Ineffective Obsessions in Brazilian Academia and Proposals Towards Meritocracy

Together with Miguel Abambres, Tiago Ribeiro, and Ana Sousa I've recently published a preprint titled "Ineffective Obsessions in Brazilian Academia and Proposals Towards Meritocracy".

As we're exploring post-publication peer review and the use of preprints, working only open access and bypassing for-profit publishers, this paper is on OSF Preprints and open for discussion on ResearchGate. I'd be grateful if you find a moment to read the paper and share your thoughts with us on its contents!

Here's the abstract of the paper:

Albeit its constitutional claim for quality, Brazilian academia has largely been referred to as unmeritocratic and academic hiring is still inward-oriented. Lattes platform, a public curricular information system, reflects elements of this protectionism. This article assesses two ‘obsessions’ in Brazilian academia: (i) the ‘mandatory’ Lattes CV, and (ii) the candidates’ assessment criteria in public tenders for faculty positions. Several pros and cons (mostly) of the Lattes platform are identified. The following improvements are proposed: (i) evaluations in public tenders based only on candidate’s CV, interview, and a sample lecture, (ii) the dismissal of Lattes CV as a mandatory format, and (iii) the use of platforms as Microsoft Academic, Google Scholar, ORCID or ResearcherID for curricular information. With these recommendations, Brazil can move towards a more meritocratic academic hiring system.

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.

I am Marie Morganelli, and This is How I Work

Today, I am hosting Marie Morganelli in the "How I Work" series. Marie Morganelli has an earned doctorate in English Literature. She has taught literature and composition at the community college and university levels since 2006, and has professional experience in marketing, copywriting, and volunteer management, as well as visitor services for a large cultural institution. She is passionate about informal education, particularly with zoos and other cultural institutions, and with telling a good story. Her freelance business, www.precisewords.org, focuses on clear, concise copywriting for small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and other publications who need help telling their unique story to further their goals. She is a huge fan of travel, coffee, and wine.

General: Marie Morganelli has a PhD in English literature, and is building a freelance copywriting business while working by day as an administrator for a university with a large online presence.
Current Job: Freelance writer for Precise Words Copywriting
Current Location: Manchester, NH
Current mobile device: An apple iphone 6, with which I have a love/hate relationship
Current computer: MacBook Air 13 in.

Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us?
I finished my PhD with no interest whatsoever in working in an academic field. I was burned out from the politics of graduate school, and stressed by the many hoops one has to jump through to get anywhere with a career in academia. I do love teaching, though, and so taught part-time for an online university while working full time in education and guest services at a cultural institution (zoo). The part-time job led to a full time job as an Associate Dean, so, ironically, I did find myself working in an academic field, though because our program is unique, my traditional title does not quite match my somewhat nontraditional role. Our hierarchy and program management are somewhat different than at a traditional university, which is what drew me to it.

While I feel very lucky to have this position, I missed working in a creative capacity, and have an entrepreneurial spirit, and so I have been working on building a freelance business to indulge my creative interests, utilize my skills, and feel as though I have some agency as to my personal success.

What tools, apps and software are essential to your workflow?
My MacBook Air is one of my favorite purchases ever. I bought it when I started teaching online because it is so lightweight and portable. I previously had a Windows-based laptop which was heavier and thus harder to lug through airports, and it was prone to crashing from viruses. Macs cost a lot more but crash a lot less, and the MacBook line is incredibly lightweight. I opted for the 13 in. because the bit of extra screen space is helpful. The 11 in. was just too small to be practical for me.

I prefer a laptop to iPad because I like having my files with me as well as the full size keyboard.

As for apps and software, I use Microsoft Word almost exclusively to write, though I do sit down with a notepad and pen quite often and rock it old school when writing a first draft. The pen in my hand helps me think better, I find. That also prevents me from web-surfing when I should be working!

I don’t use many apps in the course of getting my work done, though I do use the internet at large quite a bit for research.

What does your workspace setup look like?
I have a desk, chosen specifically for its large surface so I could spread out, in my spare bedroom. I have a second monitor that is incredibly helpful. Sometimes, when the weather is nice, I take my laptop outside and work on my porch.

I currently sit in a traditional office chair, and it’s killing my back. I am on the lookout for a backless kneeling chair to help with posture.



What is your best advice for productive academic work?
I do try to stay current in research and academic writing given my day job, but the truth is, I do not love it. I much prefer to work on my freelance projects or personal writing when it comes to professional writing. There is something about academic writing that has never truly appealed to me.

How do you keep an overview of projects and tasks?
I am continuously working on ways to do this better. Right now, my billing is tracked through an excel spreadsheet and I use the calendar built in on my mac, so I can sync with my phone. I tried using a paper calendar, but online seems to work better. I am determined to find a better way, though!

Besides phone and computer, do you use other technological tools in work and daily life?
These are the key items. I wish I could get by with using technology less, and I have been making a conscious effort to stare at my phone less overall, which helps. The truth is that I type much faster than I handwrite, so working via computer will probably always be necessary.

Which skill makes you stand out as an academic?
I’m a pretty terrible academic, to be honest! I am a terrific teacher, though, and an excellent writer. I have the skills to be a good academic but not the spirit. The skills and confidence I learned in graduate school, though, directly influence the work that I do now, both as a freelance writer and as an administrator, and I am not sure I would be on my current path without having gone through that experience. I do have a pretty strong dose of self-confidence when it comes to knowing that I’m good enough and smart enough for the work that I’m doing.

What do you listen to when you work?
Usually, silence or the birds chirping outside, which make me happy because it means that spring is finally, finally here. Sometimes I listen to classical music.

What are you currently reading? How do you find time for reading?
One of my current goals is to read more. Reading is one of my favorite things to do, and so I decided to make time for it. I read for at least half an hour every night before bed (with a hard copy book or my non-backlit Kindle) in addition to any other reading I can squeeze into a day. I am currently halfway through “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee, which I highly recommend. It’s riveting.

I also read business-related books, and right now am reading “Blue Ocean Shift” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, which is about changing one’s perspective from being a competitor to being an innovator. After that, I plan to dive into “Change Your Space, Change Your Culture” by Rex Miller, Mabel Casey, and Mark Konchar, because the concept of space and place is one that interests me a great deal and that affects many aspects of our personal and professional lives (and was a focus in my dissertation).

Are you more of an introvert or extrovert? How does this influence your working habits?
I am an introvert through and through. It took a long time for me to realize this. I spent years not really understanding how I could not consider myself shy yet found myself wanting to spend so much time alone. Then I started learning more about introverts and recognized myself immediately. I do work to embrace and appreciate myself for who I am, and know that sometimes I need time to myself, and I protect and defend that time. But I also recognize that sometimes a person needs to act like an extrovert to get things done. My previous role at the zoo managing guest services taught me how to function like an extrovert when needed.

Being a writer really is the perfect job for an introvert, except I do think it’s important not to let my comfort level at spending time alone become a crutch or a habit. Instead, I make time to participate in activities outside my home because “introvert” does not have to mean “hermit!” Plus, personal connections are how one grows and nurtures a business as well as are an important way to stay connected with others.

What's your sleep routine like?
I really wish I could confidently say that I get eight to nine hours of sleep a night every night, but that would be a lie. I am working towards meeting my goal of eight hours of sleep a night but I have yet to meet that goal, except on weekends. Typically, I try to at least get ready for bed by 9pm, and then read for a bit. I wake up around 5am to work on my freelance projects for a few hours before going in to work at my full time position.

What's your work routine like?
I work best in the early mornings, especially with a deadline, such as a time I need to leave to get to my full time position. I do not work well at all in the evenings when I am tired, so I reserve evenings for meal preparation, exercise, reading, and my artistic hobbies (cross-stitching, drawing, and stained glass).

What's the best advice you ever received?
Years ago, I asked my dad what advice he would go back and give his younger self if he could only give himself one piece of advice. He thought about it for a moment and then said: “Save early, save often.”

He was right. The impact of compounding interest is real. The impact of getting into a habit of saving regularly is real. Thanks to that one piece of advice, I opened my first retirement account when I was still in college, before I even had my first full time job, and I am definitely seeing the rewards of that now. This advice translates into other aspects of life as well, because making a habit to move consistently forward, one step after one step after one step, is how to accomplish one’s goals and make dreams a reality.

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.

Does the funding of our projects cover the time it takes to finish a PhD project?

I recently ran three combined polls trying to understand if we are applying for enough funding for our PhD students to actually do their PhD research. I've heard a number of stories about professors relying on unemployment benefits for their PhD students for their last year in almost every case, and I don't agree with such practices. I think we should hire PhD students with enough funding to pay them to do their research work within a reasonable amount of time.

What I learned from this poll is that not all students are actually hired on projects. This different funding scheme for the PhD seems to be more common in the humanities.

The three elements that I evaluated for this poll were:
- How much time it took to finish the PhD
- If you finished within the allotted time
- If you finished before funding ran out, and if not, how you survived financially after funding ran dry.

I learned that the majority of voters needed more than 5 years for their PhD project, a number that is in stark contrast to policies in various countries where there is a push towards projects of only 3 years in length. Luckily, I also learned that for the majority of the voters (note: not everybody voted in the three polls, so there may be some discrepancies) the funding provided sufficient time to finish the PhD project, and, therefore, that the majority of the voters were funded throughout.

Here's the wake of this poll and the following discussion:

I am Philip Shields, and This is How I Work

Today, I am interviewing Dr. Philip Shields. Dr. Shields is a scholar-practitioner in the field of Executive Leadership. He currently works as a manager for a General Electric Company and as an Adjunct Professor at two universities. His undergraduate degree was in Chemistry and he holds a Master's degree in Management with a focus in Integrated Logistics. His passions include faith, family, flying, friends, and bridging the gap between public and private organizations so that both may benefit through strategic alliances.

Current Job: Manager at FieldCore, a General Electric Company. Adjunct Faculty at the University of Charleston and at Liberty University
Current Location: Unites States and Virtual
Current mobile device: iphones
Current computer: Dell PC and MacBook Pro

Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us?
My research focuses on Executive Leader perceptions of their involvement with forming and sustaining Cross-Sector Strategic Alliances. Public-Private Partnerships are a type of Cross-Sector Strategic Alliances. I am exploring avenues for continuing the research that I started while in my doctorate program. I am also looking for other publication opportunities for excerpts from my dissertation research.

What tools, apps and software are essential to your workflow?
I do not work in an office with my teammates and other managers of FieldCore and so I depend heavily on my virtual communication tools. I use WebEx and Skype for Business daily. My iphone is the link that keeps me connected to my team and direct reports. During my research I found Skype Recorder to be a very good tool for recording virtual interviews and it was compatible with TranscribeMe, the transcription service that I use for qualitative research. In research I use Nvivo as a tool for analyzing multiple (hundreds) of articles for themes. It proves itself to be worth the cost each time that I use it.

What does your workspace setup look like?
I use two desks for my home office. One desk is a large table with a two monitor VariDesk setup on it, and the other desk is a vintage wood desk with my macbook and an extra monitor. I use my VeriDesk for my full-time work computer or for long writing sessions on papers (I found during my doctorate work that using the standing desk reduced my total completion time for a 18-20 page paper by four hours. I do go to work in the home office sometimes and when I travel to our Tampa, FL home office I take my work laptop and an ASUS usb monitor (game changer for those who travel a lot...you gotta have 2 monitors).



What is your best advice for productive academic work?
Get buy-in from those close to you. Your significant other needs to be supportive, because this gives you the opportunity to write without/with less guilt. Don't try to separate your work from your family...face the challenges together so that you grow together (or you will grow apart...50% of doctorate students get divorced during or immediately following the program).

How do you keep an overview of projects and tasks?
I use a bound planner that I get from Michael Hyatt's company. It is his Full Focus Planner. I find it to be the best planner that I have ever used (previously I used a Franklin-Covey planner system)

Besides phone and computer, do you use other technological tools in work and daily life?
I also have a nook that has a digital reader function. There are times when listening to a book or an article is the most efficient way for me, like when driving, so I let my nook read the article out loud to me. I then go back and highlight as needed.

Which skill makes you stand out as an academic?
Confidence and Collaboration. I enjoy collaboration and feel that my willing to face rejection (confidence to hear a No) helps me to meet people and partner in research.

What do you listen to when you work?
The genre of music varies but I try to listen to music that I don't mind being on repeat. I use music that I like and that I don't have to concentrate on the lyrics. Recently I have been listening to Rend Collective and NeedToBreathe.

What are you currently reading? How do you find time for reading?
Jocko Willink's "Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual", and various faith based books and articles. I wake-up each morning at 4:55am and use the time before 8am for self-development. Including exercise in the morning makes me more productive throughout the day.

Are you more of an introvert or extrovert? How does this influence your working habits?
Extrovert. I am not a fan of working alone at my house (when my wife and kids are around I am actually more productive), but I do like the flexibility of working remotely. I enjoy working in environments that I can collaborate with and draw energy from others around me. When I am working alone and see myself becoming distracted I make my phone calls or conference calls that I need to make that day.

What's your sleep routine like?
This is where I fail most often. My goal is 10:30pm bedtime with a 4:55am wake-up. Most often it is a 11:30pm bedtime.

What's your work routine like?
First, update my planner by checking my calendar and transferring my to-do list to this day's page. Next, I check my phone and email inbox for urgent messages. Then I start with my to-do list. During the day when I feel sluggish (mentally or physically) I take a break and step out of my office. As I wrap up my workday I review my progress and plan for my next day or few days.

What's the best advice you ever received?
Never give in, Never, Never, Never... Winston Churchill's 1941 speech. Don't quit, that is the quickest way to fail.

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.

Publishing Advice from a Journal Editor

Today, I am welcoming Dr. Nancy R Gough who shares her views on academic publishing as an editor. Nancy R. Gough is the owner and founder of BioSerendipity . After 17 years with AAAS, she stepped down as the Editor of Science Signaling (a weekly journal on the topic of cellular and organismal regulatory biology), she left to start her company. She is dedicated to helping scientists communicate effectively. Dr. Gough has a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics from the University of Maryland Medical School and was a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. You can email her at ngough@bioserendipity.com and follow her on Twitter @NancyRGough and Facebook.

Science Signaling is a weekly journal about regulatory biology at all scales. Submitted papers included those about mechanisms of molecular regulation, cellular regulation, regulatory biology in model organisms, and in plants and man. I also had the opportunity to evaluate basic and applied or translational research relevant to biological signaling. I personally evaluated each submission, assigning the appropriate ones to the staff editors, rejecting those that were inappropriate or out of scope, and providing initial comments about level of interest, Board members, and potential reviewers. From this perspective, I can offer a few words of advice for authors preparing to submit a manuscript for in-depth review and publication. The first hurdle you must pass after submission is the editor who assigning manuscripts for evaluation to other staff editors or members of the academic board. Then, you must pass the hurdle of engaging the interest of the handling editor to have your manuscript go for in-depth peer review.

First, think carefully about the title of your paper and the abstract. These two parts, and the cover letter to the editor, give the first impression of your paper. Ask yourself, is the title accurate? Does it overstate or overinterpret the data? If so, the editor and the reviewers can use this as justification to reject the manuscript once they have skimmed the methods and results. A simple example that I saw often was authors who made claims about human disease in the title and abstract from studies performed only in cultured cells or using animal models and who failed to clearly state that the studies were performed in cultured cells or only in an animal model of the disease. The study may have had implications for disease, but the title or abstract used language that was too strong for the main conclusion and the description of the study in the abstract lacked precision and accuracy.

Second, remember that titles and abstracts are what makes readers want to read your paper in more detail. Think about the intended audience for your paper. Are they likely to understand the title and abstract? Are they likely to read the journal where you have submitted the manuscript? Although you are writing for a scientific and expert audience, the abstract should be clear, free of lab jargon, have terms defined the first time that they are used, and provide a clear (not overinterpreted) take-home message. Remember that these parts of the paper are also often read by computers that text mine the scientific literature and by various search engines and indexing services. Think about key search terms that are important for your work. Ensure that these are present, and if they are abbreviations, define them for readers outside of your field. Use precise language, avoiding words that have multiple meanings.

Finally, the cover letter serves as the place where you can convey the excitement and potential implications of your study in stronger terms. Here is a place to capture the interest of the editor, convey discrepancies or controversies in the field, note the main gaps that your paper fills, and highlight a few key findings and their implications for the field of study or across fields, if appropriate. The cover letter is your chance to “sell” your work. Try to keep it to one page or at most 2 pages. Remember that the editor is unlikely to be an expert in your field and may not know the methodology in detail. Give the big picture view and then provide enough explanation for the highlighted findings to make sense to someone who is not familiar with your work or your field. Too often, I found that authors failed to realize that the editor is not an expert in your specific discipline, system of study, or field. The reviewers certainly should have the appropriate detailed expertise, but the editor often will not.

In summary, remember the intended audiences for the different parts of a paper. Avoid giving an editor or a reviewer a reason not to proceed right from the title and abstract. Don’t treat the cover letter as an afterthought. That is your chance to “speak” to the editor.

First generation students

I recently ran a poll on Twitter asking if people are first generation academics, or if they come from a more privileged background. The results are interesting, with the majority of votes coming from first generation students.

I certainly come from a privileged background, and if you put my last name in Scopus you will find my grandfather, my father, and myself. Even though I come from such a privileged background, and I grew up in an environment where going to university was the obvious choice, I don't feel like the love for research was passed on to me from my family. My grandfather passed away more than a decade before I was born, and my father had alzheimer's disease when I was at university - I never got to talk to him about the joys of doing research. But I do remember him sitting on the beach during our holidays, while flipping through the British Journal of Urology and the American Journal of Urology. At that time I couldn't believe one can read such boring things on the beach...

Here's the wake of the poll:

I am Chris McComb, and This is How I Work

Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Chris McComb. Dr. McComb is an assistant professor in the School of Engineering Design, Technology and Professional Programs at Penn State University. He holds courtesy appointment in mechanical engineering and industrial engineering and is an affiliate faculty of the Institute for CyberScience. McComb attended California State University-Fresno and received dual B.S. degrees in Civil and Mechanical Engineering (2012). He later attended Carnegie Mellon University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and obtained his M.S. (2014) and Ph.D. (2016) in Mechanical Engineering. McComb’s research examines the interface between humankind and the technology and products that we create, with topics ranging from team methodology, social choice theory, machine learning, and computational synthesis. He teaches courses in design innovation, engineering design, and decision-making.

Current Job: Assistant Professor of Engineering Design
Current Location: University Park, PA, USA
Current mobile device: iPhone 8+
Current computer: Apple MacBook Pro

Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us?
I’m a tenure-track assistant professor in the School of Engineering Design, Technology, and Professional Programs at Penn State University. I co-direct the Technology and Human Research in Engineering Design (THRED) Group with Dr. Jessica Menold, where we study the interface between humankind and the systems that we create. I’m specifically interested in (1) designing organizations and teams to optimize enterprise-level as well as individual goals, (2) creating tools that allow engineers and designers to create more intelligent and performant products, and (3) addressing fundamental issues that will enable hybrid teams of humans and machines/computers.

What tools, apps and software are essential to your workflow?
The tools that I use fall into three categories: management, development, and writing. In the management category I use Basecamp (project management program that includes chat, file storage, task management) and Box (file syncing).
In the development category I primarily use PyCharm (development environment for Python software), Atom (a lightweight text editor when I don’t need the full power of PyCharm), and Github (version control for software projects).
Finally, in the writing category, I use Mendeley for citation and reference management in conjunction with Microsoft Word.

What is your best advice for productive academic work?
Always keep a few small, mindless tasks handy. Whenever I get stuck on a problem and start banging my head against the wall it’s nice to do something easy and simple yet still productive.

Which skill makes you stand out as an academic?
I think that I have a talent for building computational models of complex systems. I’ve built accurate models of engineering design teams, sequence learning behavior, composite structures, and wave energy converters. It’s easy to make an accurate model if you include everything under the sun, but those models take forever to run. My talent is finding the most meaningful and salient phenomena to include in the mode to strike an optimal balance between accuracy and runtime.

What do you listen to when you work?
That depends on the type of work that I’m doing. If I’m writing or editing I usually listen to grey noise because it helps me focus. For other tasks I listen to an idiosyncratic combination of music ranging from electronica, rap, rock, and pop.

What are you currently reading? How do you find time for reading?
I’m reading three books: Lord of California by Andrew Valencia, Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks, and Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele. Most of my reading gets done when I travel, or right before I go to sleep.

Are you more of an introvert or extrovert?
I’m an extrovert. I love to meet with my colleagues in different departments to talk about new ideas and its always exciting to skype with a potential collaborate who I’ve never met before! I try to use these meetings like fuel to get me through the day. That being said, I still get nervous during networking events and conferences. For some reason I find it difficult to be extroverted in that context.

What's your sleep routine like?
I usually manage to get about 7 hours of sleep per night (roughly 10PM to 5AM).

What's your work routine like?
I make it a point to work 7AM-5PM Monday-Friday (except for vacations and mental health days, of course). Trying to focus my work during those hours helps me keep my evenings and weekends free, but near deadlines I end up working earlier/later/more. My objective is usually to work more efficiently rather than just working more.

What's the best advice you ever received?
When I was getting close to finish my dissertation, my advisor (Ken Kotovsky) told me that “Every research publication is just a progress report.” That has really stuck with me. Most academics have a tendency towards perfectionism, but we also have to contend with deadlines! Nothing is ever going to be perfect and being able to accept “good enough for now” is a valuable skill.

Which email address do academics use?

How prevalent is gmail in accademia? I was wondering and decided to run a poll!

What I learned is that most academics have several email addresses, and use these depending on the purpose.

I too have four email addresses that I use daily (gmail for blog and personal use, TU Delft account, USFQ account, ADSTREN account which runs on the gmail platform). Three out of four get redirected to my Outlook. I do InboxZero, so I use Outlook files to save my emails.

You can find the results and the wake below:

I am Tammy Evans Yonce, and This is How I Work

Today, I am inviting Dr. Tammy Evans Yonce. Dr. Yonce, an Atlanta native, is a flutist, collaborative musician, writer, and professor. She is a dedicated new music performer who is particularly interested in the commissioning and teaching of new music. Dr. Yonce has commissioned over a dozen works involving flute, many with a specific focus on creating new music for the Glissando Headjoint. Dr. Yonce is Assistant Professor of Music at South Dakota State University, where she teaches applied flute, woodwind pedagogy, and courses in musicology. She recently designed and taught an interdisciplinary Honors colloquium, which explored music in connection with neurology, therapy, global studies, technology, politics, and the arts. A first-prize winner of the Atlanta Flute Club Young Artist Competition, she holds degrees in flute performance from Kennesaw State University (BM), Indiana University (MM), and the University of Georgia (DMA). Dr. Yonce can be found on Twitter @TammyEvansYonce and at her website: www.tammyevansyonce.com.

Current Job: Assistant Professor of Music, South Dakota State University
Current Location: Brookings, SD
Current mobile device: iPhone 8, iPad for scores
Current computer: MacBook Air

Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us?
I’m an assistant professor of music. My teaching load consists of applied flute lessons, world music, early music history, woodwind pedagogy, music appreciation, an honors colloquium on interdisciplinary topics in music, and a continuing education course for music teachers. My research is better described as “creative activity,” which consists of me performing on campus and around the world. I primarily focus on the performance of new music and often work with composers on the commissioning of new music for flute. I also specialize in the Glissando Headjoint, which is a relatively new piece of equipment that allow for unusual, unexpected sounds on flute. Secondarily, I write on the topic of flute pedagogy.

What tools, apps and software are essential to your workflow?
My flutes, tuner and metronome apps, Skype for meeting with people who are not local.

What does your workspace setup look like?
I have an office at the university where I teach, do admin work, and practice. I often work at the local coffee shop downtown for a change in my environment. When I’m performing, these events happen at different locations around the country and world. I’m currently working on an album, so my workplace also includes the Performing Arts Center here on campus where the recording is being done.

What is your best advice for productive academic work?
By setting lots of small goals that lead to the larger ones. I set 6-month goals, which helps me manage my day-to-day decisions. I’ve recently established longer-term goals and make sure that everything I do leads to those bigger goals. I feel like I’m still refining those long term goals.

How do you keep an overview of projects and tasks?
I use a white board in my office to keep a quick overview of a performance calendar. I also list big projects there but keep track of the smaller steps involved in those projects on separate lists. I also list potential collaborators there. The white board is just a quick at-a-glance reminder of what I have going on.

Besides phone and computer, do you use other technological tools in work and daily life?
I use a pedal and iPad to display my music scores. I also use tuners and metronomes, which are now apps on my phone. I also use MailChimp to manage my newsletter. My website (www.tammyevansyonce.com) provides a centrally-located description of my projects, which allows me to promote the music of the composers I work with and advertise performances of that music.

Which skill makes you stand out as an academic?
The number of high-quality projects I’ve been able to produce in the past few years. I work fairly efficiently, even though there is definitely room to refine that skill. I’m also good at connecting music to other seemingly-unrelated subjects.

What do you listen to when you work?
Nothing. As a musician, I cannot concentrate on other tasks if I’m listening to music.

What are you currently reading? How do you find time for reading?
I just finished a book about Theodore Roosevelt’s time in the Dakota Territory, working as a ranch owner. I found it interesting because I live in that general area of the country. I’m in the middle of a book called The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land because I recently returned from a fellowship to Israel. I tend to read a few books at a time and generally focus on non-fiction. In terms of finding time, I set a reading goal each year and am fairly consistent about reading a little every day. This year I will read at least 35 books.

Are you more of an introvert or extrovert? How does this influence your working habits?
Introvert for sure. It works out really well when I need to practice because that is essentially a solitary activity. I do a lot of networking and communication online because I am geographically isolated; as an introvert, this also works well. I’m still able to make the fantastic connections but can do so on my own time instead of as a forced social interaction.

What's your sleep routine like?
I have very young twins, so my sleep schedule leaves much to be desired. On the days I teach early classes I probably get 6 hours of sleep at the most, with a couple of wake ups during the night. When I have a later class, I probably get 7 hours. I sleep as much as I can on the weekends. I look forward to healthier sleep as the babies grow a bit.

What's your work routine like?
Every day is different, which I enjoy. It keeps me energized. My teaching is generally done in the morning most days. Admin and service work seem to be crammed in wherever they fit. My practice schedule is somewhat different and depends on what performances I have scheduled. I prioritize those pieces of music usually by performance date but sometimes by difficulty if it’s a piece that I know will take longer than usual to learn. On a macro level, I usually give a recital tour in the fall and attend a variety of conferences in the spring and summer. Most of the summer is spent planning the next academic year in terms of performances and big projects. I also get some writing done in the summer.

What's the best advice you ever received?
Two things come to mind. One was to teach whatever classes I had the opportunity to teach as an adjunct, even if they didn’t line up exactly with what I had learned or taught before. This advice helped me develop the skills required to do my current full time job. (I have a DMA [Doctor of Musical Arts] in flute performance, but I teach much more than this.) The second piece of advice was to think big. Really, truly big. Plan projects on a large scale. Broaden your impact and scope.

I am Alexandre Pinto, and This is How I Work

Today, I am interviewing Dr. Alexandre H. Pinto. Alex Pinto is currently a Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow and Faculty Member at Ithaca College (Ithaca, NY), where he leads the group for Green Chemical Synthesis of Nanomaterials. Alex was born and raised in Brazil, where he took his undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Master’s degree in Physical Chemistry, both at Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos (UFSCar), advised by Prof. Emerson R. Camargo. After that, Alex moved to USA, where he took his PhD in Chemistry at University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, advised by Prof. R Lee Penn, working on the synthesis of transition metal chalcogenides using microwave assisted reactions. Throughout his career, Alex has worked with the solution chemistry synthesis of transition metal oxides, selenides, and sulfides, and characterization by different techniques, such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman and Infrared Spectroscopies, Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopy. Since joining Ithaca College, Alex has worked on the application of Green and Materials Chemistry concepts to solve environmental problems, such as remediation of wastewater contaminated by organic pollutants via photocatalysis and solid-liquid adsorption, and development of transition metal oxides for less expensive catalysis of organic reactions.

Current Job: The title of my current position is Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow and Faculty Member, it is a position suited to provide teaching and research advisory experience in an undergraduate institution for recent PhD graduates aiming to pursue a career in undergraduate institutions.
Current Location: I am currently working in the Department of Chemistry at Ithaca College, which is located in the city of Ithaca, in the central part of the New York State.
Current Mobile Device: I own a LG Stylo phone with Android System, I have owned this cell phone since October 2015.
Current Computer: My current computer is a Toshiba Satellite, with an Intel Core I3 processor, 4 GB of RAM memory, and 500 GB hard drive and a Windows 10 operational system. This computer has been with me since Summer 2013. Sometimes it is a little bit slow, mainly when a new update of Microsoft Office or Windows is about to be released, but in overall, it has been fully functional.

Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us?
As previously told, I am currently a Faculty Member at Ithaca College, where I teach generally three courses per semester. Generally, it is a lecture course and two lab courses per semester. Besides that, I manage a research group with undergraduate students. The goal of our research group is to synthesize nanomaterials using more sustainable, less toxic and harmful methods, which complies with a branch of chemistry called Green Chemistry. Then, we use these materials to solve some environmental problems, for instance, wastewater remediation. Talking more in depth, we are interested to study how textile dyes present in simulated wastewater interact with nanomaterials. Currently, we are working with two classes of materials, one of them is the polymer chitosan, which is produced from a material called chitin, found in skeleton of sea animals like crab and shrimp. The second material is the graphene oxide, which is a twodimensional material, very thin and with high surface area, mostly constituted by carbon. Besides our research in nanomaterials and Green Chemistry, we are also starting to do some research in Chemical Education, we are about to submit a paper about this topic, regarding the development and implementation of a course about characterization techniques for solid state materials.

What tools, apps and software are essential to your workflow?
Besides the regular Microsoft Office package, there are three softwares that I consider essential to perform my job. The first one is called Origin 2017, it is a graphical software, which allows to plot graphs with a publishable quality, and offers more features than Excel. Besides the capability to produce high quality graphs, Origin is essential for my work because it allows me to do curve and linear fitting, as a Materials Physical Chemist, those two features are very necessary to perform my data analysis. The other two essential softwares are used to image treatment, the interesting thing is that both of them are free softwares. One of them is called ImageJ, and the second one is called Gimp. I use ImageJ to adjust contrast, sharpness, and adjust scale bars for electron microscopy images, then, I move to Gimp to increase image resolution and do small adjustments. The great thing about ImageJ and Gimp is that both softwares are free.

What does your workspace setup look like?
The majority of the week I spend in my office at Ithaca College, preparing classes, reading papers, analyzing data and thinking about the next experiments, which you can see some pictures. Then the rest of the time is spent in the classroom, while I am teaching, and in the lab space, where I go few times per
week to perform some experiments by myself.



What is your best advice for productive academic work?
Be self-driven. Science is made of ideas, but ideas themselves do not translate in results. Most people who chose a scientific career, usually have a lot of ideas, either good or bad ones, but, in general, all of them are worthwhile. However, many ideas are never put in practice, and to put an idea in practice, I consider that the researcher needs to be self-driven, because there will be a lot of factors and people trying to demotivate you around this way. So, the researcher needs to find their inner strength, take the ownership of their idea, and do everything that is feasible to make it work.

How do you keep an overview of projects and tasks?
I do not have any sophisticated device for this purpose. I am still in the phase of my career that I rely a lot on my memory to remind me about appointments. One thing that I do routinely is to take a blank paper sheet when I first arrive in my office in the morning and write as bullet points all the tasks that I have to do for that day. Then, after I have completed a certain task, I cross that off the list. This simple action to cross the task of the list, although simple, gives kind of feeling of accomplishment.

About the research, I rely a lot on the lab notebook, and monthly or every other month, I gather the results obtained by the students or myself in a certain project and write a results outline, where I paste the graphs and briefly write how those results could be interpreted, and which are the remaining questions to be answered in order to make the project as close as possible to be a cohesive story, and hopefully become a paper manuscript. I feel these outlines very helpful when it is time to write a manuscript for a paper.

Besides phone and computer, do you use other technological tools in work and daily life?
No, I do not use any other technological tool besides laptop computer and cell phone in work and daily life. Also, by looking at how long I have owned my current laptop and cell phone, you might have noticed that I try to keep my devices for as long as they continue working. I am not the type of person interested to buy immediately the latest model of a computer or cell phone.

Which skill makes you stand out as an academic?
I have always worked hard in my academic life, and one thing that I consider that essential is preparation. So, I always have tried to be prepared for when a possible opportunity could show up. Besides that, take the initiative and propose ideas that people probably would not expect from you. In a positive and humble way, I can say that I am proud to be on this point of my career so far. When I look back and see that I was the first person in all sides of my family to obtain a College education, and now I am teaching and researching in the USA, and having my work recognized is something that shows how far education, preparation and dedication led me in my life and career. I think this is one of the reasons I like teaching and academic life in general, because in the academy is where knowledge is seen as worthwhile. And that is the reason why I hope to continue researching, teaching and somehow trying
to be a good example to the student generations that will come.

What do you listen to when you work?
I am the type of person that prefers the complete silence while doing something that requires attention. If I have something to listen, like song or video, I totally lose the concentration. So, when I am seriously studying I do not listen anything.

What are you currently reading? How do you find time for reading?
In this moment, I am not reading any book outside the scientific field, unfortunately. However, this is a habit that I intend to retake in a foreseeable future.

Are you more of an introvert or extrovert? How does this influence your working habits?
For sure I am an introvert, in all fields of my life and relationships, but I see any professional activity as an opportunity to leave my introvert side away. Surprisingly, I have never felt uncomfortable talking to audiences, like classes or conferences, actually, I greatly appreciate talking in public. I think this one of reasons why I like teaching and give oral presentations, it seems that in those situations I am the extrovert person that I think I would like to be in all other fields of my life. In summary, I would say that being an introvert does not influence much in my working habits, despite influencing in most of the other fields in my life.

What is your sleeping routine like?
I sleep about 5 to 6 hours per night, generally from 11 PM to 5:30 or 6:00 AM.

What is your routine work like?
I arrive in my office right before 8 AM, this semester most of classes I teach are in the morning. They start at 8 AM or 11 AM. When the class starts 11 AM, I can work in my research activities for a while. The afternoon is filled with either by class preparation, paper reading, writing, and experiment planning. I generally leave my office around 6 PM. Until last semester, I used to go to my office and work during the weekends. For this semester, I have done the commitment with myself to avoid as much as possible going to the College in the weekends, to spend more time with my family. I am happy that so far, I have accomplished this goal.

What's the best advice you ever received?
This advice it was not given personally to me, but I heard it in a lecture more than 15 years ago, I was still in high-school that time, and to have heard this statement early in life made the difference in my professional career. The statement says: “Things like space, opportunity, and prestige will not be given to you. You have to conquest them.”

What drives the day of an academic?

I recently ran a poll on Twitter to see what drive the day of academics. Do we mostly plan our days based on a weekly template, based on our to do lists, based on what is in our mailbox, or based on our meeting schedule? The majority is working around to do lists.

I work around a weekly template, but have a daily to do list as well. When my mailbox overflows, I need more time in my weekly template for the "email + admin" category. When I have meetings beyond my weekly meetings with my thesis students, then I have to move boxes around in my template too.

Here's the wake of the poll:

Stress levels in academia

I recently ran a poll on Twitter to see the stress levels of fellow academics. The results are not pretty, with the majority of the respondents reporting stress beyond what is acceptable.

Tell me about your stress levels in academia #highered #acwri #phdchat #profchat #ecrchat

— Dr Eva Lantsoght (@evalantsoght) March 5, 2018

You can find the wake of this poll here:

I am Rasheda Weaver, and This is How I Work

Today, I am interviewing Dr. Rasheda L. Weaver for the "How I Work" series. Dr. Weaver is an Assistant Professor of Community Entrepreneurship in the department of Community Development and Applied Economics at the University of Vermont (UVM). She is also the Co-Director of UVM’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Living Learning Community. She conducted the first large-scale study of the social, economic, and legal activities of social enterprise (businesses that have a social and/or environmental mission) in the United States. Her research analyzes how entrepreneurship may be utilized as a strategy for poverty alleviation and community economic development. In her free time, Dr. Weaver is an avid salsa dancer and loves to make spicy Caribbean food for her husband and son.

General:
Current Job: Assistant Professor of Community Entrepreneurship
Current Location: University of Vermont
Current mobile device: Samsung Android
Current computer: Mac Desktop and MacBook Air

Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us?
I am in my first year as an Assistant Professor in the University of Vermont’s Department of Community Development and Applied Economics. Since arriving, I was also offered and accepted the position of Co-Faculty Director for the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Living Learning Community.

What tools, apps and software are essential to your workflow?
My Macbook Air is essential to my workflow because I travel a good deal and I try to stay out of the office when I am not teaching to focus on research days.

What does your workspace setup look like?
I alternate between work, office, and a café. I work in the office on teaching days and 1 day for research meetings, but I usually spend two days working from home or a café. I also have mini-writing retreats during the semester where I just work in a coffee shop near a scenic area or walking trail and take hiking/site-seeing breaks during my writing sessions.



My Office Desk (The week before classes when I am syllabus prepping)



Home Office



Café Work

What is your best advice for productive academic work?
Consistency, compassion, self-awareness.
I am consistent in that I get my work done. I may not write every day at the same time, but I try to ensure I write or work on my research every day. There is never a day throughout the work week where I do not do something involved with my research.

In regards to compassion, I focus on excellence as opposed to perfection. Excellence to me involves: 1) completing a task (e.g. writing and submitting a journal manuscript, completing a lecture) and 2) reflecting on the task over time. I usually do not complete any research, teaching, or service task without just getting it done and then putting it aside for a few days to reflect on it, make changes, and then sent it out to the world. Essentially, I accomplish every responsibility I have immediately/ as soon as possible, put it aside to see if it reflects my vision for it, and then move on to the next thing. I try not to dwell on any one project/task because that often leads to time wasted.

How do you keep an overview of projects and tasks?
My Publication Pipeline (shown below) helps me stay productive. It is on a bulletin board that I see every day. I left the names of each article out of the photo for anonymous peer-review purposes.



My Tenure-Track Portfolio keeps track of my work for promotions, reviews, and positive self-affirmation.



Also, on Fridays I make a list of all the things I have to do the following week (e.g. attending meetings, manuscript writing, teaching). I then create an agenda for each task and stick to it! I upload my class agendas to Blackboard, send agendas for my meetings, and set writing goals. This way, everyone that works with me knows what to expect and I have already prepped for my meetings for the week. It saves so much time and energy.

Besides phone and computer, do you use other technological tools in work and daily life?
Not really, though I probably should. I feel like I should make better use of Evernote and some reference management tool, but I have not come around to doing it yet. I would like recommendations of any time-saving and organizational software.

Which skill makes you stand out as an academic?
Positivity, friendliness, a strong sense of self-confidence and self-awareness, and pretty cool dancing skills. My dad is a dancehall DJ and my aunt used to sing with Bob Marley. I’m a positive and free spirit. I get along with almost every person I meet.

What do you listen to when you work?
I love Pop and R&B, as well as reggae and salsa, but it depends. When I am writing, I usually listen to Whitney Houston, Ed Sheeran, Jason Mraz, or Alicia Keys. Essentially, I like music that speaks to my soul, but not so much that it will make me want to dance while writing. However, before any kind of presentation including a regular day in class, a conference, or a keynote presentation, I like to listen to Beyoncé, Katy Perry, or something upbeat and empowering. These types of songs help me unwind so I can be the free-spirited and open-minded person that I naturally am. After a conference, I usually try to attend a local salsa or reggae club as a treat. Dancing is one of my favorite things to do and I’m of Jamaican and Cuban descent so this kind of music helps me let go, be myself, and just have a good time after all the great work I just did.

What are you currently reading? How do you find time for reading?
I just read Trevor Noah’s book “Born A Crime” and I love it!
I usually read when I traveling using audiobooks.

I also love, love, love Thoughtfully Magazine. It’s all about self-care and positivity. The issue in the picture below is particularly amazing.



Are you more of an introvert or extrovert? How does this influence your working habits?
I’m an extrovert, however every now and then I need alone time to be creative and to focus. I’m very friendly, fun, and outgoing. This influences my work in that I see the classroom as a fun experience. My students often describe me as “energetic” and say that I make learning fun and cool. I do not aim for this, I just always focus on being myself because not being myself would make me nervous (food for thought). In regards to alone time, I like to get up early to write by myself and I often work alone. I sometimes like to work in groups (e.g. writing groups) as long as we stick to working for the most part. Because I am so outgoing, I can get distracted, but if I notice that I will usually just leave and come back to a group once my work is done.

What's your sleep routine like?
I try to get to sleep by 10p.m. and wake up around 5a.m. or 6a.m. depending on whether or not my toddler son wakes me up at night haha. This gives me time to wake up early for 20 minutes of yoga and meditation, 30 minutes of writing, and time to prepare breakfast and lunch (I make salads and smoothies for lunch in the morning plus prepare my son’s lunch) before my husband and son wake up.

What's your work routine like?
I teach 2 days per week and I only focus on teaching on those days. I prep for class, teach class, and then write notes for the next class. I usually try not to meet with anyone on these days. I come to campus an additional day each week for research and other meetings.

What's the best advice you ever received?
“Being a professor is like being an entrepreneur.” In our research, we must be innovative and productive to generate knowledge that is of value.
“In order to be “here” for students, you need to be “here.”” In other words, if I spend all my time focused on teaching and advising, I will not be productive enough in my research to be “here” at the university for my students in the future.

I am Kimberley Mitchell, and This is How I Work

Today, I have the pleasure of inviting Kimberley Mitchell in the "How I Work" series. Kim is a registered nurse and has been an instructor in the nursing department at Red River College in Winnipeg, Canada since 2002 where she has primarily taught the least nursey stuff possible: research methods and academic writing. She also acts as faculty writing mentor and all-round advice giver. Kim is also currently a PhD student at the University of Manitoba in the College of Nursing where she is plotting her doctoral thesis to explore the Theoretical Construction and Measurement of Writing Self-Efficacy. She has designed, completed and published several studies exploring writing self-efficacy in nursing students. In 2016, Kim created the persona and blogs at https://academicswrite.wordpress.com and tweets @academicswrite in order to inspire, share, and create a community of practice related to academic writing, research, and instruction.

General:
Current Job: Instructor, Red River College
Current Location: Winnipeg, MB Canada
Current mobile device: iPhone 8+
Current computer: MacBook Pro

Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us?
I am a doctoral student at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. My home department is nursing as I have been a registered nurse since 1997 and working in nursing education at a teaching focused institution since 2002 shortly after I finished my Masters degree. It took me this long to do my PhD (I started in 2016) only because I didn’t need it and I was enjoying life and the ample free time my flexible job allowed me. But the research bug crept back into my life around 2011. The most common question I get related to my nurse educator status is: “Did you ever do “real” nursing?” To which I tell them that what I do is REAL nursing, educating the future practitioners, but I did practice in a hospital for 5 years after my nursing degree and worked in Cardiac and Vascular surgery and Intensive Care. As an educator, I taught academic writing in our department from 2005-2015 and I have been teaching research methods since 2007.

In 2011 I decided that since I had developed this first year writing course for our nursing students that I should start collecting evidence as to if it was successful. I decided to focus on writing self-efficacy. I’ve done 3 studies on my local student population related to writing self-efficacy, developed an instrument, and did an analysis of all the writing self-efficacy instruments that have been used in research. These studies taught me that to increase my knowledge, the only solution was to do my PhD. My PhD focus is nursing education. I am carrying on with work in writing self-efficacy and re-developing my instrument to measure it and doing some other philosophical work in that area as well.

What tools, apps and software are essential to your workflow?
Microsoft office. I write. A lot. So my main tool is Word. But I also make use of Exel for data entry and I’ve been learning SPSS and most recently Rstudio for doing latent variable analysis.

What does your workspace setup look like?
I alternate between home and office. Currently, as I type, I am at my Red River College office but I have a PC laptop here which I hate. I much prefer working on my Mac. My workspace is really uninteresting as it is just a desk and a computer and not much of a view.



What is your best advice for productive academic work?
I am known for being extremely efficient and productive. And I don’t really know if I have any tips for anyone that would actually work for them. I just do what I do and I don't think about it a whole lot. I never stop thinking. I just don’t procrastinate. I mean, I do procrastinate but I really consider that ‘thinking time’ rather than procrastination. I’ve put off duties like writing up assignment guidelines, for example, and then when I sit down to write them out, I can hammer out a first draft in about 30 minutes because the whole thing is usually pre-written in my head. That doesn’t necessarily work for academic writing.

I am very old school in my paper writing practices. I read paper copies of articles. I take handwritten notes of those articles. I thematically analyze the articles as I am taking notes often because my ideas form during reading and then are transformed and thickened by writing.

I’m very efficient. I look for the quickest way to get things done and I tend to not dither over decisions. All things that are truely time saving. My brain just "sees" how things should be organized before I go to organize it and it helps me to work faster.

I work very independently. Meaning, I know some folk that can’t seem to make a decision or implement a change without checking in with someone or getting approval. I don’t need any of that. I do what I do and I face the consequences later if I've done something inappropriate -- which is both often, and rare at the same time. There... those are my productive work paradoxes.

How do you keep an overview of projects and tasks?
Mostly in my head. I know what I need to get done and when it needs to get done by and I tend to only work on 2 things at a time. I do have a magnet board with some listed papers I would like to tackle but it is kind of outdated right now. I mentally block off time to complete a particular task.

For example, I have a factor analysis paper I want to write about my original questionnaire and I hope to have it done by mid April. I have three papers at journals right now in various stages of the review process. I have a systematic review I am working on unrelated to my PhD life that is being conducted with work colleagues and that one will go out before the end of the month. I have a educational innovation paper I wrote on a whim last week and I would like to have that one submitted before the end of the month too but it is the second priority from the systematic review. I have another paper I want to revise but I’m still percolating on. I had a meeting last week about team writing an editorial but that is usually a day of writing and it is collaborative writing so less time consuming overall. I’m involved in about 4 research projects as a team member all in various stages of completion. So I may have lied when I said I only work on 2 projects at once. I have about 11 I am involved in but really only 2 sit at the top of the priority list on any given day and I only allow 2 of them to "call for my attention" at any given time. It’s complicated but all academic life is complicated and I am pretty sure that is normal.

Besides phone and computer, do you use other technological tools in work and daily life?
Nope.

Which skill makes you stand out as an academic?
My efficiency and my writing skills. I’m not a perfect writer. No one is. But I have a thorough metacognitive understanding of writing. I can diagnose writing issues easily. Mostly other people’s writing issues. With my own writing issues, I tend to have a bit more trouble. Also because I have been teaching research methods for 11 years, I have a very well honed understanding of a variety of research methods.

What do you listen to when you work?
I rarely listen to anything but when I do it is usually whatever is on my iPhone in iTunes which is mostly 90s grunge or sappy pop from the same era.

What are you currently reading? How do you find time for reading?
I have two books going at once at the moment. Both are things that I don’t “have” to be reading but yet neither is pleasure reading. One is William Zinsser’s On Writing Well and the other is Connelly and Clandinin’s Narrative Inquiry. Nursing is a very article based discipline so I am finding it a tough conversion to look at books. Most of the classic writing literature is in book form not in article publications. Because I am taking a measurement course right now, I am also reading a lot of Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis Studies.

Are you more of an introvert or extrovert? How does this influence your working habits?
I’ve done the Myer’s Briggs surveys numerous times and I sit right on the border of Introvert and Extrovert so the answer changes depending on my mood. I’m not shy but I do have social anxiety. My extroverted side was out in full force yesterday at the office where I talked several people’s ears off till I think they wanted to get rid of me. But I could also quite happily live in the forest on a lake and never see people for days on end and be lost inside my head writing. When I was writing as a young adult, I could often be swayed away from the pen by a phone call from a friend saying, “Hey let’s go out!” That’s probably why I never finished any of the writing I started at that age. I could easily be pulled away from it to socialize. Now in my 40s I would be more likely to say, "no thanks, I need to write."

What's your sleep routine like?
My ideal biorhythm is from about 9 am to 1 or 2 am but I often don’t get to live up to that. But I rarely work past 8 PM. I never work in the middle of the night or early in the morning. I am in bed by 10 or 1030 and lights out by 11. My partner has a strict routine and it is a good relationship practice (especially in my busy PhD student life) to go to bed at the same time so I follow his routine. But I could easily sit up and write till 1 or 2AM. When I wrote my novel that's what I did and because of it I started drinking coffee at the age of 35. But the only time I could write was when my children went to bed and I had rare children who slept and were in bed by 7PM so it worked. They were about 5 and 3 at that time. The writing got done from 7PM until I hit a brick wall. The house didn't get cleaned. It ended my marriage. But I was writing and it was one of the happiest times of my life.

What's your work routine like?
There is a lot of talk on Twitter on work-life balance which I respect but I find it doesn’t work for me to have strict “I only work from 9-5” rules to structure my work life. I work when my head is in that head space and I don’t when it isn’t. I'm not a pleasant person to be around if I have some writing or other task itching in my brain and I'm being kept from it by some obligation or other mundane task. I find my best work hours are between 10AM and 8PM. I don't watch much TV. My work routine can only be described as unpredictable.

I live outside of the city of Winnipeg which means about a thirty minute to one hour commute to get to work or to get to school. Sometimes I work at home -- whenever I can but that is not often these days. I teach 2 days a week currently and those days are spent at my Red River office. I usually have to be at the university for some student related activity for minimum one other day of the week. I will set up office in the grad lounge on those days or the research office depending on what needs to be done. My kids don't go to school in the town I live in, so they get driven into the city with me which often means I do a split work day. My office hour time is done by about 3PM and then I drive to pick up the kids and do grocery shopping and run errands and take them home. The kids are 16 and 14 now. Then I work for another hour till dinner, and, many evenings, after dinner for another couple hours.

I work when work calls, and I do life when life calls. sometimes that means working all evening or weekend and sometimes that means going for a three hour bike ride at 10AM on a Tuesday morning. As long as deadlines are met, I don't tend to fret about it much. I don't much let a clock dicate when either happens. The writing muse doesn't always appear because a clock says it should. And sometimes life needs to happen at 10AM instead of at 5PM. (editors note: sometimes there are spousal complaints). It is a crazy work life but it works for me. It is hard to describe to others. My solice is in the fact that at my current job I have 44 days of vacation a year to use and I tend to do nothing but leisure time, and read, most of the summer.

What's the best advice you ever received?
I don't know if this falls in the category of advice per se, but I've been teaching undergraduate nursing for 15 years and I had a mentor for the first 12 of those who was in the same office as me (before she retired) who really inspired my approach to learning. As the writing instructor we had many conversations about plagairism and she was also the adminstrator who had to have conversations with students when their assignments were suspected plagiarism. She always used to say, "Would we rather be police? Or would we rather teach?" And the first time I heard her say that it changed my thinking. Of course I would rather teach! I changed my pedagogial choices after that. I really don't think much about or every go hunting for plagiarism. Students are less likely to plagiarise if you are in their face about their writing process. So find a way, in every assignment, to make sure that every one of your students has to look you in the eyes with respect to their writen work.