Research commercialisation in Australia has been getting more attention recently, but researchers face major obstacles to achieving this. If Australia wants to get serious about commercialising research knowledge, then we have to look seriously at the obstacles and incentives for researchers. Australia’s gross spending on research and development (R&D) funding has been in the lower half of […] … learn more→

Looking for an international postdoc? Watch out for the not-student, not-employee trap! You’d think that when you finish your PhD you’d finally stop being “just a student”. After all, once you have completed your university’s Higher Degree Research programme, there is no such thing as an Even-Higher Degree Research programme (at least in Australia). However, […] … learn more→

Plan S is clear: science must be public and publicly funded research must be accessible by anyone. Like many colleagues, I am keen to see this happening. How to make it happen is, however, a different story. In an effort to liberalise the market, Plan S asked the publishers to disclose the price for open access […] … learn more→

I dont write much about research methods on this blog. That’s not because I’m not interested in research methods – I’ve published three methods texts, after all – but more because I’m pretty sure people who come here mainly want to read about writing. But the two things are not really that easily separated. The […] … learn more→

It can be a real challenge for PhD students to decide on a lab to do their research. I began reflecting on this a few months ago after advising a mentee. I had offered the standard advice that you can find all over the internet: “Talk to the people from the lab.” Yet I soon […] … learn more→

Multiple times a year I provide impact statement workshops. Not everyone can make those, so rather than having that knowledge only live in the workshop space, I thought I’d highlight some of the main take-aways shared during that workshop here. While I’m based in Australia and tailor a lot of my advice to Australian frameworks, […] … learn more→

To generalise ridiculously, there are three types of people: People who start a research project intending to finish it on time. People who start a project not really caring when they finish it. People who don’t care about finishing a project on time until they fly past the deadline. If you are doing a PhD […] … learn more→

Conclusions can be hard. There are a few big traps that conclusion writers can fall into. In order to avoid them, try the following three things. Deep breath. It’s good to be bold. The conclusion generally requires bigging up what you’ve done. In a thesis you have to name and claim your original contributions. At the […] … learn more→

The University of California’s recent negotiations with Elsevier achieved a better deal for researchers than was initially given to them when they walked away in 2018. After a two-year standoff, during which academics at the multi-campus system had no direct access to paywalled Elsevier content, the publisher largely bowed to California’s demand to cut overall costs while allowing California […] … learn more→

Sometimes when I ask myself why I’ve made a certain choice, I realise I don’t actually know. To what extent we are ruled by things we aren’t conscious of? – Paul, 43, London Why did you buy your car? Why did you fall in love with your partner? When we start to examine the basis […] … learn more→