Research Education

Even in today's fast paced world, one can help predict the future by taking a look at the past. Read more...

"Being physically close together is better. Teams that worked in the same place produced papers with a bigger impact than those who lived further apart. This was particularly true when you measure the physical distance between the first and last author of a paper. Check out the scatter plot above: It shows that teams located in the same building did better than teams that were merely in the same city, and teams that were in the same city did better than those that were inter-city"

"This summer I experienced a grad student rite of passage: crafting a review of literature. The way was fraught and I had to overcome everything from an avalanche of articles (let’s just say my snowball method raged out of control) to a complete inability to conceive of any kind of organization. I also developed fascinating new ways to procrastinate. Thankfully, I follow #phdchat on Twitter, and the participants’ sage words on the process helped me move from a state of near paralysis to fruitful, concentrated writing sessions. These writing sessions eventually led to a Lit Review that I really, really enjoyed writing."

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory.""

A good dissection of issues in academic publishing. Check out the figures on the estimated amount of free academic labour publishers are getting.

This week the School Of Graduate Research held our annual 3 minute thesis final. Here is an old post I wrote on the subject especially for those who are preparing their presentations for the Australia and New Zealand final in September. Good luck to everyone and may the best university win!

”How Do You Measure Twitter Influence?” .. Is it worth attempting to put a metric to? This question is becoming more relevant and will continue to be increasingly important as the growth of Twitter climbs,the worldwide takeup continues to spread and its entanglement with other social media platforms."