What happens when you are about to finish your PhD, have a couple of months to spare, have no teaching experience, and are slightly worried about what happens after graduation? […]
Scholar’s Toolbox
“Editors don’t want just standardized stuff”: Interview with Simon Marginson, Editor-in-Chief of “Higher Education”
In this interview, I sat down with Simon and we spoke about what it is like to be the lead editor of Higher Education, how the journal operates “on the inside”, how it deals with authors and reviewers, what makes a paper a good candidate […]
“I think, therefore I write”: 4 takeaways from an expert’s writing class
Two weeks ago, I attended a 2-day writing masterclass by Katherine Firth—an award-winning educator and one of the authors of the book How to fix your academic writing trouble, which was earlier recommended in a post by Melina Aarnikoivu. Here I wish to share some takeaways from this very […]
Article-based PhD thesis or a monograph?
Even before we start our PhD journey, many of us are presented with the dilemma: should I hand in a so-called cumulative dissertation, made of articles (or article manuscripts), or should I go for the good old book or monograph? […]
Surviving supervision: walking the rackety bridge, together
Doing a PhD is challenging even for the most prepared and confident individuals. The PhD journey is a personal intellectual quest during which the bar is constantly raised for you and by you. Beside personal motivation, social relationships also play an important part […]
Thinking strategically: what can co-authorship bring to your academic career?
While in lab-based disciplines co-authorship is the norm, there are “individual(istic)” disciplines where it is sometimes still frowned upon. In general, co-authorship is not bad per se, and there is nothing negative in being the 4th or even the 99th author, especially if we are talking about a highly cited paper.
Stringing research pearls: some tips for managing your research
Navigating the endless world of knowledge and research can seem like a daunting task, especially if you are in the early phases of your research career. As early-career researchers, we usually need to […]
Which higher education journals have the highest “prestige”?
As Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, I like to know why authors choose to submit research to our journal. The journal publisher, Taylor and Francis, surveys authors and reports results to me […]
What does societal impact mean for early-career researchers?
When I hear the phrase societal impact (which is often these days!), I usually connect it to the use of social media – mostly Twitter and Facebook. Societal impact, referring to the many ways of transferring research results from the university context to the […]
Three years, one manuscript, and hundreds of CVs later: a higher education journals and conferences database
This post chronicles a multi-year journey I embarked upon as a doctoral student: a journey to create a database of higher education journals and conferences. It all started in fall 2016, during my first semester as […]