FastTrack Live Workshop #34 | Start 2026 with a Research Plan That Actually Works

Feeling stuck, scattered, or unsure what to prioritize this year?
Join us live as Professor Courtney McNamara returns for a hands-on session on:

✔ Goal setting for researchers
✔ 3-month milestones that actually move the needle
✔ Building your personal research roadmap

We’ll finish with live Q&A on anything you’re working on—from early ideas to papers in review.

🎥 Send your video questions here → https://forms.gle/gp9cceQfWrXXWcXb6

📅 See you live.

Prof Stuckler

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Back to this week's Fast Track Live. Great to see you all back. This year we're starting off a little bit differently. We're going to step back and take a moment to get clarity on where you're actually heading with your research and not just your to-do list that you might keep side by side on your table, like I do here, that you're ticking off as you go. We're going to be looking at how to set realistic goals for 2026, what strong three-month attainable milestones actually look like, and how to connect this all up with a clear roadmap that not only keeps you from getting lost, but steers you in a straight line towards publishing, finishing the big projects rather than just staying busy, so that we can have this conversation at the end of the year and you feel really proud of where you've got to. To make this concrete, we're also going to walk through a real roadmap from inside the research collective, one of our mentorship communities, where Jeff is joining us along with another member of our collective, Mara. We're going to go through their plans for the coming three months and year. And Jeff's working across systematic reviews, empirical AI research, psychology, really doing fascinating research. And his is a great example of how a big, ambitious vision can be broken down into focus next steps. After that, we're going to open up things to QA on anything you're working on from methods, writing, publishing, or wherever you're feeling stuck. I've got several submissions that you've sent us. By the way, we were going to have Courtney, uh Professor McNamara join us. Um, and I'm hoping she will towards the later end of the stream. I know she had a family emergency come up with children, and that small, small children are unpredictable. These things uh do happen. And it's one of those unpredictabilities that you actually can take as an example into your roadmap and plan for. And you'll see brilliantly how Jeff uh does that today. So, with that, let me bring on Jeff and Mara. Really great to have you here. Uh hey Jeff. Hey Mara, welcome. Awesome, Mara. There you are. Hey Mara. Um, yeah, uh, I guess we've seen each other in the workshops, but just to repeat, I hope you're off to a good start to 2026. Jeff, thanks for sharing this with us. Really excited to dive into it together. I'm gonna share my screen and pull up your roadmap. This actually comes from one of the templates inside our community. And you know, I I think a lot of people don't necessarily they they sometimes in grad school you have so much going on, or in research generally at your early stage, it's almost like you're groping for stones to cross the river and you're you're waiting, stumbling through. Um, just before we dive in, Jeff, what was it like for you, and had you gone through this kind of intentional priority setting road mapping process before, or is this the first time you've done that?

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Nothing like this kind of detail. It's more like, oh, it'd be fun to do a paper someday.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

That was uh yeah, it it definitely forces you a little bit to think differently. What about what about you, Mara? Have you ever kind of taken a structured approach to to setting your goals over uh dedicated time? Like something seems so obvious, but people don't actually do.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Yeah, no, it was my first time to doing this type of exercise in trying to plan my research. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Okay. Um, well, thanks for sharing that with that with us because uh certainly I didn't do this as a graduate student, and I remember being feeling like I was being pulled in many, many directions at once. Um, and I I was able to work incredibly hard, but not all people have 80 hours a week. They might have part-time jobs, they might have small children, families, other obligations. So having that focus is is important because it helps you to say no to things. But look, before going in into more abstraction, let's dive straight into Jeff's uh roadmap document. Um, and it's deceptively simple, but I think you'll find it helpful. So here we go. I've got this on the screen. Let me uh make this a little bit bigger for everybody and see if I can get this here. So, Jeff, thanks so much uh for sharing this. And uh and I'll try to make this a little bit bigger. Hopefully you guys can see this if I uh expand my screen. And uh here we go. Okay, so one of the things you see, just kind of macro structure, what Jeff has done here. Actually, I'm gonna have to make this a bit bigger. Here we go. So Jeff's out his North Star goal, kind of aligning if we were gonna have this conversation at the end of 2026, where he wants to be. Um, and and broke this down into a milestone of where he wants to be in three months' time. And I like this three-month focus because uh if if you try to set out concrete goals for six months or nine months, it's very easy to get overwhelmed. The mountain's just too big to climb. I like planning work in three-month time slots uh for a couple reasons. One, that's really if you want to get on the proverbial fast track, we've mapped out you want to be able to get papers consistently out, start to finish. This doesn't work in all fields, but if you can do this in three months, focus on low-hanging fruit, get on the proverbial fast track, that'll get you on track for about four papers a year. And uh that that's really what we see across fields that high-performing researchers are able to do over and over and over again. Um, the same thing for if you're working on, say, your PhD, you want to aim to get a chapter done or a big chunk of your overall North Star uh aim done in three months. That keeps you on a cycle in the research phase of your PhD, getting it done in say there's about five to six chapters in most PhDs, that would have you on track to do the research phase in about a year and a half if you can consistently hit on a chapter. So I really like this three-month focus and that you've got this concrete. I I've got some critiques for you come in here too, Jeff, uh, along the way. So it's not just all pat on the back, but I I really like this. The other thing you've done is you followed our optimization of one approach, choosing one focus project, and that really just helps cut out the noise. Um, so I I like that a lot. Optimizing for one, it's it's ambitious, but it also feels kind of quietly boring in the same way. Uh, and that this is the main thing. If you want to hit right that this three-month uh objective or project that you've really honed in on the one thing you've got to do and can really reward yourself for that. Am I making progress on this one thing I've got to do? And as humans, we like to think we can multitask, but we're really not great at it. It creates a lot of friction, and sometimes you'll find you feel more tired at the end of the day if you balance between many different projects than if you just did one set of deep work on one project. It's much more satisfying, you feel more productive, and you probably will notice on yourself you feel happier. So I really like that you've set this up as well, and you you've even gone even more fine-grained into what what you're gonna do next week and started to um identify kind of he broke it down even uh in a more detailed way. Um finally, you you did something really good here. You identified obstacles and solutions. This is a step very few people going to take. You've identified certain friction forces or things that might pop up and hold you back, and and you've gone farther than that, not just identified it, but you have a concrete plan about what you're gonna do to address that. So I think that's that's very, very again. I I really like this. I'm zooming out, looking at the whole. I've got some critiques of it, but I like this here. For example, you you said full-time grad studies, um, well, not accepting less than all A's. So um uh yeah, this is this is definitely something you don't want to let your courses interfere with your research. Uh we said don't let uh class when I was a grad student at Yale, don't let classes interfere with your learning. And you've got a solution like the eat the toad or eat the frog strategy first, putting the hard thing on your research that you've really got to get done at the beginning of the day and um ensure that you stay ahead of the curve on your homework so you can clear up some time blocks for for research. So I want to go through some of this in more detail, but I guess just asking you, Mara, um does does this resonate? Did you follow a kind of similar approach yourself in uh in trying to set up a roadmap?

SPEAKER_03 8:15

Yeah, I think uh like pluralizing thing, like the one that you showed before was one thing that I did.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

The optimization of one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

Yeah, I think that it was very useful for me at least.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yeah, I you know, it really is remarkable how many researchers come to me and they're feeling overwhelmed and stressed. And I often see I'm trying to write the lit review chapter, I'm trying to write the results chapter, or they'll tell me, Oh, I'm working on my quantitative paper, I'm working on my lit review, or too many, I'm trying to organize this conference, and uh they're trying to do everything and not doing anything, and just kind of it's like they're spinning their wheels and like in a cartoon, the smoke from the wheels, it just like the engine's running so hot. Um they're on overdrive, but if you you step back and look at the car, it it's not moving. Um, so excellent about the optimization one. One thing I I want to push you on uh uh a bit, Jeff. So I like how you've separated vision uh from execution. I like how things are pointing in a straight line. I think this is a nice, appropriately ambitious but attainable goal to go for four or five papers to get on that proverbial fast track. Um I I think where where it starts to get maybe a little bit ambitious is the next three-month focus. Um so uh, but look, I mean this applies to uh ordinary researcher, and and uh you're not ordinary, so you you can overshoot the mark. But um, I think I if I were you, I'd be feeling good if you got the first article. I see you're working on a systematic review, which I know about, which I think is a fantastic uh first uh paper to do for a number of reasons. I might ask you to reflect on that process, but I I think this is good. If you can get to the second, I might even delineate this as like extra bonus, fantastic if you can hit it. But uh, this would be the core thing I'd be aiming on. And I I don't know if I'd I I'd aim for this. These are also kind of optional, uh nice to have things. I know you've been going through some of our training on on how to reach out, find mentors, and get people invested in your success. That's really nice. Um, but yeah, I think I I would aim aim for this one here. The other thing you've got is you had a long list of conferences, I remember somewhere here. And uh you want to go to the conferences and make contact. I I think that's helpful. This is a big set. I mean, you're gonna be internationally jet-setting a lot. Some of these can get quite expensive. Um, I'd prefer you to go to conferences as a player. So if you can, I might be aiming to the latter end and see if you can submit some of your papers to some of these conferences. I know in your field, some of the conferences count as much as a full-blown uh peer they count as a peer-reviewed publication. Um but yeah, that that that one jumps out to me that this is maybe uh a little ambitious. I I don't know. I was typically at this stage I was going to one or two a year, but um not this many.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Um well that there are the question marks on a few of them because I don't even know if they're useful yet.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

I I yeah, but I like that you've scoped them out and have kind of figured out where the base of the conversation is, and this of course links into your strategy on finding co-authors. Now, I like you've set it up as a Word document. Another helpful way we sometimes will do if we go through road mapping exercise together is to do this on a whiteboard app like Miro, where you can start drawing the connections um between the steps. But this is really, really good. Um, and then the other thing I think is really appropriate is the time blocks. I think sometimes people start and they try to do research here or there. The fact that you found two blocks of about an hour and a half uh in the day, in your afternoons, uh and you're defending those. That's that's really really helpful. So just to recap, what your roadmap's doing really good is it's separating vision and execution. It's not a laundry list of things, but you've got a pipeline that you want to achieve, and you've identified in that pipeline the first big thing you want to get done with our optimization of one, and you've identified the obstacles and main solutions. So overall, I mean, if I can grade your roadmap, that this isn't an A plus. Also, of course, I like that you're you're planning to attend our uh our workshops and submit and get get our feedback, and uh it's especially helpful if you send a day before, so we got a little more time to review. Um, Mara, anything in Jeff's roadmap that you think you could lift, maybe that you didn't put in your road your roadmap that would be useful for you looking at this fresh for the first time?

SPEAKER_03 13:05

Maybe uh strategies to block time. Uh I could add to the to your do you mean my plan or my roadmap or yeah to to to your plan.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

We've got jabs here, but just as your anything that kind of strikes you as something that maybe would be useful that you hadn't thought about or hadn't put on your roadmap that you could my robot.

SPEAKER_03 13:27

I haven't um looking for conference, for example. I think it is a very good idea. If you move the sheet, I can see more. Can you do that?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah, um and also Yeah, yeah, let me ask that up. So this is on the tools time block support plan. Identify obstacle solutions. Um have you I have you gone through this and identified uh potential barriers to making progress on your big North Star and that kind of intermediate three-month milestone? Um this is always a good one. And if you're watching along, I highly encourage you to do this. And these obstacles, they don't have to be just barriers like I don't have enough time, they can also be other friction forces that come into play, like I'm struggling to get started, um, or I'm struggling to get feedback, uh, or I don't have certain technical skills. Um could be useful here if you brought out the obstacles and solutions. Um but yeah, Jeff, thank you. Um I'm gonna uh close this down. Thank you for sharing this with us. Uh really, really helpful. I'm gonna just go to the chat for a second, and uh we got some uh comments coming in. Uh Chelrio, great to have you with us. Uh and uh we'll I can see here, let's see if this will show. Why is this not showing? Um two seconds. Let me go back and change the scene. Because oh, there we go. Most of the researchers in developing countries are facing challenges of grants and funds. Yeah, so we're gonna come back and take some of your questions later. I'm gonna pivot and we'll look to some of the question submissions that we have. And uh, Jeff Mara, if you want to stay with us, we can look through some of these questions together. Let me just uh adjust the scene two seconds, guys, and I'll uh try to make it like bring you guys back on here. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

I I I can say to one, I'm not a PhD, I'm not a PhD student, so it's not only for PhD students.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Okay, so I think meaning that's a really good question.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Yeah, um I think it's a really really good exercise. I think it's especially important for PhD students, but anybody doing research to to take this moment, this quick pause before going off to the races to make sure you're going in a straight line and Georgia goals. Oh, we've got Tal with us today. Oh, hey Tal, really good to see you. Tal, Tal, you remember maybe in the chat, you remember the uh roadmap exercise we did before we we started and you went off to the races, and uh Tal got a well, got his first paper out and it opened up the floodgates to many, many more. But uh really good to have you you join us. I'm gonna turn to some some questions, Tal, but yeah, maybe if you could share a little bit in the chat uh about that road mapping exercise, what that did for you, that would be helpful. But guys, um, if you've never done this, just follow the template that Jeff just did and do this as an exercise for yourself. It it at worst, um, it does no harm. At best, it's transformative. All right, so we've got a couple questions that are coming in. Um, so one is from Margarita. And Margarita asks, how much time should you give yourself for major revisions? The journal gave me a deadline in four months, but I think it would make sense to be much, much quicker. Um, what is a good time frame for someone whose primary task is research, no teaching responsibilities? Um, so I I look, I remember, I I know Margarita, you work in sociology. Um, so I remember when I got my first R from American Sociological Review, I was so excited, I kind of wanted to drop everything and get it back as soon as possible. And the reason is I I felt the sooner I could get it back, the sooner it was gonna go to the reviewers, and the sooner the paper would come back. But I also wanted to be fresh on the reviewers' minds. So you can imagine a world where it goes a very long time, they just forget about it. And they're almost looking at the paper fresh, and I didn't want to catch them on maybe I caught them on a good Tuesday, and then I catch them on a bad Thursday, and they forgot they really love my paper. Um, so I I've always tried to do these as quickly as possible rather than wait right up to the deadline. It also kind of signals to the editor that the these comments were straightforward to integrate and dispense with. Um, so yeah, I would make this if you got revisions, we treat revision inside our mentorship communities as a win because we have an over 90% success rate of getting revisions accepted. Um, we follow a two-step method in which we itemize all everything the reviewers um have said, and we develop our response to that, get all our co-authors on board with how we're responding to the comments, and then we integrate into the manuscript. So we split it into those two stages uh because otherwise you can get pulled back and forth. You integrate the manuscript, but one co-author doesn't like what you did, you have to redo it again. So you get everyone to agree on what you're gonna do, and then you implement it. Um, and so if you have many co-authors, okay, you couldn't just do this in a flash, but I I would definitely aim to get this done well within the four-month deadline and be much, much quicker. Also, because in a in the field you're in in sociology, it's gonna take probably about two, three months to get through that review process again. So part of this can also link to your goals. If you're trying to go on the job market, you want to get papers out, maybe you want to get that acceptance so you can already get it on your on your CV. Thanks for asking this. Um, Jeff, Mar, I don't know if you you guys have a lot to add on this in uh major revisions, but I think you've seen people inside our communities trying to go quite quickly rather than wait to the deadline and ask extensions and and for things to come up, which which is not necessarily good look in the eyes of the editors. Um but yeah, Margarita, thanks for sharing that with us. By the way, Tal just jumped back and said uh about the roadmap. Uh oh yeah, and uh that was the table setter for sure. And and I remember, Tal, if you don't mind me me sharing, I mean, you had lost some confidence from having some papers rejected and sort of stepping back, going from first principles, doing some of the things that might seem basic but people skip, like setting those priorities, um, really helped us to hone in um what was going to be the best paper in your your big menu and set of papers to focus on. And I think that's one thing too. When I think about you, Jeff, coming back to this for a second, you've got a lot of energy, you're really bright, you're creative, and one of the challenges that if you you're in that dynamic is is to get shiny object syndrome, bounce from one idea to the other, and uh kind of constraining yourself and forcing yourself to go the distance with one is uh is is really, really important. I can see Paula's uh joined us as well, and uh Abdirman saying thanks. Interesting to discuss roadmap. Yeah, let us know in the comment. Have you guys actually done a roadmap yourselves? I'd be really curious, those of you watching, let us know where you're from and if you've ever done a research roadmap. I I ask my students, uh, I like to ask my students at the beginning of the year how many of you um have feelings of imposter syndrome, things like fraud, and I do it anonymously. About two-thirds of them say that they felt things like imposter syndrome before. And when I ask them then about roadmap, uh, if they've ever done it, and it's crickets, almost no one's ever done that kind of an exercise. And if you were gonna ever gonna work with like a life coach or any kind of uh mentor, it's one of the most fundamental things that they do. You don't have to pay anybody to do that, uh, you can do that exercise for yourself. And uh Paula is asking a question that's really on the theme uh here in Paula C. And uh Jeff Mara Ugex and Paula, she's awesome. Paula uh says, I'd love to publish three, four papers to really get to the proverbial past track. How do you accomplish that? I'd like to establish a workable system and workable rhythms rhythms as a budding academic scholar. Um that's a that's a good question. Okay, I have some ideas. And I know Jeff uh you uh uh and Mara in are in early stages. Do you guys have any thoughts from your perspective on that as you're trying to define for yourselves a kind of research operating system that that you can get into? Do you do you feel like you've developed that? Do you feel like you have a groove? What what would you say to Paula here? Putting you on the spot, I know.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

I uh well the first thing is just try stuff, you know. Don't don't like paralysis through.

SPEAKER_03 22:12

I would say develop a focus in doing things. Like going for one thing and do this only thing and lock the time for this. I think this is the thing that I am doing.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Yeah, I think you guys, I mean, Jeff, I like what you said the paralysis by analysis. I see this, this is a big friction force I see people have. They'll start almost these are sometimes people who rearrange their desk a million times before doing anything, or they uh or they start thinking, well, I need to have this before I start, or oh, I just need to have this first. And many of them might hunt around. I see sometimes these people come to me with a big AI tech stack. They've got like six different tools, like I'm using this tool to map out literature, I've got research rabbit here, and then I've got uh consensus AI here, or all these different things that they don't even need. Um and in that and it all kind of plays out paralysis by analysis, it it all can be kind of a hidden face of perfectionism as well, in a way that if I start giving my all to this, I'm gonna truly be seen and be judged. And it just plays out the the expression in that case is procrastination. But if you had asked those people, no, I'm not the type of person to procrastinate, wait to the last minute, but implicitly that's what ends up happening. And uh, Mara, you just kind of hit the two kind of axes of our roadmap that are really important. It's optimize your main goal over the next three months and figure out the time blocks that you're gonna protect and allocate to it. Um, if you can get that right, you're you're 90% of the way there. So super helpful. Um, and I see some people again saying like the same thing when I when I ask courses, no roadmap yet. Um but but Pancha, I think joining our programs you'll be starting that in week one. We we kind of we operate as a forcing function, taking you on this guided journey in our mindset and roadmap training stack. Um is saying not yet. Um so and uh Pema Wangchuk 5037, no roadmap yet, but definitely would need one. Cool, guys. Well, I'm looking forward to I want to be able to have all of you who are joining today a conversation and about if this is January 16th, 2026, that we could be in February, March, April 2026, and see where you got to uh towards your goal. There's a cliche of what gets measured gets done. And if you haven't set a goal, you have no way of benchmarking or measuring your progress or doing a post-mortem or analysis of why didn't I make progress on my goal? What do I need to do differently? How do I adjust? How do I do better? I mean, you you yourself are a rich source of data and treat this as an opportunity to learn more about yourself. What helps you be more productive, what holds you back, and is the only way that you can truly improve, or you can do what I did as a grad student, is just muddle your way through and hope you figure it out. But I I think there is a better way. Um, okay, I'm gonna take a couple other questions here. Um, that uh one coming from the community. We've got one from Marina J5Q7H. Uh Marina mentions you mentioned that submitting a paper every three months is a good rhythm, but how do you count papers coming back for revisions? Do you simultaneously R and R and write a new paper within three months? That's a really good question. Um so you've got you're gonna have unexpected things come up in life at any point in time that you've got to triage and deal with. I would say if your big North Star is I gotta get published, um, and you've got an R that creates a time deadline, and it's like you've got a fish on the line you're trying to reel in. I would uh take a minute and allocate time to your RR. But I mean, RRs do come with a relatively predictable timeline. You can see the median times of journals. So whenever our researchers submit to journals, they do a journal mapping exercise, and part of that is they they are anticipating the median review time for that journal, which is published on their websites. So you will have a ballpark of when you can expect that to come, and you can factor that into your roadmap, knowing, hey, I'm probably gonna need about a week or two weeks to handle a revision. Um, sometimes a revision can be particularly extensive where you have to do substantive changes to your research, and it can be a lot, but I would just factor that. I would just factor that onto your roadmap. Um, so that's a really good question. Jeff Mara, spin to you. Jeff, have you thought about in your roadmap or budgeted any time for potential revisions? I I don't think it's gonna happen in three-month cycle. You want to get submitted.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

No, yeah, yeah. Well, no, I'm I'm seeing that that issue as I look at like the lead times, for example, for conferences. You gotta send them in like six months before the conference. So and then there'll be revisions. And so, like, well, I'm not gonna just wait for six months and do nothing, I'm gonna work on the next thing. And right now I'm I'm blocked because uh on my first paper, because I'm having a second person doing the screening so that it's more valid, it's not just my opinion of what to be. So while that's happening, I'm doing other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

So yeah, I like that a lot. I I I I really like that to keep the momentum going. I I used to have a strategy where I'd be going to bed in Italy, but I had colleagues in California and it was still their working day. So I'd get a version, a great way to leverage co-authors is that things just continuously keep moving rather than stagnating. And and look, that doesn't work if you're flying solo on a paper, but the vast majority of you will have co-authors on your paper, and you can leverage that effectively to get a full 24 hours of active climb in the day on your projects. Um, okay, let me see here. MK5759 says no roadmap yet, but I need to accomplish much in the first half of 2026. And MK, I'm really glad you mentioned that because without a roadmap, you can just see yourself staring to the mountain that you need to climb over 2026. And if you don't break it into small baby steps or milestones, anybody would feel pretty daunted and overwhelmed. So, really encourage you to to break that. And we, I mean, we go further inside our courses to break even the whole process of a paper into baby steps. And when you have that, it's if you if you know where you're going in the steps, it's much, much harder to get lost. If you know where you want to end up and that north star, right, when when the waters get rocky at sea, um you can easily course correct and get back on track. Um, okay, let's take some other questions. Um, I've also got a manuscript that Agnes Titus, uh, or Agnes Titus, sorry if I got your name wrong, um, sent. So we'll take a look at that. I've got um one, another couple from Margarita, actually. Uh so Margarita is asking some great questions, so I I do have a soft spot for really good questions. And Margarita says here in sociology, what is a competitive annual publication rate for early stage postdocs, given rejection rates and review timelines, how many manuscripts per year should one submit to sustain the competitive publication rate over time? Um, so right, that this is a really good question, and you can kind of answer it statistically. So um but short story if um you your manuscript, if you submit to a top journal, say American Sociological Review again, and acceptance rates are less than 10%, um you you also know what the rate of desk reject is. If one in three, uh I have to check the stats exactly on their desk reject rates. I believe it's much higher for ASR. Um, but editors have a big incentive to desk reject your paper so they don't consume their scarce editorial resources. Um let's just say it's higher, which is probably realistic. At least one in two. Um the desk reject's fine because that's gonna go fast. You submit it, and maybe a week or two, you're gonna have a desk reject, you submit to the next journal. So um 50% chance getting sent out. Um, let's say then, and it takes two weeks for a desk reject. Um, you can you can budget the time that that's gonna take, throw in a couple weeks. Um, then the review process itself for sociology journals tends to be, I just happen to know this, about three three months. So um you budget three months from there, and then another phase of revision, typically, because most of these will go through two stages of revision, sociology can be more, but let's say the median again, you can look up these stats and calculate for yourself, throw on another two and a half months. Um, so now now you've got at least a six-month process to getting things conditionally accepted. Um, so if you want to get four papers actually accepted um a year, um that has to factor. And the other thing I I didn't put in the calculation, I'm just doing this back of the envelope, is that's also based on the acceptance rate. Um, so your expected number of publications from the one submission means you're probably gonna have to go through multiple cycles of peer review. I could set up the model to calculate this out. I just don't have it on the back of back of the envelope here. Um, but I would assume you take an average paper if you're aiming high. If if it gets accepted smoothly, you're looking at six months to acceptance. If it gets goes through review and gets rejected, you're looking at a process that could take north of a year. So focus on the things you can control, which is the the high-quality submissions that you can get out. And so I I had mapped this out at one point earlier in my career that to get four papers out, I actually needed to get them published, I needed to have seven papers under review at all times. But I'll have to go back and revisit the math I did behind that um and check the assumptions across fields. So but the better way to think about this for you is actually to map out and reverse engineer from your goals. So if you want to get land a top-tier job in sociology, there's a big premium on a top-tier publication. So one paper in a top journal like American Sociological Review will matter a whole lot more than four papers in lower-tier journals. Especially in that field, there's a rite of passage in getting assistant professorships around publishing in the top journal. And there's big incentives because of that premium on the job market to try to keep keep you out. Because you're gonna have an important job market paper in your field. I would ensure that you've got a very high quality manuscript coming out that you're shopping around, and maybe diversify your strategy with some lower-hanging fruit papers that you could aim for a top-tier journal, but won't be your job market paper and get you some quick wins so that you don't have all your eggs in one basket. Um, so that is to say, I would have your flagship paper that you have in mind is gonna be your job market paper, and I would invest a lot of time and energy on that. And then the other papers, I'd be picking some low-hanging fruit that you can get up faster, that'll have a chance of getting published. A lot of this depends on when you want to go on the job market, so you can optimize for that. If you're looking to go in the job market next year, your strategy is gonna be different from a scenario where you're looking to go in the job market in two or three years' time. Um, I hope that makes sense. Um uh, Jeff, Marlowe, you guys are facing this. Are you doing how are you thinking about this problem yourselves? Oh, and I can see Courtney's just joined us. Uh, hang on a second. There is Courtney. Uh Courtney, welcome.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

I'm so sorry about the confusion.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Don't worry, all good. We're glad you could could join us. Um, we have we're tackling a question. We've got Jeff and Mara from our collective community with us. And I was trying to work out, and not very effectively doing so, the math uh while talking uh a lie aloud um was not working. Um, how many manuscripts per year do you need to submit to sustain a competitive publication rate in sociology? Do you have any any thoughts on this while I try to work out the back of the envelope calculations?

SPEAKER_02 34:40

Yeah, I mean, I think the way I was listening in on that, and I think the way you're thinking about it is right, that like probably at any one time you just need to have a number of submitted publications. But thinking like if if you're so that's a different so have how many you need published versus how many you need to have in to get that many published are two different questions. So but I think like competitive annual publication rate for early stage, I mean sociology, I would say competitive is like in these like sort of top-tier journals would be two or three for early career. I mean, as David said, if you're on the job market and you have one in a very high-tier journal, like that's your rite of passage, that can get you your first permanent position. And then once you're in, you know, having something around two to three in these very high impact journals is going to be, yeah, I think quite competitive.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you see that on the market, you probably see that with some of your your PhDs and postdocs who are getting out as well. How much do you do you place emphasis for your mentees, Courtney, and trying to get them the top tier publication? I mean, we're not just talking Q1 here, we're talking top three journals in the field. The very, very top of the top versus just getting them to have a base hit and get points on the board.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Yeah, so I'm I'm aiming for them for the top. Um, and I wish I had that strategy when I was at their stage, because I was sort of just like trying to get I was thinking like numbers. I was playing a numbers game. Um and I mean coincidentally or luckily, I did get some of those high journals, so it worked out for me. But I think if I had a more focused strategy from the beginning, I would have done better.

unknown 36:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Um I I think it it I can see both sides to this argument. Um, I really like getting a quick point on the board with a systematic review because it often is a reference point and helps you spot high-impact, low-hanging fruit papers um and will get you gonna points on the board, while then that will help kind of craft what is gonna be that job market paper, what is gonna be that big hit. I think taking like going using a baseball analogy, going up to the plate and taking big swings, big swings, misses is great, but you don't wanna um that might not be the the best way to get get started. Um, because even if you could get a big hit, there are a lot of things you've got to learn along the way about the publishing process um in writing a paper that's even gonna help you deliver better on your big idea that that might be the basis of your job market paper.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Um, and I think it depends on what sort of PhD you're doing as well. So at Newcastle, we still have their uh students are doing their PhD by manuscript. So when they finish their their manuscript, then they they might have that sort of high impact big paper that they could publish at the end of it because they haven't published anything so far in the in the three years. But if you're doing PhD by publication, then I think definitely getting that sort of literature systematic review out first is a really good idea.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Yeah, yeah. Um uh so uh yeah, we do see also a lot of researchers who are pivoting, by the way, to the PhD by publication. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:56

I think that's the way to go.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

I think that's definitely the I mean, I think both of you, uh you and I feel like if we could do it over, it's why I feel like why you swim around in the kidney pool when you could just go straight to the big leagues and focus on publishing papers, which is it just kind of cuts the fluff. It's the skill that you need. It's what we we're gonna do another session. Our next session is gonna be on is the PhD system broken? So I don't want to steal too much thunder from from that, but uh the PhD system briefly was designed for an era where apprenticeship, uh, a long time working with a faculty member one-on-one made a lot of sense. Flash forward to today's world, that that seems designed for a different era where there's emphasis on proving capability, where there's emphasis on um well, uh I hear of PhD students getting one hour of supervision time allotted with their professors. I mean, it just the the model isn't working, and so I think PhD by publication is one alternative model that's coming up, uh compensating for some, but not all the shortfalls, but we'll have space to chat about that a whole lot more coming up. Um, Courtney, I was waiting for you to jump on here because we got a manuscript that we're also gonna review where we'll be able to apply some of our research systems and methods. And I wanted to just come back now that you're on two, I wanted to come back to a question uh Paula from our community uh asked. Uh and I'm searching for you in the comments here, Paula, uh, because I think you'd have some thoughts on this, and uh is why I love having you join us, Courtney, because you see things that I don't and have a different perspective. But Paula said she wanted to establish a workable system and workable rhythm as a budding academic scholar. Now, we've got publication systems that really help take a lot of the guesswork out, but how did you go about establishing a working system and rhythm for yourself, Courtney, especially having uh having family and small children?

SPEAKER_02 39:49

Yeah, so I mean, so there's I guess there's a couple of things to think. There's like the work-life balance question of it. Um, and then there's a sort of when you are at work, like what are you, how are you thinking about things? And when I'm at work thinking about things and thinking about yeah, the number of papers I want to publish a year and what's my strategy there. So I think you mentioned this a little bit before, but one strategy is just always having papers that are submitted sort of in the cycle, um, being peer-reviewed. Um, and then also is just, and I think we've talked about this in different sessions also about you know, getting yourself into networks, working with mentors, um, because these are also the ways that you have multiple papers going on at once at um yeah, at sort of different um points along the research process. Um so then yeah, you'll have papers where you'll need, you know, you'll get your peer review back and you'll have uh two weeks to get the answers back in and you send that in, and then you can get back to sort of the project that's just plugging along, and then you know, you'll get your proof back and you'll have three days to get that in and you'll have something. So it's just it's about having all these different things going on at at different times. Um, yeah, but as I say, the the work life balance is a whole different ballgame.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Yeah, the work-life balance is is definitely uh uh I like I'm not really a good model on work-life balance. You don't want to burn out, but I actually find often when people are burning out, there's something that is not aligned in their PhD to where the work in is not producing results. Because oftentimes you feel you get wind in your sails when you make progress. You feel inspired, you feel motivated. And sometimes people, when they're burning out, they think, Oh, I just need to work harder, work harder. But it's like trying to work with a like if you want to go train with a broken arm or something, you're you're just gonna hurt yourself even more. You've got to have uh the core alignment of your research in place. And if that's misaligned, um, you've got to snap it back into place. But that's that's another conversation for another time. I want to turn into take some of the questions though that are coming up because we've got some really good ones, Gordon. Thanks for that helpful answer. Um, we I wanted to come here and what Tal said is in a way for the uh paralysis by analysis point Jeff made earlier, start doing, and uh opportunities will start to emerge for papers. I think I think that that's right. Some people said, well, the cure for uh uh paralysis is just action, it's just start doing things. Um easier said than done, um, but uh definitely um momentum uh creates momentum. And Tel goes on to say um he would prioritize quality over quantity, but you do need citations. So in his field management, um, he would publish three to four papers quickly and be journals and then get started. Yeah, I'd rather see, you know, uh some of uh some people who who do this happens to some of the brighter people slipping into perfectionist tendencies, just keep trying to make their paper perfect and more perfect and perfect. And actually, again, when you step back and look at it, um the the it looks like procrastination. Um that's the dark face of perfectionism, even though they are working really hard. You would ask them to say, no, I don't procrastinate, I'm working hard every single day. But um, with regard to their goals and what they need to do and getting the big things done, they they are procrastinating. So I I like this. Um I I've always liked the start by getting some points on the board strategy. Um, because you're gonna learn so much along the way. Um, and here somebody asks, uh this is some uh strategy Hishamass, great talk. I have a lot of collaborative output where I'm second or third author in Q1 journals. Does that count as output for postdoc early career research? Oh, this is a great question. Um and I kinda wanna tap uh Mara and Jeff. What what would you guys what would be your thought on this? And then um we'll see what what Courtney says because I know Courtney's gonna have some thoughts here. And uh hang on, Jeff. Let me uh I think your volume went off for a second. Let me get your volume back on. There you go. Okay, yeah, what do you what do you guys think?

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Well, it all counts on your citation H index.

unknown 44:04

That's true.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

That's true. Very, very true. What do you think, Mara?

SPEAKER_03 44:10

Yeah, I feel the same. Everything everything counts.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Yeah. Everything counts. Okay. What do you think, Courtney?

SPEAKER_02 44:17

Yeah, I mean it's what are you being evaluated for? If you're going for a job or a grant, then we're gonna want the first author. Um, that's what's really gonna it's really it's nice that you have these other ones and it shows that you're in a good network with people and and things like that. But for yeah, job funding, you want yeah, first authorship.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

I I 100% agree. Look, if I get an application for somebody to a postdoc and they're in the middle of the paper, I don't know what they've contributed. It's not clear to me did they just get tacked on to the paper because they were in somebody's lab or team. If it's social science, sometimes the papers are organized alphabetically, but increasingly that's also giving way to where you leave the paper, especially if it's in your your PhD stage, you gotta be the first author. So does it count? Yes, but in my mind, in scrutinized postdocs, I want to see demonstrated evidence of somebody's capability. And look, just doing a PhD doesn't even guarantee that somebody has that capability. I I've even been amazed at interviews when somebody has a paper on their CV. I ask them about that paper to tell me what they did, what they found, what were the limitations, what could they have done better, how would they have known if they were wrong? And you'd be amazed how many people can't seem to answer basic questions about their own paper, which for me is always a red flag. So um, look, short answer, Hisham, fantastic. You've got these Q1 journals. That is really great. But I personally wouldn't see that as a substitute for you being lead author and going the distance yourself on at least one paper to demonstrate you've got the capability. Over time, you'll move and migrate, like Courtney and I have done, to be the senior author or last author on the paper, where you're seeding ideas for topics, you're supporting your research team and doing a lot of the execution. Thanks for sharing that with us. Clara asks, she'd like to know if somebody can guide someone on writing a dissertation um stuck and needs to refine the topic. Um Courtney, I might pitch this one over to you because the topic stage is really hard. It's really, really hard.

SPEAKER_02 46:28

Yeah, and we and we fast track has training for this and really nice training um because it it sets out a method for for finding not just a topic that hasn't been covered before, but a high impact topic. Um and this again is something that I wish I had training for before I when I was an early, more early career, um, because I I was good at finding gaps in things that I was interested in. Um, but finding things that are going to get highly cited is is another question. Um so I would I would suggest checking out the fast track training here because really it has all these different components. How do you find a topic that hasn't been done before? How do you find one that's going to get highly cited?

SPEAKER_00 47:13

Yeah. Yeah, those steps that that we take. I think there's something important here. A lot of people will get their topic just from their supervisor handing it to them. And that that that's one main path. And that can be good, uh, especially good. Say you're working with a very top person in the world on a topic. He's got a thriving research tree, a research agenda, and it's brought sprouting out like prolifically, branches that are gonna bear fruit, because they're right at the center of the world's leading debate. And so if you are blessed and you've won the supervisor lottery, you're gonna kind of by default probably get a topic that's pretty good. Um, but not everybody wins the supervisor lottery. I see people with supervisors uh who've have never put those supervisors have never published in a Q1 journal and they're handing off topics, and then the researchers are frustrated that they're not publishing in Q1 journals, and it's like, well, you didn't do anything wrong. It just you were kind of stuck before you even started on a dead end topic. So um what we've tried to do is rework the logic so you can see for yourself, is this topic validated? Will it have impact? You can forecast its impact. And there's steps that I was fortunate to have very good mentors when I started, and I did get blessed with getting handed some good topics. I didn't just figure it all out on my own. And I think uh, you know, so so so that can really help. Um, I think though the most dangerous ones are researchers trying to figure it out all on their own, and their supervisor maybe didn't even give them a topic. I see as people when they're at the trying to come up with a proposal for a dissertation and they have no idea what makes a good topic and what's not. Uh, there's a lot of considerations. Is this feasible? Does, like Courtney said, does it plug a big gap in the field? And that's often when they turn to AI to plug the gaps. And AI comes up with ideas, but remember it's drawing on a corpus mostly of things that are already out there. So it can come up with topic neighborhoods, but it will the problem is from there, it will cheerlead you to run with it before taking the steps to validate the topic. And that's where the problem comes in, and where I see a lot of people come with AI-generated dead-end topics as well, that they didn't run simple duplication or feasibility tests on their topics before going too far. I don't know if you're seeing that, Courtney, from some of your students, but I'm seeing a lot of that now with AI starting to plug the gaps for where the PhD mentorship based uh apprenticeship-based system is breaking down.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

Yeah, you see a lot of questionable things now where you're where you think, is this is this AI? Is this because this is an AI thing? Um but I think one of the sort of aspect of of the training too that's not obvious that I think is really important is the assessment of do you have a passion for the topic? Um, so there is the is it gonna be highly cited, is it topical? Is there a good solid research gap? But also you're gonna be spending the next three to four to five years on it. And do you is this something that you're interested in that's gonna keep you going for that time?

SPEAKER_00 50:21

Yeah, yeah. I I think it's so easy for people to drift from their passion. And this is also a pitfall that I see happen with supervisor. Supervisor, I want you to do that, and you suddenly find yourself getting misaligned to do something you never really wanted to do, and this drift quietly happens and it leads to burnout. And this is that burnout cycle is where it's just working or trying to work harder and force yourself to show up on something you don't really have desire for, um is gonna lead to in many cases flaming out. But uh yeah, starting from that person, I think yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:55

Sorry, I was gonna say that's yeah, that's the other side. So you're blessed when you have that thing happen with your supervisor that they're in this hot topic area, but then you're also sort of cursed at the same time because then you after you do that work, you have to show your independence from that researcher. So now you've been working on this topic, but it's obviously your supervisor's topic, and now you have to show your independence. And then you also I see that drift happen in that situation as well, because sometimes you're working on a topic that you're not super passionate about. So now you're you have this dilemma that you have to show your independence, and but you're not really into that thing that you've been doing for so long either. Um, so that can become problematic in sort of postdoc times.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

That's a that's a really good point. I've had um postdocs where exactly that the problem is people thought that the postdoc just got all their ideas from me or they weren't doing it independently, even when they were the lead author on a paper. It's kind of coming back to our earlier question about does it count as a good output if you're second or third author? Um, especially that can be the downside. A lot of people come and say, Oh, I want a famous, I want to work with somebody famous. And well, there's good and bad with that. Um, so don't always um grass isn't grass isn't always greener in that that scenario. I guess I just want to take a couple more. We're getting a lot of questions um today. Um, and Pancha just asked a question that you kind of answered here. If you're already a professor but don't have many first author papers, does that affect affect you when you apply to grants? How do you improve your chances? Can you still publish first author papers? What what would you say there, Courtney? This goes back to what you're saying earlier.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

Yeah, I would say definitely shoot for first author papers because it will affect you when you apply for grants if you don't show that you're you're leading in an area. Um still good if you're like at the end of the list, like David mentioned, and you're showing that you're, yeah, this is your research area and you're supervising the students who are executing your idea. Um, but it's not too late to first author either.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

Yep. Um definitely look. I mean, those are is that demonstrated capability. A grant wants to see can you deliver the goods? And they're gonna look at your track record to see if right, if they're investing money in you to deliver on the project, that lowers the risk for them that you'll be able to do it. So um they they definitely they're looking for that. I mean, we think uh our strategy often with our early stage researchers is you cash in on your publications, and you've done this too, Courtney. You see it in your pipeline, you you publish papers, and you then cash in later. Those are the basis for your grant proposal. And oftentimes the best time to write the grant proposal is kind of when you've already done the research. There's reasons to get into that, but that that's for another day. Um just Tal um pointing out to us again here uh universities want you to prove you can lead the project and research team. Um, and even in his stage as a postdoc, he's got to be in the driver's seat. And that's what I really encourage you to do. Um, there's two kinds of postdocs, some that you're assigned to a project and others where they're more independent, but both of those um you do want to be taking the lead role in in driving the research. Um, Abdiraman says something here, and I think Jeff, I want you to answer this, but having done a systematic review, because that's my answer to this question. Abdirman asks, how can I publish it within three months and start a PhD? Could you please uh deeply explain the process uh to achieve this? And uh hang on, Jeff. Let me just uh get the bottom here. Yeah, Jeff, uh any thoughts on this? Because you you're kind of yeah, you're you're past the uh halfway point on getting your your paper done within three months, start to finish.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

Yeah, and and it's really critical to get the first parts right because otherwise you just waste a lot of time doing the wrong thing. So like figuring out your topic and knowing that it's it's it's something that hasn't been done and is important is like it's just if you don't do that right, everything else is useless. Um, and then like I just follow the step-by-steps, and then you go through the systematic review, is really teaching me a lot about my field. I started on my project from uh a final project of a class, and I'm learning way more than the class taught now, just by seeing what everyone else is doing. Um and uh yeah, the actual mechanics of writing stuff, I I think it'll be fairly straightforward as going through all these other steps before. Um, I definitely, you know, my goal is to get it out before there's a major conference in in March. So that's my you know, it's it's a hard deadline. I I gotta get something out there to be able to talk to people, like hey, I finished this paper, people are looking at it, you know, review, whatever. Yeah. So that's my motivation.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

I I love that. That's a really good point, Jeff. But having a conference in mind does help you have a mini deadline that feels more binding. Uh and and going to the conference where you you're a you're a player at the conference, you're one of the speakers, or you're presented, or your paper's being covered there, you just get a different respect. It helps you so much more in networking than just being Joe Schmo participant at the conference. Um I really I I really like that strategy. Guys, um, I was waiting, Courtney. I just want to go through this paper together, and uh, Jeff Mara, it's super helpful to have you with us um to get the these perspectives. Um, I want to share my screen and show you guys this. And uh one of the things that really I think is valuable about our communities is you can have intelligent non-experts in your field look at things. And a lot of times good papers get rejected uh not because the idea is bad, but because the writing is confusing or that idea hasn't been kind of laid out in a way that's accessible. And uh, I mean, this we're in an era where a lot of research is implicitly interdisciplinary, and so you can have a lot of reviewers who don't necessarily uh you can't assume that they they know the ins and outs of your of your field. Um, so let's take a look at this this manuscript. And when evaluating the manuscript, I find it's pretty helpful to uh to focus on the abstract because that's a mini snapshot of the paper, and often you can spot some of the paper's actual defects. So the abstract in the introduction is a good place to start, and it's also gonna reflect what a peer reviewer would look at in the paper. So, guys, the concrete example, I'm gonna zoom in. Um I only have one monitor because I'm out of the office, but can you guys see the screen well enough to read this?

SPEAKER_02 57:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

Cool. Let's take a second, take 30 seconds to read this. Um, I'll read it aloud to people because some people are following on a podcast, and so they don't have the benefit of the screen. And then we'll come back and comment on it. So let me read this. This study investigates health growth relationship with the moderating effect of institutional quality in sub-Saharan African countries from 2000 to 2022. Utilizing Driscoll Cray fixed effect regression with standard errors, the analysis addresses autocorrelation, heteroschedasticity, and cross-sectional dependence. The study aims to estimate health growth relationship by analyzing the interaction effect of health and control of corruption on economic growth. Regression results highlight that while school enrollment and life expectancy positively impact GDP per capita, control of corruption does not have a significant direct effect. And it goes on and says a whole bunch of other stuff. Alright, guys, I ran out of steam. Apologies. Um But uh it goes on to say um that uh these insights are crucial for policymakers aiming to foster economic growth through investments in health, human capital, and institutional reforms in sub-Saharan Africa. Okay, so we have an econometric cross-national paper. Um so Courtney, using some of our systems and diagnostics, um what what would you well actually let me say before coming to Courtney, Jeff, Mara, you're you're not in this field, but you're quite bright. What do you what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 59:02

Um the the terminology is is kind of what what's it the syllables per word is kind of count is pretty high. So I mean it it sounds all impressive, but but I'm like, explain it to me like um, you know, in in in school where you're trying to get people to be better in school in this paper.

SPEAKER_00 59:23

Um yeah. That's really helpful. Uh Mara, any reactions when you read this?

SPEAKER_03 59:29

Yeah, the same. Difficult to read, maybe for no native speakers.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:35

Even if the topic is not in my feed, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:39

You know, you guys will notice when you read papers. Some papers are complex, but they're easy to read. And some papers are just hard to read. And and a lot of that has to do with the quality of the writing, not necessarily the complexity of the underlying source material. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and that's something we definitely aim for. All right, let's turn to Courtney, let's dive in because we'll um dissect this in a friendly way. People say we're fierce but loving. Um, Courtney, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:10

Yeah, so my first uh impression is it's starting off with this study investigates, but I want to know before you even tell me what you're investigating, why you're investigating something, what is the importance of this topic? Why is it worth my time to read this abstract? Is this uh uh an important, relevant paper to begin with in the first place, and why? Yeah, let's go. So that's what I want to see right off the bat.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

Let me uh hang on, let me just show you how you could do that very quickly. One of my favorite ways to do this in social science paper is to start with the research question. And if I could reverse engineer the research question here isn't clear because it's kind of about corruption and health and growth, but um uh let me just see. Does I'm just gonna make up a question so you guys can see the point. Does reducing corruption improve economic growth and uh health of a population? Something like that. And immediately, Jeff Mara, you guys would probably be able to latch on to this a whole lot easier than this first sentence, I think. I hope. Um one one side note, Courtney, just to book in. Sorry to cut you off. This is kind of like starting, I see a lot of people do this, it's like starting a joke, like a guy and a girl walk into a bar. It's like starting the joke in the middle of the joke when it's like and the bartender turns to the girl and says, It's it's not starting at the beginning of the story. And Courtney, I think that's where you're going next. So um over to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:45

Yeah, and usually I see these sorts of things in in students that have just like had their head down in their work for so long. So, like these you can tell by reading it, like this person knows what they're talking about, they know what they're doing. This is a but yeah, it's about being able to back up and then putting that perspective, putting your work into that broad perspective again, so that again someone's reading it, they might not know what the field is, they might not know much about this area. Um, I like this idea of doing a question. I mean, the other sort of thing that I would think about in particular is in in relation to this work specifically is this health growth relationship, which has been the subject of decades of research. Um and the the opposite sort of relationship also. So looking at the effect of growth on health. So playing into that idea might be another way um to sort of bring out the topical and the relevance.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:42

So so so you've highlighted something very important. Um, one thing we do with abstracts, just as a sanity check, is we like to break them into background methods, results, conclusion. So this is there's two types of abstracts, structured and unstructured, but they all have the same ingredients. So if we did this here, what would happen? Um, well, the background, usually you need to justify why your study needs to exist. And you can see the why this study needs to exist and what it's aiming to do. We would kind of massage this and put this here. Then we would get to the methods of the study. Well, what did the study actually do? And um, then what did the study find? And then what are the conclusions? And so you can start to see where things are disjointed and a bit thin, and you can see where problems are. So you can see we were out of order. The the study started to talk about methods too early. It's talking about how it dealt with threats to the validity of the study as a second sentence, which was misplaced. Um, you hadn't gotten into the story. And you can also see in the background that, well, this is actually not really clear what's the gap, what's missing from the literature. Like the literature's brought us to here, and we need we're gonna go to there. And Courtney, you just said something very important. So if you reframe this and say there is extensive research on the uh bi-directional uh relationship between health and economic growth, yet it is unclear whether corruption may uh moderate or or modify um these relationships. I don't think this is what this study is doing, but it is analyzing an interaction effect, which is typically looking at effect modification. I don't want to get too much into the details, um it but it may moderate or or mediate these relationships. This would be clear it may not be the world's greatest gap, but it's at least trying to say this. Um because this isn't the right question to correspond to this. But you see what I'm trying to do? I'm trying to get the research question to come into contact with a gap in value added to the paper, and then we need the methods and and results to deliver on that. It's like cash. This is like you're writing the check, now you got to cash it down here. Um Courtney, does this make sense? Jeff Maro, does this make help things look a little bit more accessible to you?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:09

Yeah, yeah, definitely cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:13

Same complexity. We we haven't changed any of the complexity, we've just actually rearranged the alignment. And it's actually the same idea, uh, but we've done a couple things already. We've tried to line things up so it's more linear, and we've we've tried to highlight a bit the gap. Okay, Courtney, keep going with this though. So um there's so you you've you've highlighted some important things. Um, what what else jumped out to you? Because this is probably gonna be in the rest of the paper. These problems, if they're like this in the abstract, they're probably gonna be in the rest of the paper.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:47

Yeah. One quick point just to build on what you've just said. Like, even if this abstract was clear in a different way and well written, because as researchers, we expect things to be written this way, then it's still going it's still going to be compu confusing if it's not in this order because background methods results conclusion, even if it's a row a well written otherwise. Okay, so yeah, so the background back together sentences.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:15

Yeah. You have a you have a couple of sentences to get to hit those major points. So why is this topic important and what is the research gap? And then as David said, straight into your aim and and then your methods. So I think some people differ. I don't know what you think, David, putting the aim at the end of the background or the aim in the methods, I like it in the background.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

There's some variation I like it in the background as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:45

Yeah. Yeah. So then moving on to to methods and we're going to be thinking about sort of overall what is the sort of broad method, where did your data come from and how did you analyze it?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

So he think Yeah there's a little bit let's see. So here we have a health growth relationship with the modern effect of so but you've yeah need to know which where's your data coming from exactly we're we're missing key details.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:23

And so this needs to come in contact with your actual research question. And the issue here is you you start going to institutional quality so you're introducing actually too many terms. So here I think you mean institutional quality is a term you're trying to use for corruption. And then you're just saying you address this this has a whiff of AI writing because it's kind of broad hand wavy sweeping without saying what you actually did. Usually you would just say like what what the model was and it's implicit like but even this is if unless this is a major threat to the validity this is all just standard stuff that doesn't need to be here you would just say here we investigate this using fixed effects models um or if that you want to make a big deal of this specific class of fixed effects models say why Courtney I'm taking over a little bit then you have some results that are completely irrelevant like why did you leave with the results of school enrollment impacting GDP? That's a red herring and then you say control of um corruption does not have a significant direct effect on what and then you go into gross capital formation this is irrelevant here to your research question. So it just distracts so you actually have been too thin in just kind of telling us an outline of results without showing us the results and then you've got half of your abstract is conclusion. This is this is way too far and the conclusions you're drawing are way too strong for the type of evidence that you have um okay Courtney I I I hope I didn't um not gloss over some of the points did did I capture the yeah that's good yeah okay um yeah yeah yeah the thing I would add the those things they're saying this didn't do anything this didn't do anything unless that's something like unexpected just leave it out. Yep. Yep 100% it distracts from your good stuff. And I think that can be something that early researchers miss is trying to to to identify what what is my important stuff what is my good stuff and you want to have that clarity before you even get to the writing stage. So it's something we could force our researchers to do in quantitative papers have a result set, their tables and figures lined up in their main three to five bullet points of their main findings before writing up because you need to know that to create the structure for your result section uh the top of your discussion section and what's going to be in your abstract and you want to make sure your supervisors or co-authors are aligned with that story before putting it together. Needless to say look thank you so much for sharing this with us. I I know we I hope we weren't uh didn't scare you off by being too critical but I hope the rest of you watching this um will get some ideas for how you can improve your your abstracts um going to take a few comments and then uh we'll kind of take us home Courtney I usually ask you for the quick tip of the week at the beginning but I'm gonna ask you for the quick tip at the end but let me just take a couple comments because we got a whole bunch of questions here. And um Tal out also has some questions too Tal's quite experienced saying what's the research problem that has to be the starting point 100% and why does it matter um we've got some new members to the channel Dahlia first time channel welcome we have a lot of uh early career researchers we have some very experienced professors and faculty you can see the uh comments who are joining us as well and one of the things the reasons we put together this training is that you're often a lot of research logic is just taught implicit implicitly pass on from mentor to mentee we're trying to democratize access to that knowledge and make it available here and also show you something that's really quite rare that you usually only see in mentor mentee interactions is how do we think out loud and approach these research problems. So uh it's a lot of fun for us hope you benefit from it and we're really fortunate to have Jeff and Mara with us today. So um uh Yagya says you guys are awesome thank you how do I integrate two theories to draft a single conceptual framework I'm trying to use Anderson behavioral theory and expectation behavioral theory in health insurance um uh I'll just jump in quickly on this typically you need to know what the conceptual framework is for and what it's trying to explain and if you have these two different theories um we'd we'd have to get in into it and look at it but sometimes you might have in your conceptual framework this theory makes these predictions uh this theory has this kind of logic embedded in it if you're doing quantitative work which you might be doing you might set up a DAG or a causal diagram that goes step by step what the Anderson theory says and then what the expectation behavioral theory says and use that to then derive the predictions from the basis of the hypotheses you're going to test in the paper. So just understand and be clear about what you're using the conceptual framework for.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:24

Yeah Courtney is yeah I I would just invest yeah I would investigate what the motivation is if one framework brings one thing but you think something is missing there and this other framework brings that missing thing then that's where to incorporate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:40

And then yeah make your your arguments clear for that yeah so uh sometimes I find that drift can happen on research projects because somebody gets a comment like you need to bring in this this theory but then the researcher doesn't exactly know how or why and that that's where things can start drifting from the original question or point. So stay focused on that what's the main thing you're trying to show uh in your paper um so so that you don't get off track. Um then I've got a last comment from oh yeah Dahlia just saying hey how can I learn to start scientific research from scratch I actually want to let um Jeff and Mara do that because you've been uh working with us we've created a way to work that's aligned with universities but also can stay independent from it um but uh you guys are earlier in the journey and Dahlia is just looking to start out uh Mara what would you guys say to to Dahlia that she can join us in the fast track community I didn't I didn't beg you to say that I wasn't expecting you to say that because there you can learn from scratch everything I mean from how to find our a research topic how how do you find uh how do you read a publication etc and there are some of courses there that are very useful at least for me what do you think Jeff I think is the same yeah I I I'm I'm only like uh one sixth through all the courses on there there's so many things to learn yeah there's a lot and just from the people absolutely yeah yeah that's true Jeff actually Jeff's you've gotten plugged into some research groups and I know you're collaborating it's pretty cool you you had a post you're collaborating with somebody from can you also get in different countries on different topics I I I can't I can't remember I can't keep up with you Jeff yeah yeah no no like yo some of the people uh asked me can I help you and another asked can you help me from the group and from Nigeria and uh Australia I think the other person's in and they're in different I mean we're sort of all geeks but they also have other different interests we're both in the we're all in interdisciplinary so yeah it's a it's a lot of fun i i i remember when i got to uh cambridge for my PhD I was like wow this is amazing it's so international I've never met all these people from so many different countries and they're all in different fields and I don't know for me I was being a little bit of a geek myself Jeff this was just like this must be nerd mecca but I I feel like in a way we we've been trying to recreate this really rich interdisciplinary kind of fertilization ground like any community um you know you got to show up nobody's gonna hold hold your hand but if you do show up it is incredibly rich and powerful we're working on ways sometimes Jeff with all those courses some people do get a little bit shell shocked when they realize all the uh what's available uh so we are we are working on smoothing the paths um we've got actually a whole journey if somebody like Dahlia is coming to us and just starting out and doesn't know where to go um that actually it starts with the whole basis of the conversation today of setting roadmaps and getting clarity on your goals and what some of those obstacles might be to achieving them and connect you to the resources that will help you troubleshoot those obstacles. So all right uh Courtney I want to come back and uh wrap up thanks again Jeff Mara Courtney your quick tip for for the week and uh we'll wrap up there.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:07

Yeah so I think um I was thinking about a quick tip and thinking about the start of the new year. So I think we're bombarded at the beginning of New Year's like with this idea that of self-improvement and you you see all these newspaper articles and books being advertised for all these things we can do to improve ourselves and improve our life. But I think really just focusing in on small changes things that you can be consistent on pushing back even against this idea of like that you have to change everything so drastically in the new year just focus in on the small things focus in on what works. It sounds cliche but like also like listen listening to yourself and knowing what's like yeah what's workable for you what's something what's a small thing that you can do like don't think I'm gonna change you know completely the way I work because that's not it's it's just not gonna happen. Yeah so that's my quick tip.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:02

One one small thing I like it Courtney I think that's manageable for everybody watching today as you go into 2026 what is the one small thing you'd like to improve or upgrade for this year. Guys thank you for joining us Courtney uh uh thanks glad you could make it next week we're gonna be looking at is the PhD system broken um and uh Jeff Mara um might have you uh join us again in future sessions thank you everybody out there and we will see you all next week