Collaborating with other researchers or external partners can be challenging but using project management strategies for planning, communication and decision making can help. Many academics undertake their PhD and post-doctoral fellowships as solo projects. That training and experience may not prepare them for coordinating project teams or collaborating with partners external to the university. Team […] … learn more→

How is writing research like story? Last post I wrote about Kurt Vonnegut’s man in hole structure and how that might help you think at a very macro level about how to organise your material. This post is also about structure – this time a four part structure I’ve called C3REC. The C3REC structure is an academic […] … learn more→

Picture a world where academic research is fast, practical, and beneficial to everyone involved. In reality, making university research practical, which typically requires working with industry, can take many years. By that time, it might be too late for it to be of benefit. Research has been singled out as a key priority for the […] … learn more→

Being flexible and learning to adapt when the world changes is something you practice every day. Whether you run into a new construction site and have to reroute your commute or download a new streaming app and have to relearn how to find your favorite show, changing familiar behaviors in response to new situations is […] … learn more→

Education Minister Jason Clare has just released a highly anticipated review into how research is funded in Australia. This is the review of the federal legislation underpinning the Australian Research Council (ARC). The ARC is the independent body that funds non-medical university research in Australia. So it has a hugely important role in the careers of academics. This review […] … learn more→

What comes to mind when you think of Wikipedia? Maybe you think of clicking link after link to learn about a topic, followed by another topic and then another. Or maybe you’ve heard a teacher or librarian tell you that what you read on Wikipedia isn’t reliable. As research and instruction librarians, we know people have concerns about […] … learn more→

March 14 is celebrated as Pi Day because the date, when written as 3/14, matches the start of the decimal expansion 3.14159… of the most famous mathematical constant. By itself, pi is simply a number, one among countless others between 3 and 4. What makes it famous is that it’s built into every circle you […] … learn more→

Recently, Zhejiang Gonggong University announced that articles published with MDPI, Frontiers Media & Hindawi, the three largest open access publishers, would not be included in research performance statistics. Universities have discouraged or banned staff from publishing in individual journals in the past, but this is the first report of whole publisher catalogues being excluded. I’ve seen discussions about whether these […] … learn more→

In the first part of the movie Avatar we met Jake Sully who, immersed in the world of Pandora, had the opportunity to walk again. Outside of cinema, the current use of the word “avatar” is related to the representations of themselves that users use on the Internet or that they build to form part of the virtual […] … learn more→

This post is the result of an email, which later inspired a blog post, and ultimately improved the lives of a small band of Early Career Researchers (ECR). It is a story of how reaching out can make a difference in our professional and personal lives – and just how far a little care from more […] … learn more→