Overview

Here are certain tutorials and lessons which all IAS members should at some point have gone through. They contain copied and pasted text, figures, ideas, etc, with occasionally inadequate citations - kinda like Wikipedia! Then again, they are just for internal use and self-improvement.

Research Success and Career Planning

Attach:choosingProblems.png Δ Towards Successful Research? focusses on the core questions for doing good science. While we forget too frequently that the ability of choosing good research problems is the most important ability. Obviously, we all have more incremental ideas, bigger advances and giant leaps than any of us can follow (if that's not the case at the end your Ph.D. or during your Post-Doc, then Science is not the right place for you). Figuring out whether to follow an unattainable big dream or an incremental step may be crucial for your success.

Attach:scientificCareer.png Δ Towards an Academic Career summarizes the post-doc tutorials by Jan Peters given to the other post-docs in his lab. It starts with objectives and research agendas goes over career paths and ends up with applications, typical questions during interviews, etc. This tutorial is aimed at postdocs but a possible read for senior Ph.D. students within a year of their graduation. The tutorial is aimed at top notch researchers but not project managers (Note: Junior Ph.D. students should not read it as these tips will distract them from their key next steps without which they would merely become some 3rd class funding collectors).

Rules Of Career Making A series of tips provided by Jan Peters for postdocs about to make their next career move.

ProfessorOrPostDocJobTalk The best advice for a job talk that I have...

Writing Abilities and Publishing

Attach:goodWriting.jpeg Δ The Paper Writing Guide: Your ideas will have little impact, no matter how good the research is, if they are not communicated effectively! The following lessons were extremely helpful for me and they may be for you as well? Use them as guideline for writing your next publication. Paper writing requires several highly different skills. This first part of the writing tutorials takes care of the process of creating a document that successfully carries a scientific point home (i.e., a paper, ideally a journal article or at least an ERA A+ conference paper) and how this part is integrated into your daily research life.

Attach:there_was_a_guide.jpg Δ Guiding by example: A guide for superficial people to make their papers look like they actually care.

Attach:WritingStyle.png Δ Write With Style Guide: Paper writing relies on another set of abilities, i.e., the key technical skills for good writing, good typesetting and good English. While there are very clear right and wrongs, many people remain ignorant about correct writing. As a result, their papers become less pleasant to read and will have less impact. They are also less likely to get accepted as reviewers feel the right and wrongs right away even if they cannot name them. As a result, this tutorial focusses on conveying these key skills.

Attach:WritingChecklist.jpeg Δ Writing Checklist: Obviously, the number of rights and wrongs is endless. Nevertheless, in this checklist, we try to summarize the key checks which you need to do before you submit a paper. These include trivial things, e.g., proof-reading and spell check, but also remind you on crucial components which not everybody is aware of, e.g., typesetting and English issues. These issues appear all the time but are not treated sufficiently. Note that this checklist is not the mother of all checklists but just a starting point! Making the mistakes listed here may result in you being crucified by Jan, Geri, or any other postdoc.

Future sections may include: