that you can do so safely). If you start the day on the bike, you'll get to the office with a fresh head and you get some exercise every day. I always bike my commute in the Netherlands and walk my commute in Ecuador (unless it's too late at night), and I enjoy this a lot.

14. Shop for presents online and ahead of the season
Gather presents for birthdays and Christmas throughout the year. When a good deal comes up for something you want to buy for your loved ones, take advantage of the offer and buy ahead of the holiday period. You probably will get the item at a lower price, and you avoid the craziness of malls around the holidays, which may confuse you and tempt you to buy too many things.

15. Ask yourself what is really necessary
Are certain expenses (such as getting a haircut. something I hardly every spend money on) really necessary, or are you just doing this because that's what you've always spent money on. Do you need to buy new clothes every season, or can you use what you already have? Can you cook with what's in your pantry instead of shopping for new food items?

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to author academic books

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

When you finish your dissertation, you may be wondering what is next. Have you considered turning your thesis into a book, either an academic book or perhaps a non-fiction book? Or when you have taken on a large project as a post-doc, and published several papers on the topic, you may feel ready to take the next step and write a book about this topic.

Granted, after finishing your dissertation or after turning in a manuscript, writing a book may be the last thing on your mind. You'd rather not type out any word again. But writing books is part of academic life, a skill to master, and a way to share your knowledge. Depending on your field, it may be a requirement for tenure, or it may simply be a step to take to grow your reputation as an authority in your field.

There are several ways to develop ideas for books to write. Your first step is always to pitch the idea to a publisher. Inquire first about the formats they use for writing a book proposal, so that you have an idea on which information you need to present your idea. Most book proposals require you to describe what the book will be about, who the book will be useful for, which other titles on the topic already exist and how your book is different, and a short chapter-by-chapter description or table of contents.

In this post, we'll zoom in to the very first step of writing a book: how can you turn a research project or other work you did into an idea for a book? There are several categories you can consider:

1. From thesis to academic book
You may think that turning your thesis into an academic book is overdone. If somebody wants to know about your research, they can read your dissertation, right? In fact, you should consider the audience. Researchers, especially those in your field, will read your dissertation. If you turn the work of your dissertation into an academic book, it should serve a broader audience. Think about the way your work can benefit practitioners and a broader academic audience. Can you include case studies, design examples, or discuss the way forward for your field based on your work? You write a dissertation as the answer to a research question, and a book as a tool for its readers - keep that in mind when you decide which topics to include.

2. From thesis to non-fiction book
If you like writing and are willing to chew on every sentence, writing a non-fiction book for the broader public can be the way to go. Go from "answering your research question" as you did in your dissertation to "telling a story" and/or "giving insights and advice" based on your research. Did you come across interesting people or anecdotes during your research? Take a storyline as the center of your narrative and move away from purely answering your research question.

3. From research project to book
A research project other than your PhD research can become a book too. If you are in the post-doc phase or are an early career researcher on the tenure track, you will not be combining the insights of your new research into a thesis anymore. Instead, you can bundle your knowledge into a book. Again, you should write the book (and of course, the book proposal first) with your reader in mind: what can they learn and use from the work you have been carrying out? Take that as your main point, and develop your work around what serves your reader.

4. From blog to book
If you write a blog about research, you can turn your posts into an e-book. With PhD Talk and AcademicTransfer, we have done this already and made our best work available as a free e-book. You too can decide to either turn your most-read posts into a "best of" e-book, or you can decide to select a number of posts around the same topic and work these into a book focused on one element.

5. From class notes to coursebook
If you are teaching, you will develop your own classnotes. You may be using a classic textbook, and develop your notes based on the textbook. If you are in a new field, if the available textbooks are outdated, or if no textbooks are applicable to the context of your location, then you will have to develop your classnotes by bringing together information from different publications, invent examples, and synthesize the information as you prepare your lectures. The next step can be to turn the information you developed yourself into a coursebook and publish it.

6. Become editor of a technical book
Being an editor to a book written with experts in your field is a whole different beast, and I certainly could devote an entire post to this. However, in this post our focus is on getting ideas for books and book proposals. If you have a number of colleagues you often see at conferences or work together with at certain occasions, you can ask for their effort in the form of contributing a chapter to an edited volume. The advantage of an edited volume is that it can shine different lights on a hot topic.

7. Become editor of a collection of essays
Besides the nitty-gritty of the technical content that you find in an edited volume, you can also act as editor of a collection of essays. Sometimes, such books are published to honor a giant in your field, and all past students and collaborators contribute with an essay on their collaboration with this giant, on life lessons he/she gave the author, or by discussing several important elements of the work of this giant. An other option for a collection of essays is combining efforts with colleagues and sharing your points of view related to higher education, foreign policy, teaching techniques...

With this list of ideas, which book project will you tackle?

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to use LinkedIn as an academic

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

LinkedIn. The website may sound to you like a place for consultants and other folks in the industry. You may consider ResearchGate and your blog as your online venues of choice. Perhaps you prefer to interact on Twitter. Maybe you once made a profile on LinkedIn when you were an undergraduate student, and then never updated it. Wherever you are, I'd recommend you to build and maintain a profile on LinkedIn. For academics, LinkedIn can serve the following purposes:

1. Become findable
Sometimes, your profile page on your institution or your blog can become more difficult to find. Your LinkedIn profile can be a good tool to monitor and manage your personal online brand. It can be a source of consistency as you switch institutions. Use it to have your most important information and specialty online, and keep it updated.

2. Have your elevator pitch online
Your summary on LinkedIn is your online elevator pitch. Use a paragraph to summarize where you studied and worked in the past, your current position, and your service appointments if these are important in your field. Keep this summary updated in the same way you keep the summary of your resume updated. Whenever you are invited somewhere as a speaker, you can simply copy and paste this summary for your introduction.

3. Use it to keep in touch with contacts
E-mail addresses are unreliable, especially for early career researchers. If you move from short-term post-doc project at one institution to another place, it can be difficult to keep in touch with your contacts. I use LinkedIn as my digital address book - and one that updates itself all the time. The only drawback of this approach is that it may be harder to get a response from a colleague when he/she has a profile, but actually doesn't use LinkedIn at all. Whenever I receive a business card, I search for the name in LinkedIn, and add this person as a contact - business cards get lost easily, but a LinkedIn profile connection can stay (provided that a contact doesn't block you or deletes his/her profile). An added plus is that you will get notified when a contact has a birthday, changes jobs, or has a job anniversary. These occasions are always good to touch base.

4. Digital CV
Consider LinkedIn your online CV. Update it regularly, and add the information that you have on your CV: educational background, work experience, honors and awards, language proficiency, skills and publications. Moreover, you can link LinkedIn to other services such as Slideshare to showcase your presentations, and to Publons to have your verified peer review record visible. If your graduation is approaching, make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date, does not have spelling errors, and gives a good overview of your contributions to the profession.

5. Participate in groups
Just as with other social media, you can join groups on LinkedIn, and participate in these groups. You can ask questions, and/or answer questions. If you are getting towards graduation and consider a job in the industry, interaction in professional groups can be an excellent way of getting noticed.

6. Follow institutions and companies
You can follow business pages on LinkedIn (institutions and companies) to keep up-to-date with some important players in your field. These pages can notify you of open positions, and give you a general idea of the culture of a certain institution beyond what is available on their webpage. The same holds true for other social media platforms, which are all less static in nature than a website.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Locations for deep work

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

We are the creatures of habit. Most days, we arrive around the same time at our office. Then, we perhaps get our coffee, check our email and see what we want to work on for the day. Or we check the news, start to read the comments, and before we realize, half an hour has gone. Or we start to reply emails, only to get lost in the rabbit hole of starting things without finishing them, or in email ping-pong.

If at the end of the day, when you leave your office, you have the feeling you have accomplished very little, you can try to switch up your routine. We've talked before about using pomodoros, planning, lists, and other tools to use your time wisely. Today, we will focus on how we associate a certain location to certain behavior.

Just like we associate our dining table with meals, we associate our office and our desk with our office-behavior. If you are struggling with bad habits and procrastination, try switching locations to induce deep work. Of course, if you have office hours or need to be available for your supervisors at certain times, don't simply disappear. You can change locations outside of the hours that you have meetings in your office, or communicate to others when you will be available.

Here are some strategies that you can use to break bad habits and focus on deep work:

1. Get a designated focus spot
If your office is large enough, or if you work from home, you can identify a "focus spot". A focus spot is a designated area for focused work. If you want to concentrate deeply on some work, take that work (and only that work) to your focus spot. You can for example take a notebook and print of a journal article. If you prefer a digital workflow, and can stay clear from the pull of the internet, then open the files you are going to use on your laptop. Set an intention to work for a certain amount of time, and stay during that time on task and in your focus spot.

2. Walk around
If sitting and reading makes you nod off, try standing or pacing around. If you are working on a computer, walking around is not very practical. If you are reading printed files on the other hand, walking around is possible. When walking around is not possible, try a standing desk to keep your body more alert. If you need to flesh out an important problem, take a notebook and go for a walk. Give your brain the space to process thoughts while you walk around. Leave your smartphone behind or on airplane mode to make sure you stay on task.

3. Go into nature or somewhere quiet
To refresh your brain and get a new perspective on things, go outside. Find a place in a park to read, a picnic table where you work for a while on your laptop, or a quiet nook on campus to hide away without disturbances. Take only what you need - either printed documents and a notebook, or your laptop (just make sure you only open the files you need and/or find a place without wifi so you avoid getting stuck into the internet).

4. Work from the library or coffee shop
If you want to switch locations to break bad habits, the most obvious choice would be to go to the library or a coffee shop. The quiet and studious atmosphere of a library can stimulate deep work for some, whereas the background noise in a coffee shop and the presence of other students will encourage others. You can make it a study date with friends or join a "shut up and write" group if you want accountability partners.

5. Associate activity with place
To make sure you stay on task, you can have a designated space per task. For those of us who work in the laboratory, the link between activity and place is already there: experiments are done in the laboratory. Similarly, you can decide to do all your reading in the library, all your writing on your focus spot, and your proofreading while walking around. Lighter work, such as administration, planning, and emails can be designated to a coffee shop. In between, you may be taking a walk in a park and use that time to clear your mind or think through a difficult research problem.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: 20 productivity tips for researchers

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

The internet is full of productivity advice for office workers, knowledge workers, writers, and more. Today, however, I want to give you a "Best Of" edition of the general and specific tips that you can find on PhD Talk. Consider this as my early Christmas present to you, and perhaps something to keep in mind when you decide you want to work in a smarter and more productive way in January.

Without much additional introduction, here are my twenty best productivity tips for researchers - things I use in my daily work practice, and that helped my get tenure in less than four years after defending my PhD.

1. Plan
Productivity and planning are inseparable. If you want to do productive work, you need to have identified first which work you need to do, and when - otherwise everything will always be a chaos and source of stress. Check out this post to learn more about the strategy I use for planning my work per semester. Plan at different levels: from long-term, to what you need to achieve this semester, this month, this week, and today.

2. Walk around when you get sleepy
If you need to proofread lots of text that you wrote yourself, you may find your attention go away. In that case, get up and pace around. You won't doze off when you are walking around. If you don't have enough space to walk around, try bouncing on an exercise ball - during my pregnancy I did a lot of my reading on an exercise ball, to stay focused and to relieve my back.

3. Use two screens
If you are not working with two screens yet, get a second monitor ASAP. Being able to have your calculations open on one screen, and write your text on another screen, for example, reduces the number of times you need to switch between programs, and the number of mistakes you make when switching back and forth.

4. Use shortcuts when writing
Don't lose time moving your cursor around to select the formatting style that you want to use, or to click on "save" for your document. Instead, memorize the shortcuts of the actions you often use. If you don't need to switch between your keyboard and mouse all the time, your writing will flow more easily.

5. Teach yourself speedreading
If you don't need to understand every single calculation step in a document, but are hunting for a precise bit of information, use speedreading. If you don't know how to speedread, teach yourself speedreading. This skill will be crucial when you need to quickly tear through large amounts of text.

6. Remove your smartphone from your desk
Keep your smartphone in your backpack or store it away in a drawer when you want to work without disturbances. Switch off the sound, remove all the notifications, and use your phone in a way that suits your needs, not in a way that is only procrastination.

7. Quantify your goals
Make sure your goals are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound. If you use a good planning, you will already know during which chunk of time you need to be doing which task. But to have that task described in the most optimal way, quantify it. Instead of planning to write your dissertation in a timeslot of two hours, identify what exactly you want to achieve: make Table 6.4, revise figure 6.2, and write 1000 words to section 6.5 over the next three hours.

8. Batch process email and use inbox zero
If you don't pay attention, you can easily spend your entire day on email and admin. Every now and then, when I have a massive backlog and my projects are all running smoothly, I may set aside an evening, day or large timeslot to get a grip on my mailbox again, but in general I spend only an hour a day on email. During that hour, I read, reply, and store each email. I store emails in folders corresponding to different projects, and then delete them, so that I only have emails in my inbox that require action.

9. Write daily
If you want to produce papers, you need to put in the time and work. You could binge write every now and then, but writing regularly gives the best results for most researchers. I start almost every workday with two hours of writing, so that I can constantly move my different writing projects forward. Reserve time in your planning every day for writing, and make sure you reserve this time during a period of the day when you have sharp concentration.

10. Reserve quiet time for research
Just as you need to reserve time for writing without disturbances, you need to reserve quiet time for doing research. Make sure your time does not get chopped up with meetings, and colleagues or students walking into your office, but that you can spend 1,5 hours to 2 hours in deep thought to move your research forward. Learn to find focus for deep work.

11. Use reference management software
Start using reference management software as early as possible during your PhD. Inform about the available software, and always archive papers in your chosen reference management software after reading. If you haven't used reference management software yet, set aside a day or a few days to enter your references - your future self will thank you.

12. Use the urgent-important matrix to prioritize tasks
If you feel overwhelmed by all the work you need to do, use the urgent-important matrix to prioritize. When you develop your planning for a semester, use this matrix as well, and make sure you spend enough time working on your important - not urgent tasks. A classic example in this category are journal papers: they don't have a deadline but are of the utmost importance for your career.

13. Read often
Keep a fresh view on research by reading often and reading a lot. Set aside time in your planning on a weekly basis to read, review papers for journals, and/or commit to reading a paper a day with a #365papers challenge. Spend time and effort on creating your reading habits, because your research will benefit from this.

14. Trust your students
If you give a research subquestion to a student, trust his/her abilities to work on your research. Don't check every single number they calculate. Don't breathe down their neck all the time - give your students the liberty to explore research and come up with original ideas. Keep in mind that you should focus on your research, and not on playing nanny of your students.

15. Try the pomodoro technique
If you need to push through a tedious and repetitive task (one that you can't program for example), use the pomodoro technique: set a timer for 25 minutes, and commit to working only on this task without disturbances for the next 25 minutes. Then, take a break of 5 minutes. Repeat 3 sets of 25 minutes concentration and 5 minutes of break, and then take a longer break to refresh your brain.

16. Measure your output
Measure the number of papers you read and keep track of this in a spreadsheet to check if you are meeting your goals. Measure the number of words you write on a daily basis, and keep track in a spreadsheet to see how you are doing on a weekly and monthly basis. Seeing the numbers grow and seeing a streak of days in which you meet your goals can be very rewarding.

17. Get accountability partners
If you don't have much self-discipline, commit with a fellow PhD student that you will work together on achieving your goals. You can do the #365papers challenge together, organize a #shutupandwrite meeting on a weekly basis to get writing together, or simply check in with eachother frequently. If there is nobody within your institution to pair up with, check out the options on Twitter.

18. Learn to roll with the punches
Experiments fail, theories don't work, papers get rejected - academia is full of learning moments. You can call these failures or disappointments, but these are part of the nature of research work. Learn how to bounce back quickly after an unexpected result, so that you don't start to lag behind because you are moping around.

19. Take care of yourself
Eat properly, sleep, and exercise. Take care of yourself, because a tired brain is not fit for research. Don't fall into the trap of working late hours, not sleeping enough, and then trying to get work done while you are not feeling in the mood for work, so that everything takes much longer and you need to stay late again...

20. Celebrate your successes
Stay positive, and stop and pause to celebrate what is going well when you achieve a milestone. Take out time to celebrate your successes and have a good time with your colleagues - this, too, is part of the nature of research work.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to select which conference to attend

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

When you start your PhD, outline where (at which conferences) you would like to present your work. Don’t wait until you feel “ready” to present something – it is not uncommon for conferences to require abstract submission 1.5 years before the actual conference. Talk to your fellow PhD students to learn where your supervisor usually takes his/her students, and talk with your supervisor about wanting to present your work at conferences as early as possible. Certainly, your plans can change as you move through your PhD, but have an idea of where you would want to present early on, and work towards the realization of that plan.

Ideally, you have been able to discuss travel funding prior to taking your PhD position, but if you are unsure about what to expect, then bring the topic up as soon as possible. The funding of the project you are working on is crucial here: it could allow you to present at a number of conferences each year, or it could limit you to one single conference per year. If your funding does not include a travel budget, look for other options. Many universities and professional associations provide scholarships for students to travel to conferences. You can also consider participating in student competitions, essay contents, and other competitions which can award you with travel funding.

Now that you know that there are many ways to find funding to travel to conferences, and that you should start building your conference wishlist early on, let’s focus on selecting the right conference. There are different types of conferences:

• Meetings of international associations: The largest conferences tend to be the meetings of international associations. These associations can meet annually, or less frequently. A good place to start looking for information would be on the websites of international associations that you are involved with or that are important in your field. If you are not a member of any international association, start looking for the important players in your field. A good starting point would be the associations that publish the journals you read, for those journals that are not owned by large publishing houses. Keep in mind that many international associations offer free or very cheap student memberships. Once you’ve identified the important international associations, look on their websites for information about their events. Many international associations also mention events they cosponsor, so you can be informed about meetings you would not hear about otherwise.
• National meetings: If you want to test the waters before you take your research abroad, and keep your travel costs lower, looking into national meetings is a good starting point. While not all national meetings require you to write a conference paper, presenting your work to a smaller audience and perhaps in your native language may be a more comfortable first step. These national meetings can be organized by national member groups of the international associations that you follow. Another type of events is organized by research groups of universities that study the same topic, giving PhD students an opportunity to share their research with researchers in the same field. Sometimes, young member groups of international organizations or student chapters of international organizations organize events in which you may want to present your research.
• Industry events: There’s a whole array of different industry events that can be particularly interesting towards the end of your PhD trajectory, when you may want to explore opportunities outside academia. Some industry events are gatherings of academics and practitioners in a certain branch of the industry. These events typically have lectern sessions, in which you could present your work. Inquire if there is a possibility, but keep in mind that in some fields these lectures feature senior professors who give a more general overview of the current state of the art. Other industry events are career fairs, and trade shows, which you may want to attend to learn about your opportunities after your graduation, but which do not offer you the ability to present your work.
• Specialized workshops: Workshops on specialized topics can be organized by international associations, or on the initiative of a few senior professors. Whereas these events typically tend to gather a small but focused group of researchers, it is more difficult for you during your PhD to learn about these events. Sometimes, these events are announced on the website of the overbearing international association. The presentations can be by invitation only, but if you are interested in participating and presenting your work, talk to your supervisor and see if he/she can get you a spot in the workshop.

Most information about upcoming conferences can be found online, and the internet (including the websites of the most important international associations) can provide you with a great amount of information. Sign up for newsletters of international associations to stay informed about the events they organize or co-sponsor. Tell your fellow PhD students and supervisor that you are looking for information about interesting conferences; they will forward you calls for abstracts when something interesting for you comes up. Ask your fellow PhD students and supervisor to bring flyers announcing future conferences when they travel to conferences.

Before finishing this topic, I need to give you a word of caution. If you receive an email with an invitation to submit an abstract for a conference, and it looks interesting, make sure you check if the conference is legit. Check their website, and see if the event is endorsed by any international association that you know. Check the organizing committee and scientific committee, and see if there are reputable scientists involved. If you are doubting whether the conference is legit, write one of the members of the scientific committee to ask about the scope of the conference. Some predatory conferences unfortunately just slap some names on a website without asking these scholars for permission. You wouldn’t expect it, but some companies have decided to make easy money with the organization of “academic” conferences: they ask high registration fees, and use no academic rigor in the peer review process (or use no peer review whatsoever) to organize conferences with the sole objective of making some quick money. Red flags for these predatory conferences are: poor English in the email, a promise for fast publication or publication in a journal, or you being invited as plenary speaker or session chair (by someone you don’t know at all). If you are doubting whether a call for abstracts is legit, google the name of the conference with “bogus conference”, “fake conference”, “predatory conference” or “scam conference” added to it to see if others have been fooled by the same organization.