phd research journal

The Savvy Scientist

Experiences of a London PhD student and beyond

Where to Publish Your PhD Research: Choosing a Journal

This post continues our series about publishing your first paper . We have already covered considerations for when and what you may want to publish. Now for the fun one: deciding where to publish your PhD research.

Choosing where to publish is probably the most contentious question in academia. I hope this post helps with your decision making!

Considerations for where to publish your PhD research

The main reason to publish anything in academia should come down to wanting to help progress the field and provide insights which could be used to inform future research. For an in-depth look into this and other reasons for publishing your PhD research, see the full post here .

No matter your reasons for publishing, it makes sense to aim for a journal which will enable as many researchers who could be interested in your work to see it. In reality though, other factors may come into play which could impact your choice of journal. These include:

• What is the journal’s average response time?
• Does the journal publish many papers using similar methods and techniques to yours? See the Appropriateness section further down the page for more details.
• Is the submission process simple? Would submission there require loads of formatting which is only relevant to that one journal?
• Will relevant researchers in your field see it?
• What does it cost to publish there?
• Are you only interested in publishing to help researchers or do you want kudos? Publishing in a certain journey may help boost your career prospects if you’re staying in research.
• How difficult is it to get something published there?

The choice of where to publish typically comes down to three main factors:

Journal prestige and impact factor

Relevance to the audience.

• Appropriateness for your study design

Let’s get this out the way first: researchers can be snobby about journals!

Disregarding the actual content of your study, successfully getting something published in a prestigious journal can become an accolade in and of itself.

The idea is that getting something accepted in a high tier journal signals the quality of the work. On the flip side, if something is published in a journal no one has heard of, questions may be raised of how rigorous the review process was.

Publishing in a prestigious journal of course can bring kudos to you and your co-authors and look great on a CV, but does it actually make your research any better?

A journal only accepts papers that are within its scope, that is to say that they’re relevant to the audience. Yet, aiming for a top journal won’t necessarily mean that the highest amount of relevant researchers will necessarily see it.

How do researchers actually find papers?

Some of the main ways people find papers are as follows:

• Reading the actual journal , either in paper form or online. Speaking to academics you’ll often find that there are a few key journals they regularly check for new research in their field.
• Searching for relevant papers as part of your literature search. Using tools such as Google Scholar or Web of Science.
• Setting up automated alerts for certain topics, keywords or researchers. I do this and get an email every time something new is published in the area.

Clearly not everyone reading your work will find it through the journal itself. I myself rarely browse a journal and instead mostly rely on method 2 to find papers relevant to my research. Even so the journal can still matter:

My experience: Ultimately the reputation of a journal can still play a part in how many people will actually read your article, no matter how researchers find it. I’ve worked with researchers who won’t read an article if they don’t recognise (or have had a bad experience with) a certain journal. This is pretty understandable with the rise of sketchy predatory journals and the numbers of journals constantly increasing, making it difficult to work out which ones even carry out solid peer-review.

One useful measure which researchers will often turn to for an initial assessment of a journal, and the papers it publishes, is impact factor.

Journal Impact Factor

What is impact factor.

The impact factor of a journal is a metric which demonstrates the number of citations that papers in the journal typically receive over a given period, usually two or five years. You can see how to calculate it over on Wikipedia .

Impact factor is a very quick way to assess journals. If the impact factor is very low, it likely means that either no one is reading the research or they don’t find it useful in progressing the field.

Papers which get cited many times indicate a lot of research activity and impact in the research community. Therefore journals which publish the kinds of paper receiving a lot of attention are indicative of high impact research.

How do you find the impact factor of a journal?

You can usually find the impact factor for a journal displayed prominently somewhere on its website. For example here is the homepage for the Journal of Orthopaedic Research :

If it’s not on the homepage, it may be on the ‘About’ page. If it’s not there I’d go back to my search engine ( Ecosia ) and likely end up finding it on Wikipedia.

What’s important to highlight is that constituents a “good” impact factor varies by research field. It’s not really appropriate to compare the impact factor of journals you’re trying to publish in with a friend if they work in a different discipline. What you can do though is compare the journal to others in the same field, which brings us on to quartiles:

Journal Quartiles

Research activity differs between fields, which plays a part in how many citations a paper will typically achieve.

My experience: I used to work in anaesthetics research. There are very few academic departments even researching anaesthetics. Looking up the impact factor of top anaesthetics journals, none look impressive because there simply isn’t much activity and therefore new papers coming out of the field!

A useful metric to judge the quality of journals is to determine which quartile a given journal sits within relative to all other journals in that field. Q1 journals mean that they’re in the top 25% highest impact for that field. Q2 journals sit between 25-50% and so on.

This means that a given journal may not appear active compared to other fields, but could actually be one of the best within your field.

How do you find out which quartile a journal sits in?

Use the SJR to compare journals in a given field. Shown below are the results for journal Marine Chemistry .

The big green box at the top shows that the journal is consistently in the top quartile across four fields:

Don’t be demoralised if even the top journals in your field have a relatively low impact factor.

What is important is that you’re trying to make your work high impact within your own field. That is what quartiles can demonstrate. You put yourself in a strong position if you’re trying to publish in Q1 journals in your field, no matter the impact factor.

My experience: When I was applying for PhDs, my soon-to-be supervisor instructed me to highlight in my application the quartiles of papers I’d co-authored. Without doing so, anyone unfamiliar with the field can’t easily assess the potential quality of the journal and therefore the potential impact of my research contribution.

Impact factor and quartiles are useful, but are not the only factors to consider.

Want your work to be highly cited? It is possible that a lower impact journal, which is highly targeted to your specialism, could get your article read by more people who are likely to build on and reference your work.

Your choice of journal will, to a certain degree, dictate the audience who will see your paper. One of the main factors to consider is the type of journal:

Specialist vs Multi-Disciplinary Journals

There are two main types of journals. The first type are journals which serve a specialist field, for example Cancer or Additive Manufacturing .

These journals will often be the obvious target for your research, particularly if you’re working neatly in one field. This means that the people who are most likely to want to implement your findings can easily find it.

Other types of journals exist which are not targeted to a certain field. These instead accept a much wider spectrum of research. Examples include: PLOS One and Nature Scientific Reports .

You could chose to publish in a multi-disciplinary journal if your work:

• Covers work across several fields and wouldn’t neatly fit into a specialised journal
• May be widely applied and would be of interest to researchers across multiple fields

Of course at the top of the tree for multi-disciplinary journals are the likes of Nature , Science and the Lancet . The work published in these journals is usually very high impact and attracts huge readerships.

Even so, your work won’t necessarily always be seen by researchers working in your area of research. This could in fact decrease potential citations if you don’t explicitly spell out the potential impact and applications of your research.

Special Issues

Every so often journals will publish Special Issues which focus on a certain topic. For example here are the recent special issues for Cell :

If you can find a special issue which relates closely to your work you’re in a great position:

• You stand a better chance than usual of it being accepted, because the editor will better appreciate your work.
• Readers will already be primed for your work since they are very interested in the sub-field. As such, special issues will usually receive a higher average number of citations compared to standard issues in the journal.

My experience: Recently I published two papers in the same special issue of a journal. The special issue theme related very closely with a lot of my PhD so was an ideal target. Do be aware that unlike with normal paper submission, you’ll be working towards a publishing deadline for that specific journal issue. If you submit your work pretty late in the publishing window (like I did), you might be working to pretty tight deadlines which can become stressful, trust me!

Just been requested to make major revisions to a paper and been given 10 days to get them done. Last time I got major revisions for a paper we had 60 days! We can ask for an extension but wondered @AcademicChatter is this short turnaround time common? — Jeff Clark (@savvy_scientist) August 10, 2020

You can find calls for special issues on the journal website or by following researchers in your field on social media.

Appropriateness of your study

This final point isn’t always as relevant as the others, but is worth considering. Effectively, the type of work you do, and associated study designs, may not always be appropriate for certain journals.

For example if you do computational modelling, even if your work is very relevant to a field perhaps you don’t have much chance publishing in a certain journal if they don’t usually accept that kind of work. In my field there is a journal that practically requires the inclusion of in vitro work for a paper to be considered.

The journal website will typically include a page detailing the kinds of topics they’ll publish:

This doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about what is acceptable in terms of methods, study design and experimentation though. For that I suggest looking at previously accepted papers. This will give a flavour of what is required to get accepted into a certain journal.

My advice for deciding where to publish your PhD research

Where are similar papers published.

If you don’t already have a journal in mind, think of the papers which relate most to your work: where were they published? The field may well have developed since then, so also look at recent related papers and see where they’re published too. These are usually great journals to consider submitting your paper to, since they publish related research.

Put together a list of potential journals

Once you’ve got an idea of potential journals, write a list in preferential order. Where would you most like your paper to be accepted?

Typically when putting together an ordered list of potential journals to submit work to, a researcher may first start with a submission to the one with the highest impact factor (typically the most prestigious) and then work their way down the list if they get rejected.

My experience: I’ve had three first author papers accepted from my PhD, and another is currently under review. Of the three which have been accepted, two were accepted at the first choice journal and the other was accepted at the second choice. The one which is still under review is at its third journal and still isn’t accepted! Try to not be afraid of rejection, and certainly don’t take it personally!

Consider aiming high

You can always try your luck at a higher impact journal than other similar papers. Even though it may be more competitive, if it doesn’t take long to try it may be worth a shot, especially if your paper can be easily adapted to fit the journal’s formatting requirements.

My experience: In my field, most of the top journals have impact factors of 3, 4 or at most 5. Earlier this year I sent something to Nature Biomedical Engineering which has a much wider scope and an impact factor of over 17. The paper was rejected but from submission the decision only took a week. This isn’t a lot of time to lose if you think your paper stands a chance of acceptance. I was disappointed but at least we could move on quickly.

Stay positive

I appreciate that working out where to publish your PhD research can be overwhelming, especially for your first paper. It is worth persevering, trust me!

In relation to prestige, if you’re working in a field where the typical impact factor of a journal isn’t particularly high, please don’t get at all discouraged if you’re tempted to compare it to friends in other disciplines. I personally know I’m unlikely to publish in any of the very highest impact journals ( with my research anyway) , but that doesn’t mean I don’t do useful research!

It’s always worth remembering that the reason we’re trying to publish is to get our research out into the world. This helps to inform further research and helps to progress the field .

Best of luck!

I hope you found this article in the publishing series useful. Next in the series we’ll be putting together a first draft. If you have any feedback please do let me know.

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Research Article

Using stakeholder insights to enhance engagement in PhD professional development

Contributed equally to this work with: Deepti Ramadoss, Amanda F. Bolgioni

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation School of Medicine Office of Graduate Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Medical Sciences & Education, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Office of Graduate Education, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Resources, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology and School of Graduate Studies, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Validation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Association of American Medical Colleges, Washington, D.C., United States of America

Roles Software, Visualization, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Graduate School, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States of America

• Deepti Ramadoss, 
• Amanda F. Bolgioni, 
• Rebekah L. Layton, 
• Janet Alder, 
• Natalie Lundsteen, 
• C. Abigail Stayart, 
• Jodi B. Yellin, 
• Conrad L. Smart, 
• Susi S. Varvayanis

• Published: January 27, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191
• See the preprint
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

There is increasing awareness of the need for pre- and post-doctoral professional development and career guidance, however many academic institutions are only beginning to build out these functional roles. As a graduate career educator, accessing vast silos and resources at a university and with industry-partners can be daunting, yet collaboration and network development are crucial to the success of any career and professional development office. To better inform and direct these efforts, forty-five stakeholders external and internal to academic institutions were identified and interviewed to gather perspectives on topics critical to career development offices. Using a stakeholder engagement visualization tool developed by the authors, strengths and weaknesses can be assessed. General themes from interviews with internal and external stakeholders are discussed to provide various stakeholder subgroup perspectives to help prepare for successful interactions. Benefits include increased engagement and opportunities to collaborate, and to build or expand graduate career development offices.

Citation: Ramadoss D, Bolgioni AF, Layton RL, Alder J, Lundsteen N, Stayart CA, et al. (2022) Using stakeholder insights to enhance engagement in PhD professional development. PLoS ONE 17(1): e0262191. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191

Editor: Sina Safayi, Rush University Medical Center, UNITED STATES

Received: August 14, 2021; Accepted: December 20, 2021; Published: January 27, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Ramadoss et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: De-identified data is made available in accordance to IRB approved protocols. These file are available from the Open Science Framework (OSF) database (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/24SNV ).

Funding: This work was supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Guidance for Trainees [CGT025] ( https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bwfund.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cdeepti.ramadoss%40pitt.edu%7C70f047ae361445cf2e1b08d9c5d2fb33%7C9ef9f489e0a04eeb87cc3a526112fd0d%7C1%7C0%7C637758333513545052%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=LCoaETVuHImoupB%2FEQCCp%2BTS%2BZaReZm9FBmcRHfkSTU%3D&reserved=0 ) (DR), National Institutes of Health [DP7OD020322] ( https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nih.gov%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cdeepti.ramadoss%40pitt.edu%7C70f047ae361445cf2e1b08d9c5d2fb33%7C9ef9f489e0a04eeb87cc3a526112fd0d%7C1%7C0%7C637758333513545052%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=zijFvu9h2EVOjSfrvYuZqWGM47CaHA1rE7P%2BVc4Pah0%3D&reserved=0 ) and Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Career Guidance for Trainees [1018849] ( https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bwfund.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cdeepti.ramadoss%40pitt.edu%7C70f047ae361445cf2e1b08d9c5d2fb33%7C9ef9f489e0a04eeb87cc3a526112fd0d%7C1%7C0%7C637758333513545052%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=LCoaETVuHImoupB%2FEQCCp%2BTS%2BZaReZm9FBmcRHfkSTU%3D&reserved=0 ) (AFB); National Institutes of Health [DP7OD020317] https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nih.gov%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cdeepti.ramadoss%40pitt.edu%7C70f047ae361445cf2e1b08d9c5d2fb33%7C9ef9f489e0a04eeb87cc3a526112fd0d%7C1%7C0%7C637758333513545052%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=zijFvu9h2EVOjSfrvYuZqWGM47CaHA1rE7P%2BVc4Pah0%3D&reserved=0 ) and National Institute of General Medical Sciences [1-R01GM140282-01] ( https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nigms.nih.gov%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cdeepti.ramadoss%40pitt.edu%7C70f047ae361445cf2e1b08d9c5d2fb33%7C9ef9f489e0a04eeb87cc3a526112fd0d%7C1%7C0%7C637758333513545052%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=Ov7fbmaQgul6IdBM3NMR8ucsBwBkBCOHjkcqqbt6LLs%3D&reserved=0 ) (RLL); National Institutes of Health [1DP7OD020314] ( https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nih.gov%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cdeepti.ramadoss%40pitt.edu%7C70f047ae361445cf2e1b08d9c5d2fb33%7C9ef9f489e0a04eeb87cc3a526112fd0d%7C1%7C0%7C637758333513545052%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=zijFvu9h2EVOjSfrvYuZqWGM47CaHA1rE7P%2BVc4Pah0%3D&reserved=0 ) (JA); University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences ( https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/education/graduate-school/ ) (NL); National Institutes of Health [DP7OD020316] ( https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nih.gov%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cdeepti.ramadoss%40pitt.edu%7C70f047ae361445cf2e1b08d9c5d2fb33%7C9ef9f489e0a04eeb87cc3a526112fd0d%7C1%7C0%7C637758333513545052%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=zijFvu9h2EVOjSfrvYuZqWGM47CaHA1rE7P%2BVc4Pah0%3D&reserved=0 ) (CAS); National Institutes of Health [DP7OD18425] ( https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nih.gov%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cdeepti.ramadoss%40pitt.edu%7C70f047ae361445cf2e1b08d9c5d2fb33%7C9ef9f489e0a04eeb87cc3a526112fd0d%7C1%7C0%7C637758333513545052%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=zijFvu9h2EVOjSfrvYuZqWGM47CaHA1rE7P%2BVc4Pah0%3D&reserved=0 ) (SSV) The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Institutions of higher education hold myriad potential connections between pre- and post-doctoral researchers, faculty and administrators, internal university offices, industry partners, professional societies, and funding organizations. Internal university partnerships are vital, ranging from pre- and post-doctoral researchers and university faculty, to externally-facing communications and alumni development offices. University career and professional development (CPD) programs also develop and rely on external partnerships, particularly with programming and resources designed for pre- and post-doctoral researchers. While CPD programs understand that these partnerships improve the pre- and post-doctoral training experience, provide pipelines for entry of pre- and post-doctoral researchers into the workforce, and lead to synergies and collaboration, the full value of these relationships may not be completely understood to internal and external partners. Our work explores the foundational value of internal and external intersections and how to best leverage them to prepare pre- and post-doctoral researchers for the workforce. The aim is to more efficiently and successfully coordinate relationships that meet all stakeholders’ needs with a more thorough understanding of stakeholder objectives and the relative value of engagements.

This project is a spinoff of the National Institutes of Health Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training–NIH BEST [ 1 ] Consortium’s Annual Meeting, in 2018. The Consortium (funded 2013–2019) was comprised of programs at 17 higher education institutions challenged by the NIH to develop innovative approaches to prepare pre- and post-doctoral researchers for a wide range of careers in the biomedical research enterprise. The Consortium’s final Annual Conference (in 2018) explicitly invited collaborations, presentations, and conversations through joint programming with institutions beyond the Consortium–ranging from well-established pioneer pre- and post-doctoral professional development program institutions to newer and aspiring institutional programs interested in establishing professional development programs, as well as external private and non-profit collaborators. This research project emerged from the massively audacious goal identified by and adopted by the Blue Sky Visioning Mastermind Group that “all pre- and post-doctoral scholars have support and resources needed to explore and pursue all careers, and faculty and institutional leadership buy in to the importance of this mission.”

The goals of this publication are to bring awareness within the higher education community about various stakeholders that commonly engage with graduate CPD, shed light on stakeholder perceptions of career development and engagement, broaden the composition of engaged collaborations, and provide engagement tools. This information can help institutions and individuals quickly self-assess and visualize strengths/opportunities with stakeholders for the purposes of CPD at their institution, and, over the long-term, build stronger relationships and partnerships.

Defining stakeholders

The authors quickly realized that to attain their goal, a broad set of stakeholders would need to be consulted. Informed by the authors’ experience in industry relations and engaging with higher education, stakeholders were identified, classified, prioritized, and consolidated into a rapid tool for stakeholder engagement (see Methods ). Table 1 displays internal and external stakeholder classification groups and subgroups: internal stakeholders include pre- and post-doctoral researchers, faculty/administrators, and external-facing staff; external stakeholders include non-profit and society partners and industry employers. Each stakeholder subgroup was approached with a specific set of questions to explore their perceptions of graduate career education and professional development, as well as their motivations for engaging with any of the other stakeholder groups, ultimately seeking advice for how to best engage them in CPD programming. Descriptions of desirable and required skills, as well as resources to share with pre- and post-doctoral researchers were sought.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.t001

Internal stakeholders.

The group that receives the most frequent focus from CPD professionals includes pre- and post-doctoral researchers. Fostering stakeholder engagement from pre- and post-doctoral researchers is critical for providing effective programming [ 2 ]. CPD programs less frequently look beyond pre- and post-doctoral researchers to engage a full spectrum of university stakeholders within their own ecosystem.

Foremost among them is the faculty. Data from the BEST Consortium indicated that a large majority of faculty are supportive of career training for various careers and have recognized that pre- and post-doctoral researchers participating in CPD activities were happier and making timely progress toward degree completion–a fact that can be used to recruit additional internal stakeholder engagement from faculty [ 3 – 5 ]. Faculty don’t always believe they have the knowledge or resources to assist pre- and post-doctoral researchers whose career interests lie outside academia, although they largely support their career pursuits [ 5 – 8 ]. Promoting transparency, encouraging the normalized need for career support, and recommending conversations to initiate CPD coaching will help bridge some knowledge and awareness gaps.

In addition to partnerships with internal communications, environmental health and safety, or research support offices for experiential opportunities, identifying internal collaborators with external-facing roles has the potential to reduce the need to develop de novo program components, to seed ideas that leverage each other’s networks and knowledge domains, and to overcome common roadblocks [ 9 ]. Cost-sharing on resources and events are an added benefit for engaging with internal partners (including student leaders) and opens doors for pre- and post-doctoral researchers to engage in on-campus job shadowing and internship opportunities for experiential learning [ 2 , 9 , 10 ]. Collaborations with alumni relations and development offices can dramatically expand the network of potential speakers and mentors [ 11 ]; it can also lead to coordinated fundraising campaigns for CPD initiatives. Moreover, establishing relations with other internal partners with external-facing roles in industry or federal relations, technology transfer, licensing, or research commercialization can amplify the skill sets of pre- and post-doctoral researchers seeking experiential learning opportunities in real-world settings [ 10 ].

External stakeholders.

Efforts of career development professionals must simultaneously be internally and externally focused to fully understand the skills current pre- and post-doctoral researchers need to execute an informed transition into careers of their choice [ 12 ]. In addition, external focus identifies potential employers to build pipelines for these researchers, attract funding sources, access training opportunities to support their CPD, and increases visibility and accessibility of the resources offered by CPD programs. External stakeholders include partners and employers as seen in Table 1 . The categorizations in Table 1 are based on how CPD practitioners primarily interact with each group but can overlap with other categories, as many partners are also employers.

Stakeholders in external groups such as industry, non-profits and government agencies, including professional societies and associations, have long partnered with academia in disseminating research and technical training. They increasingly offer skill-building and career development opportunities via conferences and webinars to assist current pre- and post-doctoral researchers in the career selection process. Additionally, societies acknowledge multiple career options and wield positional influence to support culture change within academia.

A primary function of CPD programs is to strengthen the future workforce by preparing pre- and post-doctoral researchers for interaction with external stakeholders , ultimately, future employers. Therefore, the foci of these outward-facing efforts should be strategic to broaden networks and facilitate connections. Engaging external employer stakeholders in networking events, site visits, job shadowing, internships and panel discussions makes it possible for pre- and post-doctoral researchers to explore and test-drive various PhD careers [ 9 , 10 , 13 ]. This study provides what we hope are useful tools and insights to address all types of stakeholder engagement.

Stakeholder identification and engagement

Study design..

This study is intended as an exploration of a field, and an opportunity to observe emerging phenomena. The research team identified both internal and external stakeholder groups relevant to graduate CPD programs in order to further identify values that each stakeholder places upon bidirectional interactions to advance CPD for pre- and post-doctoral researchers. Common themes were identified through open-ended questions and unanticipated value propositions to develop potential approaches for improving interactions and methods of engagement between the university and potential partner organizations.

Data collection.

Interviews offer a rich and robust capture of perspectives [ 14 ], providing in depth, open-ended responses and opportunity for dialogue between researcher and participant. Single-interaction, semi-structured interviews, conducted either in-person (before COVID-19), by phone, or online via Zoom, were used with standardized questions and optional probing follow-up questions as needed (see S1 File for complete interview question list). Once core questions were established, subsets of parallel but slightly amended questions relevant to each stakeholder group were developed. Due to privacy concerns, neither recording nor transcriptions were requested/approved for human subjects. Instead, interviewers took digital or manual live notes. In all interviews, verbal consent was sought from participants.

Recruiting/access to and selection of participants.

Selection criteria for interview subjects were designed to be representative of identified stakeholder groups, with an initial goal of including 5–6 individual interview participants per stakeholder subgroup. External stakeholders initially included industry and non-profit/societies grouped together, but after the first few interviews, the research team discussed the difference in themes that arose from these interviews and arrived at the consensus to classify them as two distinct groups. Therefore, additional participants were recruited to ensure there were 5–6 participants for each of these subgroups.

Potential participants were identified by several means: by each interviewer independently, based on individuals known to the interviewers; referrals within and across the authors’ networks; or vetted Google searches. The invitation selection process considered a broad variety of types of organizations or groups based on stakeholder classification (see Table 1 ) and identified a sampling of individuals within a particular subgroup that included variety in perceived support for the premise, academic disciplinary background, education level, as well as across social identity categories including gender, race/ethnicity, and international status. Other factors considered included leadership/experience level, tenure in respective organizations, and any experience or interest in working at the interface of professional/career development for varying purposes. This background was not known for all and some were purposefully naïve or underexposed to CPD initiatives in higher education. A review of prospective participants’ general characteristics served to uncover similarities or duplications. Efforts were made to ensure that a variety of types of organizations were represented in each subgroup.

Conducting interviews.

Once selected, prospective participants were invited by email to participate in a short 15-20-minute interview. The template invitation (see S2 File ) included a brief script of the study’s purpose and description, plus an overview of the questions to be asked. Interviewer and participant found a mutually convenient time and format (in-person, phone, or video conference call).

After identifying stakeholder groups and subgroups (see Table 1 and Discussion for the importance of flexibility and refinement), four interviewers conducted a total of 45 stakeholder interviews (of 55 invitations). Themes were collected separately for the groups that used the same sets of questions to differentiate responses (i.e. pre- and post-doctoral researchers versus faculty and administrators, external partners versus employers). Following the first round of interviews, one group had a higher sample size than the others, therefore, to keep group numbers roughly equal, target recruitment goals were updated to a minimum of eight interviews per subgroup (see S1 Table ).

Data analysis and interpretation/validity.

A multi-stage process was used for data analysis and interpretation, including sorting of sensitizing concepts [ 15 ], and analysis and reduction of data through application of grounded theory [ 16 , 17 ], leading to the identification of emergent themes, hierarchical grouping, and concept categorization. One member of the research team who did not conduct any interviews was designated as coder. The coder and each individual interviewer reviewed and ’binned’ potential initial themes emerging from keywords and phrases, and separated text into categories using paraphrased concepts or the original words from each participant into each row of a spreadsheet with category column headings. This ongoing collaborative synthesis of data and collection of emergent themes contributed to the iterative data reduction and display process, including a process of contrast/comparison, and noting patterns and themes [ 18 ].

At the conclusion of coding of each interview, coder and interviewer reviewed the initial data-sorting and ’binning’ to ensure themes were appropriate and consistent with participant intent. With each subsequent interview within a stakeholder group ( internal , external ) and subgroup, themes were refined; new ’bins’ were created if the participant’s comments did not fit into an existing bin. If a response fit into two themes, then they were placed in both bins and coded as repeated. A second text review after all interviews were complete was conducted by the coder, with all authors working collaboratively in a process to establish inter-rater reliability. The team appraised the interviews in the larger context to make sure the original interview notes and emergent themes were not in conflict, still represented participant viewpoints, and to catch any themes missed in the first review. A final complete review by all authors prior to summation repeated this process through robust group discussion and collaborative decision-making [ 19 ]. All final themes and comments were reviewed and consolidated to assure researcher agreement on the accuracy of the themes and statements were selected to represent each theme.

Unique themes found in interview text were highlighted and reported as representative themes that arose when multiple instances of each theme occurred within a stakeholder subgroup.

Subjectivity/ethical issues/limitations.

All interviews were conducted by researchers who are professionals in higher education (e.g., program directors, associate directors, assistant deans) strongly invested in CPD for pre- and post-doctoral researchers (within offices of graduate education, postdoctoral affairs, CPD programs, evaluation). All interviewers are professionally full-time employed women in the US, and the study team included US and international interviewers, both people of color, Asian, and White.

The possibility of selectivity bias exists, in opinions or stories shared by participants based on their roles, and in the selection of participants within individuals’ networks tending toward supporters of graduate CPD. To attain a balanced view of various stakeholder subgroup perspectives as well as in recruiting participants, three methods were used to avoid compounding selectivity bias: 1) a semi-structured interview style with pre-selected questions (see Recruiting). 2) explicit recruitment of “nay-sayers” as well as “supporters” of university/organizational partnerships and graduate career training. 3) Online searches to identify further participants beyond known networks (e.g. Google), as well as searches and requests to members of known networks (e.g. LinkedIn) to suggest individuals the authors had no previous connection to, who might not be interested in or knowledgeable specifically about graduate professional development, but were in positions related to industry-university engagement activities. Each interviewer conducted interviews with individuals they knew and those they had never met, from offices or organizations they were familiar with and those with which they had no prior knowledge. Specific inclusion of the question, “Do you follow the national conversation about career development and outcomes of PhD-trained scientists?” helped determine their level of awareness of the subject matter. Nonetheless, the authors recognize the need to interpret findings with caution and that they will not represent all possible viewpoints. The results should be viewed as pilot data to inform additional research.

All participants provided oral informed consent. Participant names are anonymized using pseudonyms and all data is de-identified prior to sharing in accordance with IRB approved protocols (Rutgers–FWA00003913 Study ID Pro2020222400; PittPRO STUDY19110306-I4; UNC IRB# - 19–3054; Boston University H-40210). Note that the pseudonyms were randomly assigned and their perceived ethnicity or gender is not intended to represent the individual participant. Any correlation with a theme and gender, race or ethnicity is purely coincidental. Demographics were gathered at the last step to fill in post-analysis to prevent unconscious bias or revealing of identity or demographics of any participant. In detailed results in S3 File , only pseudonyms are used, using the code in S2 Table .

Stakeholder engagement tool

The authors observed a gap between the perceived awareness of the variety of stakeholders and the ability to assess and capitalize on strengths of potential existing partnerships with internal and external stakeholders . To help rapidly assess the two, a tool was created. During the development of the stakeholder engagement tool, categories were refined based on discussion among the authors, their combined experiences working with various stakeholders, as well as a two-way influence of the interview process (the tool influencing the interviews, and the stakeholder perspectives from the interviews influencing refining the tool).

The authors first debuted the tool publicly during interactive workshops at sequential meetings of the 2020 international conference hosted by the Graduate Career Consortium. Input from conference attendees participating in that workshop helped question previous assumptions and helped to better describe how users would customize the tool.

Use of the stakeholder engagement tool.

STEP 1: With your unit or collaborators, create a list of stakeholders—start with the suggested categories (see Table 2 below) and customize for your institution & geographic area by entering your own labels to tailor to your institution. Try to be specific (i.e. don’t say ’alumni office’ but rather, ’alumni association of Boston’). You can further break these down into lists of names and contact info. Note that engaging with naysayers/agnostics can be as valuable as engaging with your supporters to identify blind spots and valuable alternative perspectives.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.t002

STEP 2: Based on your institutional knowledge, take one or two minutes with your team to quickly rank your perceived level of engagement with the stakeholder groups in the first column. The authors encourage users to define their own Likert scale to calibrate the level of engagement or use the suggested Likert scale in Table 3 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.t003

For analysis and interpretation of the stakeholder engagement tool, see the Results section.

A total of 45 individuals were interviewed by four interviewers ( S1 Table ). Consenting participants consisted of both men (42.2%) and women (57.8%). Participant demographics included US (71.1%) and international (28.9%); African American (15.6%), Asian (17.8%), White (62.2%), and Hispanic (4.4%). Participants were geographically diverse across the US, with interviewers accessing their own networks primarily across the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest United States, but also extending geographic representation via national organization contacts and referrals.

Stakeholder organizations included public, private, and public-private hybrid institutions of higher education (some with medical schools); large and small companies in or serving the biotech, medtech or pharma industries; as well as foundations, non-profit organizations or business associations serving STEM fields. Major themes arising from each set of stakeholders are presented, with details available in S3 File .

Stakeholder 1 –Internal pre-doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers

Interviews ( S1 File ) probed attitudes towards devoting time to CPD. Responses from ‘frequent users’, ‘occasional users’, or ‘non-users’ of CPD programming were separated. Responses broadly had two flavors: support for CPD programs and their perceived benefits, or opportunities to improve ( Fig 1 ).

(a) Sankey diagram and (b) stacked bar graph representing the same data of the number of mentions for each theme representing benefits and challenges/opportunities to improve mentioned by frequent users, occasional users and non-users.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.g001

Support for and perceived benefits of CPD programs identified by pre- and post-doctoral researchers.

Pre- and post-doctoral researchers find CPD affects productivity in a positive way and allows for CPD programming users to get a broad overview of resources (12 mentions or 12 M). Community-building advantages of professional development activities, e.g. bridging researchers across labs was discussed (11 M), highlighting confidence-building, cultural, and gender-based inclusivity that these programs can provide via intentional conversations and making role models prominent. This aligns with findings of a sense of community among those attending CPD training, especially in cohort or mandatory participation models [ 2 ]. The benefit of networking activities with hiring managers and recruiters outside academia was underscored. Advantages such as exposure to different career paths, allowing for informed decision-making (6 M), embedded/required CPD training providing consistent support and messaging (6 M), and prestige for recruitment (4 M) were raised.

Challenges or opportunities to improve identified by pre- and post-doctoral researchers.

Pre- and post-doctoral researchers communicated their desire for consistent exposure to CPD activities throughout training (18 M). Centralized programming to equalize access to resources and institutionalize the concept of career development to facilitate faculty acceptance was viewed as necessary (5 M). Challenges around personal growth (4 M), and the express need for faculty permission (4 M) were identified.

For details, including representative comments for individual themes, see S3 File .

Stakeholder 2–Internal faculty and administrators

Participants answered the same questions as the pre- and post-doctoral researchers subgroup above ( S1 File ) focused on probing attitudes towards devoting time to CPD, and opinions of existing or hypothetical CPD opportunities. Themes that arose naturally divided participant responses into categories that were later identified as ‘enthusiastic supporter’, ‘cautious supporter’, and ‘non-supporter’ responses ( Fig 2 ).

(a) Sankey diagram and (b) stacked bar graph representing the same data of the number of mentions for each theme representing benefits and challenges/opportunities to improve mentioned by enthusiastic supporters, cautious supporters and non-supporters.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.g002

Perceived ‘benefits’ of CPD identified by faculty/administrators.

The benefits of CPD activities identified by faculty and administrators acknowledged evolving training requirements and climate (12 M), with comments ranging from requirements for training grant applications to how participation in these activities can improve mental health. Faculty and administrators acknowledged institutional peer pressure nationally among top tier universities to provide these opportunities, and that as educators, they believe there is an obligation to provide these experiences.

Enthusiastic supporters acknowledged the limited availability of faculty positions, and the value of transparency of workforce outcomes of alumni (9 M). Less supportive respondents believe that professional development is not related to graduate education, that it de-emphasizes academia as a career path, and that individuals who leave academia cannot return. Enthusiastic and cautious supporters noted valuable effects of CPD programming, such as promoting career planning and gaining professional skill sets (6 M), and improved reputation of graduate programs (3 M).

Challenges or opportunities to improve identified by faculty/administrators.

Multiple comments arose regarding early exposure to options, and the need for experiences tailored to each individual’s stage and priorities (17 M). Some faculty raised concerns and perceptions (13 M) such as the belief that CPD could be a distraction, and lengthen time-to-degree completion. Narrow definitions of professional development revolving only around academic skills (6 M) are among challenges observed by interviewees.

Stakeholder 3: External-facing staff (industry relations, tech transfer, communications, alumni relations and development)

Interviews with external-facing staff were guided by a different set of questions ( S1 File ). The goals of these questions were to identify with whom external-facing offices at institutions typically interacted, and around what topic(s) the majority of their interactions centered. While these offices are open to all institution affiliates, it is not known if the external contacts have an interest in STEM pre- and post-doctoral researchers.

Respondents in external-facing offices interact with small and large businesses and foundations (8 individuals), investors (4 individuals), alumni (3 individuals), inventors (2 individuals), and innovation centers (2 individuals). These respondents often wear several hats, and interact with many other affiliates and identities including experts, educators, presenters, business development and intellectual property professionals, an institution’s business school (e.g. on consulting projects), grateful patients, hospital systems, government, and professional organizations. It is of note that the themes below do not include a federal relations point of view ( Fig 3 ).

Bar graph representing the number of mentions of each theme.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.g003

Reasons to engage with industry identified by external-facing offices.

Bringing the voice of the market to academic research is a strong motivation for interactions between industry and academia (16 M). Building partnerships between the two (11 M) has several benefits such as fundraising, increasing awareness of internship programs, and co-creation of curriculum content, and furthermore, provides long-term relationships and resources. External-facing staff are motivated by the possibility of fundraising or financial support (10 M) for the institution, as well as the perceived benefit to pre- and post-doctoral researchers (4 M).

Reasons external stakeholders engage with academia identified by external-facing staff.

A recurring theme that emerged was the perceived interest of external stakeholders in early access to emerging technologies and innovations (18 M). External stakeholders are believed to be keen to assist in developing an entrepreneurial mindset (11 M), such as instilling skills to better serve both researchers and the workforce more broadly, with an external-facing staff member referring to a joint research brief on entrepreneurial mindset, Ernst & Young & Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship [ 20 ], and to reports published by the EU Commission [ 21 ] and World Economic Forum [ 22 ]. External-facing staff also identified external stakeholders’ keen desire to create connections to faculty expertise (8 M), to have a venue for talent identification (6 M), an interest in providing scholarships/grants, or to fund programs (5 M), and paying it forward by means of creating opportunities (3 M).

External stakeholders’ interest in STEM pre- and post-doctoral researchers identified by external-facing staff.

While STEM knowledge was discussed as important, business acumen and experience were deemed as the distinguishing features of a successful industry applicant (10 M). Creating an expertise or talent pipeline (10 M) motivates external companies to interact with external-facing offices at institutions. The mutual benefit to multiple stakeholders (10 M) and the desire to support student needs (4 M) are perceived to be the sustaining power of these relationships.

External-facing staff’s additional thoughts.

External-facing staff were eager to share suggestions for researchers to better prepare for their careers (11 M), such as being prepared to learn on the job independently, trusting critical thinking, and relying upon other transferrable skills developed in training. Based on their experience, external-facing staff provided suggestions regarding CPD programming, such as the need for new perspectives on training (6 M), ensuring one point of contact (4 M), and including an alumni engagement role (3 M).

Stakeholder 4: External partners–societies, foundations, non-profits

Interviews with societies, foundations, and non-profits indicated that there were many partnerships and exchanges of service through which they interact with academia including: networking and community building, providing resources for honing career skills, generating scholarship and publications, facilitating advocacy, providing feedback and advice, and creating funding opportunities.

Discussion with the stakeholders from societies, foundations and non-profits brought new themes to light. These highlight many available resources that are not always accessed by institutions. The most common reason societies, foundations, and non-profits provided for wanting to engage with academia was to build relationships to connect academics with the mission of their organization ( Fig 4 ).

Bar graph representing the number of mentions of each theme for themes mentioned 3 or more times.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.g004

External partner organizations’ engagement with academia.

Building relationships (16 M) was a large motivator for societies, foundations and non-profits to interact with academia, as is the prestige, recognition, and public visibility (8 M) that comes with interacting with prestigious academic institutions. This engagement is also seen as a catalyst for connections and knowledge (5 M).

Societies, foundations, and non-profits resources to offer.

Societies and foundations have several scientists on staff possessing a wide range of expertise and perspectives as a resource to offer (6 M), as well as varied online resources and guides (4 M), experiential learning opportunities (4 M), and self-exploration tools (2 M).

A few challenges faced by external partner organizations mentioned included limited funding (4 M), connecting with target audiences (3 M), and creating flexible, creative models along with the need for culture change (3 M).

External partner organizations’ view of career preparedness improvements.

The need for pre- and post-doctoral researchers to develop and broaden their skills and learning approach (11 M) was discussed frequently. Advice such as taking early initiative (8 M), improving self-efficacy and growth mindset (6 M), learning to listen with humanity and broaden diversity (4 M), making use of networking opportunities (2 M), and getting involved in professional societies (1 M) were provided, alongside the idea of defining one’s own success (1 M).

External partners’ view of engaging with academic institutions.

Non-profit and society stakeholders are keen to engage and disseminate their resources, and encourage institutions to coordinate on-campus visits (5 M), or organize for researchers to engage with them off campus (2 M). Some challenges discussed included the difficulty to integrate their offerings into training (2 M), their ability to engage at all levels with academic institutions (2 M), the perception that the wrong people make decisions regarding these partnerships (1 M), and the need for more industry mentors (1 M).

Stakeholder 5 –External employers–small and large companies, intellectual property firms, consultancies, accelerators

External employers interviewed for this study include representatives of large pharmaceutical, biotech, government or national labs, consulting firms, intellectual property firms, policy or communication organizations as well as small business/start-ups, accelerators and boutique consulting agencies.

Types of engagement already in place with universities include: recruiting events, career fairs, tours/site visits, case studies/workshops, serving on advisory boards for curriculum development, and internships. A key goal for this kind of engagement is to maintain relationships.

This representative sampling of interviews with external employer stakeholders revealed additional themes and underscored themes already brought to light in the previous interviews ( Fig 5 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.g005

Reasons why industry external stakeholders engage with academia.

Companies desire being involved in professional development programs, as it helps recruit and broaden their reach (8 M), and are keen to build long-term relationships (5M), often facilitated by an alumna/us acting as the liaison. There appears to be a need for bidirectional partnerships (4 M), and advisory and feedback roles (3 M).

Training and collaboration industry-academia partnership benefits.

The modes of interaction between industry and academia include alumni working with their alma mater (8 M). Increasing awareness of industry’s resources to develop academia’s complementary skills was discussed (6 M), as well as advice to pre-doctoral and post-doctoral researchers to learn industry-relevant skills (4 M), recalibrate what is considered important in job functions (3 M), and make use of grants and academic collaborations (3 M).

An important aside arose that if a company’s needs are already met, they admitted to not seeking out interactions with academia.

Differing priorities and organizational complexities–Challenges with industry.

Challenges to industry interactions with academia include distrust due to perceived differing values (5 M), as well as a lack of a single point of contact at academic institutions (3 M).

External industry employers’ views on challenges with pre- and post-doctoral researcher preparedness.

Understanding career options, industry culture, and priorities (8 M) are considered critical to being a successful industry applicant. The need for pre- and post-doctoral researchers to develop skills such as good communication (8 M), present experience and motivation appropriately to employers (7 M), and increase focus on relationship building and collaborations (5 M) are seen as crucial skills for success in industry. The need for faculty culture change (4 M) to improve CPD relationships with industry was also discussed.

How to encourage industry professionals to interact and visit campus.

Several companies are glad to visit or interact with academic institutions upon receiving invitations, ideally by pre-doctoral or post-doctoral researchers (6 M), while some prefer attending high-impact events (3 M), match-ups (3 M), or hosting site visits at the company (1 M). Industry representatives advise academic leaders to be open-minded to industry (3 M), and mention the challenge of limited time and resources to engage with academia (1 M).

The vast majority of large and small external employers interviewed were unaware of the national conversation about career development and outcomes of PhD-trained scientists.

Stakeholder engagement tool purpose, use, and opportunities for action

A stakeholder engagement tool was created for practitioners to rapidly assess and identify with which stakeholder group they are primed to interact most efficiently. The tool can help practitioners quickly focus on existing strengths at their institution on which they can rely, as well as on areas of improvement and possible links to approach stakeholders strategically. Coupled with the themes found in the interview data, a targeted approach can be developed to improve stakeholder engagement.

The stakeholder engagement tool is fully customizable to reflect local organizations with whom to partner and those that already might have existing relationships. A 360-degree view of perceived stakeholder engagement can be quickly determined by encouraging colleagues around campus to fill out the tool. The resulting scores will inform discussion across offices to see where perceptions align and where there might be differences in scores. Since the tool is quick and easy to use and automatically creates a visual output by summing scores in each quadrant of the ensuing graph (representing internal pre- and post-doctoral researchers, faculty/administrators; external-facing staff; external partners; and external employers) practitioners gain a quick, holistic view of their engagement.

To interpret the output of the stakeholder engagement tool, use the Excel file ( S5 File ; Note: Please download the Excel file to view proper format) which automatically sums each quadrant. The scores toward the left or right of the plot indicate areas of focus externally (right, blue and grey) or internally (left, orange and red). The top half of the plot reveals information on internal/external users (in orange and blue), the lower half on internal/external partners (in red and grey). The sums in each quadrant indicate the relative strength in each stakeholder group (top left: internal stakeholders such as graduate students or faculty; top right: external stakeholders such as employers; bottom left: internal partners such as licensing office; and bottom right: external partners such as professional societies).

This is a self-reflection tool to identify areas of individual network engagement and areas for potential development. The more the sectors are filled to the outside of the circle, the more perceived relative engagement there is. Based on how you define your Likert scale (see suggested scale in Methods ), the score for the relative engagement may reflect representation of stakeholders belonging to each group, as well as frequency and quality of interactions between stakeholders. For example, the CPD office may only have one or two stakeholders in a given stakeholder group, but you might meet with them often and they might be extremely influential and enthusiastic about supporting CPD programs for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Moreover, it is important to engage with and address the concerns of naysayers, as this will add value to overall CPD operations and help to launch more successful programming.

In the example ( Fig 6 ), the internal stakeholders are visually a strength, especially graduate students, and there appears to be room for increased engagement with certain external stakeholders such as intellectual property firms.

A rapid assessment tool for internal and external stakeholders to evaluate competencies and determine strengths for engagement in career and professional development programming. Detailed instructions for entering values are in Methods, and interpretation can be found in Results. [see S5 File to download and use the stakeholder engagement tool and view proper format: https://osf.io/fc27x/?view_only=b166987514234b718d8457778651534f ].

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.g006

There are three basic approaches to action as a result of filling out the stakeholder engagement tool.

• Evaluate competencies. Using this stakeholder engagement tool, start conversations in your group to identify a shared framework to address areas of strength and growth. Choose 1–3 areas to connect with stakeholders (some might be linked or be in one quadrant). Identify the decisions to be made and develop an action plan based on these linked competencies; for example, local companies and an accelerator/incubator might provide more opportunities around entrepreneurial career paths for postdocs.
• Identify challenge areas. Look at the chart to identify three barriers to potential growth in stakeholder engagement (lowest scores, to the inside of the circle). Low scoring areas should be evaluated for feasibility and potential actions to take (or non-relevancy). These areas might form the basis for discussion of methods to overcome challenges. Pay attention to challenges pertaining to diversity among stakeholder networks, and reflection of stakeholder diversity as it pertains to the trainee population, such as international/domestic participants, gender or gender identities, and race/ethnicity. For example, conversations with your industry relations office, national labs and a trade organization might spark ideas; perhaps there are no business/tech parks nearby so a virtual site visit might increase interactions.
• Map your strengths. In looking at the chart, identify three strengths (points reaching most to the outside of the circles). Look for strengths in each quadrant of users, internal/external partners, and employers. Identify key individuals in these areas and bring them together with your team to discuss next steps for engagement; for example, pre-doctoral researchers, career services and professional society representatives might meet to brainstorm ideas.

Common themes

When considering the diverse stakeholder groups, common themes emerged across the different internal and external groups. Themes that reappeared across the various stakeholders suggest that these topics should be priorities for CPD practitioners when attempting to engage broadly.

Individuals from all interviewed stakeholder groups recognized the value of CPD activities for pre- and post-doctoral researchers, despite different perspectives on similar concepts, with individual participants varying in levels of enthusiasm and commitment. For instance, there is a distinct need for CPD programs across stakeholder groups, who engage for varying reasons. Among internal stakeholders , most pre- and post-doctoral researchers believe these activities benefit their career growth, many faculty and administrators believe the programs strengthen researcher career development and benefit their mental health, and all external-facing offices are keenly aware of both the value to pre- and post-doctoral researchers and how these activities generate interest among external stakeholders . External partners and employers desire that researchers are well-prepared when entering the workforce, and encourage CPD programs to partner with them on program development. Notably, external partners develop many resources to aid CPD activities for pre- and post-doctoral researchers and encourage them to be involved and to use these resources.

Networking, making connections, partnering, and collaborating are seen as crucial aspects of CPD across all stakeholder groups. Pre- and post-doctoral researchers are interested in opportunities to build and grow their networks to help form their future careers, and faculty/administrators understand this to be critical to researcher development. Non-profits and foundations encourage non-prescriptive models for graduate learning, which could open the doors for more engagement across stakeholders, and industry partners offer assistance in developing programming and internship opportunities. Financial arrangements can be mutually beneficial: universities can benefit financially from industry interactions to support their research, and collaborative commercialization of research benefits industry. Additionally, external stakeholders are interested in connecting with academic institutions to have early access to emerging science and technology, develop partnerships to grow their own priorities, and build a talent pipeline. External employers also showed keen interest in collaborating with faculty, and recommend that academics engage with industry partners on joint publications to help highlight these partnerships in the media [ 23 ], and facilitate culture change regarding opinions on industry collaborations.

The timing and content of CPD activities was another important focal point with multiple subgroups (pre- and post-doctoral researchers, external-facing staff, external partners and employers) suggesting the need for integrated, persistent, embedded, and flexible access to these activities. In particular, pre- and post-doctoral researchers suggest that there is a need for consistent exposure to CPD throughout training, including by some infrequent users who believe that this programming should be woven into the curriculum for maximal benefit, as is common in professional schools. Historically, the common opinion was that pre- and post-doctoral researchers should focus on their careers after they complete their training, but this is not ideal as it delays the workforce pipeline [ 9 ]. In addition, some faculty stakeholders do not see the value of CPD activities and expressed some concern about the time their pre- and post-doctoral researchers dedicate to these activities. However, recent evidence-based research has shown that participation in internships, career development programming, K-12 outreach programs or IRACDA programs does not lead to increased time to degree or decreased productivity [ 3 , 24 – 26 ]. Pre- and post-doctoral researchers, faculty/administrators and external partners all noted the value of flexible programming to encourage pre- and post-doctoral researcher engagement. All stakeholders pointed to the need to remain informed about the needs of both researchers and the workforce when planning, designing, and executing CPD activities.

An important challenge identified by pre- and post-doctoral researchers, external-facing partners, and external stakeholders was the need to expand the purview of scientific training to include skill development for a variety of careers. Alongside this, these stakeholders comment on the challenge of normalizing CPD activities in the larger context of training, and the need to help academic leaders (e.g. faculty and administrators) understand that academic career preparation is only a part of CPD, and that other types of skill development are necessary, as they are complementary and important to the success of their pre- and post-doctoral researchers. For example, developing self-efficacy is extremely beneficial to researchers when approaching their CPD [ 2 , 27 ]. Relatedly, requiring faculty approval to participate in professional development activities can present a barrier to participation and reinforces the cultural stereotype that professional development is outside of the normal expected activities of a pre- and post-doctoral researcher. Despite federal agencies [ 28 ], clarifying that pre- and post-doctoral researchers’ skill development is critical, the concept of career exploration has not permeated to all faculty and administrators–it is evident that for successful CPD implementation, practitioners need to be active in outreach and engagement with internal faculty [ 5 , 9 ] and administrators. CPD offices should work to identify new strategies for conveying their services and value to develop faculty/administrator buy-in, e.g. more evidence-based research to convey the program’s benefits. Knowing the culture of local faculty and their attitudes toward CPD can help strategically design programs that will yield the highest number of participants [ 9 ].

Among other challenges discussed, one key challenge noted was the identification and implementation of streamlined methods to access or connect with the right resources or people. Pre- and post-doctoral researchers report struggling to identify resources at their institutions, suggesting the need for a centralized institutional CPD hub, while external-facing staff commented on not knowing the appropriate people within academic institutions with whom to connect their external contacts. External stakeholders recommend universities have a visible “one-stop shop”, to encourage external partners or employers to connect with them. Additionally, external stakeholders note that it is critical for a graduate career office to have strong engagement between past and present CPD practitioners, to ensure continuity of relationships with the various stakeholders.

A disconnect was revealed specifically for external stakeholders who are unaware of the national conversation about CPD activities, suggesting that practitioners at academic institutions should more frequently intermingle in industry settings and more broadly disseminate their findings to external stakeholders , perhaps at industry conferences.

The authors’ knowledge of internal stakeholders allowed them to engage with a spectrum of users of CPD services including frequent users, occasional users and non-users, as well as a range of faculty/administrators showing enthusiastic, cautious or no support for CPD activities. The variety of internal stakeholders interviewed resulted in valuable conversations to identify where CPD practitioners can improve. For example, pre- and post-doctoral respondent interviews cited requiring an increased awareness of their needs and purpose for engagement to better align existing CPD opportunities and guide new ones, while faculty/administrator interviews highlighted perceptions of CPD offices, identified concerns, collected suggestions on tailored experiences and exposures, and identified the need for clearly defined CPD. It appears valuable for CPD practitioners to have a clear understanding of internal stakeholders ’ needs and concerns to create effective programming. Simultaneously, university staff who engage with external stakeholders share similar interests to CPD offices that include supporting and giving advice to pre- and post-doctoral researchers. Hence collaborations with these partners can provide valuable external stakeholder perspectives.

In summary, common themes across all stakeholders are shown in S6 File . Many emerging common themes centered on a tailored approach to CPD programs. For example, while most stakeholders acknowledged the need for CPD, the desired timing and content of programming aligned with individual specific needs. This further accentuates the need for creating streamlined access, discussed by most stakeholders.

Stakeholder engagement

The stakeholder engagement tool was debuted at an international meeting of CPD practitioners to demonstrate how to evaluate and plot to extend their networks in a targeted and structured way. Feedback from university-based users included surprise to learn the number of partners that could be leveraged by sometimes small, understaffed offices tasked with serving large populations of graduate students and postdocs. Subsequently, the tool’s value was expanded to address diversifying not only the roles, sectors, and stakeholder groups existing within one’s network, but also who and which social identities or wide varieties of lived experiences were represented among those contacts. Newly identified partnerships across campus as well as in the local community were seen as options not previously considered, including (but not limited to; see S4 File for more examples) partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), as well as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), Latinx and other groups, serving those who have been historically excluded and underrepresented in science (e.g., persons excluded due to ethnicity or race [ 29 ]). Benefits cited by meeting attendees included the rapid ability to identify a wide variety of stakeholders with whom to work and partners to increase opportunities for their pre- and post-doctoral scholars.

An added value identified by participants was the quick analysis of potential barriers to growth in stakeholder engagement that could guide future discussions to overcome challenges. The tool was also cited as useful because it was designed for customization to each institutional setting, e.g. whether appropriate for recruiting industry partners in the local area if high density of contacts is available regionally, or fitting to explore ways to connect across a university that is a large, decentralized behemoth. Templates for how to reach out to potential partners were also reported to be useful. Of course, the tool is intended only as a first step in engaging stakeholders. More research and time investment is needed to determine the exact person to reach out to at various organizations if no existing partnerships exist, but the process is intentionally step-wise so that over time more stakeholders can be involved in CPD to benefit all parties. The tool serves as a way to focus on strengths of existing relationships, hone in on partners to include in discussions, or optimize outreach to spark new collaborations across stakeholders, rather than to identify specific challenge areas or strengths within a stakeholder group. We would advocate to first use the tool as a preliminary screen to identify which stakeholder categories to focus on. Informed by these themes identified through our interviews, CPD offices can then follow up with stakeholders to develop strong partnerships. Should the stakeholder engagement tool indicate that increased interactions with faculty or university administrators is warranted, that might stimulate conversations among CPD offices, department chairs and deans, to better inform faculty of the advantage of transferrable skills for all careers. These actions will help promote culture change in academia and reinforce awareness of the range of career options beyond academia available to PhDs.

CPD practitioners should consider engaging with both alumni and future employers as key stakeholders. Alumni are one of the most accessible external stakeholders for graduate career development work. The personal experience of alumni in the workforce provides critical input for assessing skills required by employers and to inform curriculum changes [ 2 , 9 , 12 ]. Furthermore, alumni connections are valuable for establishing external partnerships. Individual institutions vary in their ability to cultivate and engage alumni, influenced greatly by the existence of an alumni relations office with active engagement strategies, for example, social media sites and accessible directories [ 10 , 11 ].

Finally, the process of identifying external employer stakeholders as well as engagement opportunities should include strategic consideration of the location of the institution. For example, universities located in urban areas with a high concentration of biopharma companies might develop mechanisms to promote pre- and post-doctoral researchers’ biomedical expertise, valuable to local external stakeholders [ 10 , 30 ]. More isolated universities might organize a conference or trek to a more biotech-rich area [ 10 , 23 ].

Limitations and future directions

Faculty and administrators were sampled from a wide variety of roles, ranging from rank-and-file faculty; through departmental leadership such as Chairs, Associate Deans, and other leaders; through leaders in graduate and postdoctoral education such as Deans of Students. Nonetheless, we acknowledge the importance of identifying unique themes and perspectives that may arise for Provosts, Presidents, Chancellors, and other high-level university-wide leadership roles which are crucial to setting strategic aims, funding, and program priorities. The current sample did not include a large enough subset of high-level leaders to analyze the data separately, and future directions of research could include examining this group of administrators specifically.

External stakeholders were sampled from a variety of roles in industry and non-profit employers including small and large companies, intellectual property firms, consultancies, and accelerators. While this study did not specifically sample alumni as a stand-alone stakeholder group, some external stakeholder individuals (e.g., For-Profit, Non-Profit/Society) were incidentally alumni of the institutions represented. Still, we realize it is important to include the voice of recent PhD and postdoctoral alumni for their understanding of how their training affected their employability, how their industry sector views PhDs, and their retrospective views of their careers. This is especially of interest since they are role models for our current students and postdoctoral researchers, and are now potentially in hiring positions. Alumni are a very strong stakeholder group to engage with, as they are eager to give back to their institution, are invested in the institution, and directly experienced programs and the various stakeholders involved in the programs. Hence, investigating this stakeholder group would be extremely useful as a future research topic.

Further analyses that merit additional attention include examining unique themes arising through intersectional identity groups (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, international/domestic status, among others). Unfortunately, sample sizes within each stakeholder group were not large enough to examine these important differences; however, this is an important topic for additional work to consider.

Another useful future analysis would be to ask stakeholders to rank which challenges represent the biggest barriers, a function that was not queried in this study’s interviews. Such a ranking would assist CPD offices to prioritize resources to overcome challenges.

Though our research interviewed only people currently residing in the U.S., the importance of CPD globally should not be understated. A recent report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) representing a coalition of 38 nations also emphasized the need for tracking PhD alumni career outcomes to help understand where the programs can increase their CPD, as postdoctoral researchers are outgrowing the number of tenured or permanently employed academic positions in many countries [ 31 ]. The importance of CPD and culture change around CPD is critical not only for the U.S. but also globally, and future research could garner more insights from a global perspective, although we recognize that the one-size fits all approach wouldn’t apply to all countries.

Conclusions

This study brings to light fundamental career and professional development (CPD) concepts that span the various internal and external stakeholder groups interviewed. Learning from these opinions is valuable, and can help form recommendations in the creation, design, and sustenance of effective CPD activities at individual institutions.

This study also presents the stakeholder engagement tool, which can be used for rapid self-analysis of practitioners’ networks to assess strong stakeholder relationships and areas where the practitioner can strengthen their network. Coupled with the various themes from interviews with 45 internal and external stakeholders across the country in various roles, graduate career practitioners can use the themes presented as discussion points to interact with their own stakeholders to prepare for potential meetings with new contacts. Meaningful and targeted engagement with various stakeholders is key to create and sustain successful graduate and postdoctoral CPD programs.

Supporting information

S1 table. number of interviews conducted per stakeholder subgroup, by interviewer..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.s001

S2 Table. Pseudonym assignments for stakeholder interviews.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.s002

S1 File. Rationale and sample questions for stakeholders.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.s003

S2 File. Sample wording for invitation to participate.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.s004

S3 File. Detailed results, including example comments.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.s005

S4 File. Examples for diversifying networks.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.s006

S5 File. Stakeholder engagement tool.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.s007

S6 File. Common themes across stakeholders.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262191.s008

• 1. National Institutes of Health, Office of Strategic Coordination. NIH Director’s Biomedical Research Workforce Innovation Award: Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) (DP7) [Internet]. 2014. Available from: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-13-019.html
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• 8. Varvayanis S, Schaffer CB, August A. Chapter 2—Cornell BEST: Keys to successful institutionalization of career and professional development programming. In: Infante Lara L, Daniel L, Chalkley RBT-B, editors. BEST Implementing Career Development Activities for Biomedical Research Trainees [Internet]. Academic Press; 2020. p. 11–24. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128207598000024 https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.19-12-0270 pmid:32822277
• 11. Qualls ADC, Lundsteen N, Purvis TN. Ph.D. Alumni: Hidden in Plain Sight [Internet]. Inside Higher Ed. 2021. Available from: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2021/01/14/colleges-should-make-greater-collaborative-efforts-engage-phd-alumni-opinion
• 14. Lofland J, Lofland LH. Analyzing social settings: a guide to qualitative observation and analysis. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth; 1995.
• 16. Glaser B. G. & Strauss AL. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine; 1967.
• 17. Strauss A, Corbin J. Grounded theory methodology: An overview. In: Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications, Inc; 1994. p. 273–85.
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• 19. Kaner S, Lind L, Toldi C, Fisk S, Berger D. Facilitator’s guide to participatory decision-making. Third. Jossey-Bass; 2014.
• 20. Ernst & Young, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). Supporting the next generation: The entrepreneurial mindset and the future of work [Internet]. 2018. Available from: https://www.nfte.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Joint-Research-Brief-The-Entrepreneruial-Mindset-and-the-Future-of-Work.pdf
• 22. Drexler M, Eltogby M, Foster G, Shimizu C, Ciesinski S, Davila A, et al. Entrepreneurial Ecosystems Growth Dynamics–the Early-Stage Company Around the Globe and Entrepreneur’s Perspective [Internet]. World Economic Forum. 2014. Available from: www.weforum.org
• 28. National Institutes of Health. OMB Clarifies Guidance on the Dual Role of Student and Postdoctoral Researchers [Internet]. 2014. Available from: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-15-008.html
• 31. OECD. Reducing the precarity of academic research careers. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers. 2021.

Book series

Springer Theses

Recognizing Outstanding Ph.D. Research

About this book series

Aims and Scope  

The series “Springer Theses” brings together a selection of the very best Ph.D. theses from around the world and across the physical sciences. Nominated and endorsed by two recognized specialists, each published volume has been selected for its scientific excellence and the high impact of its contents for the pertinent field of research. For greater accessibility to non-specialists, the published versions include an extended introduction, as well as a foreword by the student’s supervisor explaining the special relevance of the work for the field. As a whole, the series will provide a valuable resource both for newcomers to the research fields described, and for other scientists seeking detailed background information on special questions. Finally, it provides an accredited documentation of the valuable contributions made by today’s younger generation of scientists.

Theses may be nominated for publication in this series by heads of department at internationally leading universities or institutes and should fulfill all of the following criteria  

• They must be written in good English.
• The topic should fall within the confines of Chemistry, Physics, Earth Sciences, Engineering and related interdisciplinary fields such as Materials, Nanoscience, Chemical Engineering, Complex Systems and Biophysics. 
• The work reported in the thesis must represent a significant scientific advance. 
• If the thesis includes previously published material, permission to reproduce this must be gained from the respective copyright holder (a maximum 30% of the thesis should be a verbatim reproduction from the author's previous publications).
• They must have been examined and passed during the 12 months prior to nomination. 
• Each thesis should include a foreword by the supervisor outlining the significance of its content.
• The theses should have a clearly defined structure including an introduction accessible to new PhD students and scientists not expert in the relevant field.

Book titles in this series

High energy efficiency neural network processor with combined digital and computing-in-memory architecture.

• Jinshan Yue
• Copyright: 2024

Available Renditions

Enhanced Microbial and Chemical Catalysis in Bio-electrochemical Systems

• Xian-Wei Liu

Stability Assessment of Power Systems with Multiple Voltage Source Converters

Bifurcation-Theory-Based Methods

• Youhong Chen

Micromachined Mixed-potential-type YSZ-based Sensors for Nitrogen Dioxide Monitoring in Automobile Exhaust

Event-Based PID Controllers with Fixed Threshold Sampling Strategies

• Oscar Miguel-Escrig

Publish with us

Abstracted and indexed in.

Where To Find Journal Articles For PhD Research: A Beginner’s Guide

Writing a high-quality dissertation or thesis requires the student to review high-quality original papers. Whereas books and grey literature provide useful information for dissertation writing, the majority of the sources should come from peer-reviewed journal articles. This composition of references cited in a dissertation is one of the things that examiners look at when marking a PhD student’s dissertation.

This post is a useful guide for PhD and Masters students preparing to write their dissertations or theses on where they can find original peer-reviewed articles.

Specifically, novice PhD students can find original journal papers from: online journal databases, Google Scholar, ResearchGate and Twitter.

Online journal databases

There are many online journal databases, each covering specific fields. The databases have several journals within them, each covering a specific field of research.

The databases in most cases require subscription but most universities have subscribed to them. If a student is not sure, they should check with their university’s library.

In order to access the databases, students are required to log in with their institutional email addresses.

The table below provides examples of common journal databases and their websites (arranged alphabetically):

The list of databases in the above table is not exhaustive.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a great start for finding relevant journal articles.

To use Google Scholar:

• Go to https://scholar.google.com/
• There are two options provided: articles and case law. Select the “articles” option.

• Search what you want to find using relevant keywords. As an example, I would like to find articles on “maternal health during covid-19.” The following 159,000 results are shown, sorted by relevance (with the most relevant article at the top).

• Scan through the titles of the articles and select those that seem relevant to your research. Open them and look through the abstract to further determine their suitability to your research. If suitable, save them to your folder for later reading.
• For each relevant article found, look at the “related articles” section (see the image below).

• Additionally, for each relevant article, look at the “cited by” section (see the image below). The “cited by” section lists all the articles that have cited a particular article. These articles are more recent than the article of interest and are therefore important because they provide a more updated state of evidence of the topic under investigation.

• Lastly, create alert for the keywords (see the image below). Alerts will notify you through email when new articles on the specified keywords are published to Google Scholar. You can create numerous alerts that align with your research topics. This is a great way to keep abreast of the latest articles in your areas of research. But for the alerts to work, you need to first sign up with Google Scholar.

ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a great networking platform for researchers across the world. One can follow researchers in their areas of interest as well as specific research projects that are relevant to their research.

The search bar on ResearchGate can be used to search for research articles and authors.

To use ResearchGate:

• Go to https://www.researchgate.net/
• Sign up for an account and fill in your profile information. The profile has the following categories: Overview, Research, Experience, Stats, Scores, Following, and Saved List.

Under the overview tab, fill in details about your research interests, areas of focus, the languages you speak, your disciplines, and skills and expertise.

Under the research tab, include the projects you are working on as well as your publications.

Under the experience tab, fill in your professional experience, your education background, any grants, awards or scholarships you have received, and your affiliations.

The stats tab shows the number of citations, reads and recommendations you have received on your research publications.

The scores tab calculates your scores with regard to the exposure of your research work and how engaging you are on the platform.

The following tab shows all the research and topics you follow.

Lastly, in the saved list tab you can save research works that are of interest to you and which you can read later.

• Based on your profile, ResearchGate will populate your page with feeds from researchers, research publications and research projects that you follow or that align with your interest.

It is therefore easy to receive information about new research articles that have been published in your areas of interest.

• Alternatively, you can use the search bar to search for research articles covering your topic of investigation.

Another advantage of using ResearchGate is that it will notify you via email every time your followers publish new papers or anytime a project you follow is updated. This helps you to stay updated in your research fields.

Twitter is a social media platform but can also serve as a great source for finding original journal articles. Like ResearchGate, you can find journal articles on Twitter in two ways:

• By following the experts in your field of research if they are on Twitter.

Most researchers on Twitter tend to tweet their new publications as soon as they are published.

Besides checking on Twitter’s feed for new publications, one can click on the profiles of the experts in their fields and check what they have been up to, for instance, what projects they have been involved in, what papers they have published etc.

• By searching for relevant journal articles using Twitter’s search bar.

The advantage of using the search bar is that the search results always include not just published papers, but also events such as webinars and conferences that are being held on the searched topic across the world, grey literature being published by the organisations in the industry, and global news about the searched topic. All these sources of information are valuable for writing a high-quality and up-to-date dissertation.

Final thoughts on where to find original journal papers for PhD research

For PhD students, the quality of the references used in their dissertations or theses is as important as the quantity of the references. It is a classic case of “garbage in, garbage out.” While there are many places where PhD students can source for the original papers, this post lists four important and credible sources, some of which (such as ResearchGate and Twitter) are often overlooked yet they are highly valuable in finding not only quality research papers but also in connecting with experts in various fields.

Related Posts

How to Read Journal Papers Quickly and Effectively

Academic Referencing 101 (The What, Why and How)

Grace Njeri-Otieno

Grace Njeri-Otieno is a Kenyan, a wife, a mom, and currently a PhD student, among many other balls she juggles. She holds a Bachelors' and Masters' degrees in Economics and has more than 7 years' experience with an INGO. She was inspired to start this site so as to share the lessons learned throughout her PhD journey with other PhD students. Her vision for this site is "to become a go-to resource center for PhD students in all their spheres of learning."

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Keep a research journal: It is important

Keeping a research journal can be a very powerful research tool. Many great minds and historical figures used to journal, including Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison and many more. Very few people I come across keep a research journal, they often don’t even know about the concept. I want to share information about what to put in the research journal, and why I think it is important to keep one.

What is a research journal?

It is a record of everything that you are thinking about your research, or what you think at the time of your research. It is everything you are thinking about your research. It is not the place to take notes on your literature, but it is really a place where you can write down things that you are thinking about your research. It doesn’t need to writing, you can draw, sketch, paint anything!

It is meant for YOUR EYES ONLY. It is not something you have to show your supervisor, your peers or boss. It is a place for reflection on your research. You should feel free to write what you want, without worry of perfecting the writing, or even worrying about whether the ideas are correct, or valid.

Your journal doesn’t have to be written. You might choose to talk into a recording device. I used to record notes before and after interview in the car on the way to and from interviews. At a later stage, I would listen over these and selectively transcribe the notes into my journal.

What are the benefits?

• The practice of writing : It helps you keep writing, which is one of the things many students and researchers find challenging. It is easier to do with a research journal because you know that no one else will look at it, and you know that you don’t need to sure of what you are writing.
• Seeing things in writing can help clarify ideas: If you are unsure of your ideas or analysis, it can often help if you try and write it out. Seeing your writing, and sometimes the process of writing itself can help clarify ideas in your head.
• It helps when writing up the project: You can use your research journal to help you with writing up your project. If you have a record of all your reasons, justifications and decisions about the project, you can use some of this in your final report/thesis/paper. Research projects can be long, and you might forget a lot of those things, so having it written down somewhere can help at the final stages. Particularly with introductions, and methodology sections.

Ideas on what you can include in your research journal:

All notes on your topic , including:

• Why you like the topic (could be because of personal experiences)
• Why you chose the topic
• Potential research questions
• Books/articles you would like to read
• People you want to speak to about your research
• Things you want to explore that seem beyond the scope of your research, why you want to explore them, and why you think they are beyond the scope.
• Decisions about narrowing your topic, and why you chose to narrow it in t hat way (could be as simple as “because I was more interested in that”)

Notes that relate to analysis of your research, for example:

• What you think you will find
• What you think you are finding (as your research progresses)
• Any relationships you might be seeing
• Things that don’t make sense to you
•  Areas which you find interesting, but don’t think relate directly to your research question (might be something “new”)

 Notes on your method , such as:

• Thoughts on which methods you are thinking of using
• Thoughts on your sample, and sampling technique
• Methodological mistakes
• Methodological triumphs
• Justification of your method
• Reasons for selecting the method/s you did
• Pro’s and con’s of your methodology
• Thoughts before and after an interview
• Personal feelings before and after an interview (because they can affect the information that you collect).

Keep everything in one document, and keep it in chronological order. Use headings to differentiate between topics.

To sum up: What do you put in a research journal? EVERYTHING!!

My research journal read like a diary at times. I even included personal information about what was happening in my life. It helped to keep me writing, and helped me understand why I chose to take my research into certain directions.

Remember that no one else has to see this but you. There will probably be a lot of jargon and rubbish in there, but there will most certainly be some real gems of writing that you yourself will marvel over.

It is never too late to start , so I suggest go open a new document called “research journal” and get typing right now!! If you are stuck, and don’t know what to type, I always used to start with “I don’t really know what to write now, but…”. So go get writing (or talking)!

I’d love to hear about the benefits you have found with keeping a journal, or even the types of things you include in your journal.

Share this:

Published by Dr. Anuja Cabraal

Writer. Qualitative researcher. View all posts by Dr. Anuja Cabraal

30 thoughts on “ Keep a research journal: It is important ”

Reblogged this on Elodie Crespel .

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I’m in the fourth year of my PhD and my research journal has more words than my thesis (over 82,000 words so far). It has been a really important place to reflect on my personal journey, as well as the academic one. I write about the things I’m doing to explore my topic beyond the narrow confines of what is required by the thesis. It is a useful record of where I have been and how I am progressing. Often chunks of it become blog posts, and some paragraphs have been copied into the thesis. It will possibly become a book of its own one day. The happier I am, the less I write, so it seems to be a place where I let out stressful stuff too. Re-reading it at intervals is encouraging, because I can see that I’ve come a long way. I highly recommend keeping a research journal or a personal diary for all the reasons described in your post, but also for your own sanity.

I have done this for projects in the past and it is SO important for projects that often get backburnered. With a journal, you can pick up right where you left off!

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Yes. This is really applicable to any walk of life. We are such wordy, intellectual creatures. Anything we do is enriched by a steady discourse with ourselves that we can easily keep in a pocket. Thanks for this reminder!

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It ‘is very interesting and I like your points they are very good.

A really great post! A research journal is also a great place to keep track of research databases and archives you have searched and keywords you have used in your searches.

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Most helpful and instructive.

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Where would you store your research journal in NVivo? A source, a memo? Thanks

I would store it as a memo.

I’ve been trying to keep a research journal, but I have trouble with keeping it with me. I have a handwritten journal, but often my thoughts come at times when I don’t have a spare hand to write. I could use a recorder, but that eliminates the advantage of having everything in one place. Any ideas on how to integrate the two?

I suggest you simply transcribe as soon as you get the chance. I used to transcribe first thing the following morning. It was a great way to get my head back into the research space.

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Great post! I have kept a journal since university for just about everything, but for some reason it took me a long time to apply the concept to research. My life journal is handwritten, but for research I find it easier to type things up. I use Evernote, which can handle audio recordings as well, doesn’t require an internet connection, and allows for tagging.

Very helpful. I’m a mature (57yo) student about to start an Open Degree with the Open University. This post has inspired me to start keeping a Research Journal.

I’m really glad you found it useful!

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As self reflexive journaling is a method of qualitative research, if I list this method within my research proposal, will this constitute my journal being part of the research data, thus owned by the University and able to be read by my department et al? If yes, would this mean two journals are kept? Thx!

Thank you for this inspired post, you describe it well ‘EVERYTHING!!’

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I loved this post. Do you have tips for going back to find things? I’m afraid if I hand write on my remarkable that I will lose things in the mass of words I will write. Do you often reread or have organizational ideas for making the journal easy to search?

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How I revise my journal papers

Along with writing your first journal paper , doing a substantial revision to your manuscript upon receiving the reviewers’ comments is one often-cited painful moment of any doctoral process. This complex act of scientific communication involves balancing diplomacy with integrity, creativity and systematicity. In this post, I go over the concrete (and, sometimes, counter-intuitive) steps I follow to revise my journal papers upon receiving peer-review critiques, as well as some basic principles to increase your chances of success and avoid unnecessary suffering.

If you’ve been for some time into your PhD, probably you know the feeling: after what seemed like an eternity of writing, rewriting, getting feedback from your co-authors, rewriting again, dealing with the unexpectedly complicated formatting issues and a surprisingly medieval submission system, you finally submitted your paper to a good journal. Check. Hurray. Then, you just got on with your life: doing the next study, analyzing the next batch of data, reading and understanding a new corpus of literature that seems relevant… Several months later, when you had already forgotten about the paper, an email arrives: major revision. Or, even worse, reject and resubmit.

That big task you had so confidently checked (rather, that host of smaller tasks or milestones you had already passed), suddenly un-checks itself and bites back. You feel your heart sink. You question the whole idea of ever finishing this PhD.

I have experienced this myself many, many times 1 . Lately, I have been seeing most of the PhD students around me going through this experience for the first time, and how hard it is psychologically. This post is just a way of saying “it’s OK to feel like that – everybody does”… but also that “this too shall pass”, and that publication is actually closer than it was when you had just submitted (even if it does not feel so now). If the response was not an outright reject, probably the reviewers saw value in the proposal. Manuscript revision is an essential part of the research process, of making our ideas and our papers better. And it works. Especially if you follow some basic principles and procedures, and put some time into it. Now, take some time familiarize yourself with the peer review process, if nobody has ever explained it to you in detail 2 , and read on.

My process for revising journal papers

The experience of getting (often detailed and exhaustive) critiques for one’s work, and having to answer to them and make changes in a cherished artifact of ours, feels rather unnatural for most people. I know it was weird for me the first time. After doing it a few times, however, you get the hang of it. Below I describe, step-by-step, what I do these days once I get comments with major revisions (or rejections) from a journal. Naturally, the process and principles I mention are in a sense very similar to the ones I have for writing papers , just with this particular situation in mind 3 :

• If you decide to go for a different journal, do not just resubmit the same original manuscript again! Still, consider the comments and make changes… chances are, the same reviewers can get the paper again (as there is a limited number of experts in your particular paper’s keywords), and they will not be happy to see that you ignored all the effort they put into giving you advice.
• If you decide to go ahead and resubmit the paper in the same journal, be sure to set aside several good chunks of time to work on this revision throughout the next weeks/months until the deadline you and your co-authors set 2 . Really, block the time in your calendar already . Revising is often time-consuming and we tend to underestimate the time it takes. Then, continue to step #2.
• Set yourself up for the revision . Read again the practical guidelines for revision that often come along with the journal’s response email you received (if that’s not the case, check the journal’s submission system, and see what format and options they allow for your resubmission). It should specify quite clearly how the response and the new manuscript should be formatted (e.g., whether they need a clean version of the new manuscript and another one highlighting the changes, etc.). Unless something else is said, the editors will expect from you a letter of response which details the changes done in the manuscript to address the reviewer comments (this letter is often forwarded directly to reviewers upon resubmission) 2 . Hence, start a new document for this letter with some boilerplate text, and copy after it, verbatim , the comments received from the reviewers, as well as the meta-reviews/comments from the editors themselves (you can find real examples from past papers of mine here and here , using either a narrative or tabular format for the reviewer comments). At this point, probably it is a good idea to label each comment clearly (e.g., “R1.1” for Reviewer 1’s first comment) for easier cross-reference. You can also include a prioritization tag, for internal use among you and your co-authors, stating whether each of the comments is voiced as a major criticism by the reviewers, or a mere suggestion for improvement (this will help you later to calibrate the effort and exhaustiveness you need in your responses and changes to each of them 4 , 2 ).
• Outline the response and changes strategy in the answers document 5 . The key word here is strategy . Do not (I repeat, do not ) start making changes right away in the manuscript. Take the answers letter/document you just created and, for every editor and reviewer comment, write down two bullet points: a) what would be the gist of your answer to them (e.g., “we agree”, or “we used the definition by …, which needs to be included”); and b) in general terms, what changes would be needed in the manuscript to address the comment (e.g., “add definition to introduction”). Don’t write a lot, but think a lot. Of course, as you go down the different comments, be attentive to synergies or contradictions between reviewer comments (can one same change address two of the comments? how can you address apparently contradictory comments?). Some authors suggest that, rather than going from top to bottom of the document, you may start with those comments you agree with the least, or those that are conflicting with another reviewer’s 4 . When devising these answers and changes, keep a clear, calm head, and focus on what can be the legitimate concern behind the comment (however hurting the form of saying it was). As one friend of mine often says, you need to look through the comments, not merely look at them 7 . How can you make your paper stronger or better, with that concern in mind? 2 Once you have gist-answer and gist-changes for each and every comment, send this “answer/change strategy” document and the original manuscript, to your co-authors for feedback : do they agree? have you misinterpreted a comment? are there simpler solutions to address the comment? are your proposed changes likely to be considered insufficient? Your team should be clear on what needs to be done, before the messy work of revision starts.
• Iterate on the answers/changes strategy . As you and your co-authors progressively agree on the general approach to address comments, start adding a bit more flesh to the responses (what do you understand the comment means? to what exactly will you agree?) and to the changes you propose to do in the manuscript (e.g., write snippets of the new text to be changed/added, especially for the more tricky parts of it; find and add new references needed, etc.). But do this fleshing out on the answers document, not the manuscript (yet) . There will probably be still interactions among comments, new ideas that that can come up as you read newer studies in relation to what was criticized, and it can be hard to keep track of all the changes in two documents at the same time. Needless to say, this step involves several back-and-forth exchanges with your co-authors , as they suggest specific strategies, phrasing or add details to what should go into the changes.
• Change the manuscript . Once the changes strategy (and maybe some particular snippets of new text) are clear and agreed, you can start doing changes in the manuscript itself . Sometimes, I do a first pass just locating the parts of the text that need changes, and I add just a comment there about what I need to do (e.g., “TODO: mention literature about X and improve argument line to highlight Y”). Then, I just go solving those comments by making changes in the text (remember to activate your word processor’s “track changes” or “suggesting” functionality!). Once you finish, if you have access to a professional proofreader (or someone more proficient in the English language than yourself), it is recommended that they give it a pass looking more at the flow and clarity of the text 5 .
• Finalize the answers document . Once you have resolved all the edits that were needed in the manuscript, come back to the answers document (which should be quite good already), and add the final layers of polish to it: check that the answers to reviewer comments are clear and polite (see the principles below), add concrete quotations from the manuscript to illustrate some of the changes done, add concrete locators and references so that the reviewers can find where the changes are located in the manuscript (e.g., “we have changed the arguments as per the reviewer suggestion, see section 2, 2nd paragraph/page 3”). You can see what I mean from the examples here and here . Then, of course, send both the manuscript and the answers document to your co-authors , for a final round of feedback.
• Final checks . Once everyone is happy with the new version of the paper, it is time to prepare the resubmission: check again the concrete guidelines for revision given by the journal, as well as the general formatting guidelines of the journal. Check out the journal’s online submission system, to see if you have all the files and information that you need for resubmission. At this point, it is common that the manuscript has grown to address the questions and comments from reviewers. If now the paper exceeds the expected length, include that fact in the letter to the editors, and be open to work on reducing it if the editors think that length is more important than what you think is fully addressing the reviewer concerns (that varies a lot from journal to journal). Any other critical issues or difficulties that you may have encountered while editing (e.g., addressing reviewer comments that go in opposite directions), you can also mention in that “letter” that opens the answers document. And then, just…

This process may seem a bit complicated, if you thought that revising a paper is just going to the document and making some changes. But, believe me, being systematic during the revision process is even more critical than when writing the paper. And that’s what research is all about, really. Being systematic.

Some principles to keep in mind while revising

In the same way that I gave my 10 Commandments of writing scientific papers , so that you know why the writing process is done the way it is (and to help you step out of the process and improvise with confidence, if necessary), here I also would like to give you a few basic principles to keep in mind while revising your journal papers:

• Be aware of your emotions . For a career in which one is supposed to put rationality and logic first, research is surprisingly emotional, as the effort we put into our work and ideas, makes us identify with them. Revising one’s own journal papers is maybe one of the most emotional parts of it. Hence, when reading the reviews and writing your responses, be aware of your emotions, and avoid situations that can trip you up 4 . If you are feeling enraged by the reviews (especially in the moment of their arrival), maybe it is a good idea to calm down, even wait for a few days, before re-assessing what was meant, what valid points may be hiding under those remarks, and going on with the revision 2 .
• How did I contribute to the problem? Related to the previous point, sometimes reviewers are wrong, sometimes they read in a hurry and overlook things that are actually written there. However, these “wrong remarks” also pose opportunities to make the paper better. Think about your future readers – chances are they will also be in a hurry, and they may also overlook what this reviewer passed over, or did not understand. Ask yourself if there are better ways to convey that idea, or to bring it to the forefront more (either through emphasizing, or repeating elsewhere, or using different, less ambiguous vocabulary). Since you cannot change their lack of attention, work on what you can control: the text.
• Do not be discouraged . One of the first emotions that usually pops up during this process of revision is dispair: you see a document in which a person (supposedly an expert in your field) is giving you a dozen reasons why your paper is bad 8 . It is normal to feel that your work is shit, and that you’re never going to finish this review, or publish this paper, or finish the PhD. But it’s not about you or your work – it’s just that researchers tend to be systematic people! (see #7 below). Reframe it as a learning, an improvement process 4 : you are making the paper better, more understandable for others, making your knowledge easier for fellow researchers to digest and build upon. If you got a “major revision”, cheer up! In my experience, those papers have a high chance of finally being accepted, if the authors put in the work (and follow these principles) 4 .
• Be polite and use evidence 9 . When you are answering to a reviewer, however lousy you think their review was, think about this: this is a real human being, fallible, but also generous enough to spend some time trying to understand and (hopefully) trying to help you make your paper better… and they are doing this for free , on top of an already busy schedule. Hence, treat them with respect, and think of them rather as consultants, not adversaries 4 . A brief “thank you” here and there will not hurt either 2 . If, in the end, you have to disagree with them, do it without being disagree able : just point to the evidence that supports your position, while acknowledging that the other person may have understood otherwise.
• Collaborate : use your co-author team extensively during the whole process, to double-check your interpretations and strategies. Chances are that they have done this process quite a few times already, and they may know better what works, or some other tricks of the trade… if you give them the opportunity to show you. You can also contact the editor, even before the resubmission, if there are problems that make a good, exhaustive revision unfeasible (e.g., reviewers having non-compatible views of what the paper should look like, etc.).
• Iterate, iterate, iterate… but do not touch the manuscript until later . This one is very unpopular, and a bit counter-intuitive. Why iterate? what one really desires is to finish this whole business, be done with it! However, as I do for writing the papers themselves , I firmly believe in the power of iteration while revising. We never get the approach, the idea, the argument, right on the first try. This is also why I advice to not touch the manuscript at the beginning: in this messy, iterative process, you are bound to put some things in the manuscript and forget to put them in the answers document, or vice versa. This initial strategizing will also help you detect and exploit synergies and commonalities between different reviewer comments. You may have the impression that the revision is stuck because you have not even touched the manuscript but, in my experience, you will spend less time overall if you wait and edit the manuscript once the answers and editing strategy are clear. For one, you will not need to delete stuff you wrote as often! (which is always painful)
• Be systematic, be exhaustive 4 . This capability to be systematic, to exhaustively look at every issue in your work, is one of the key researcher skills or attitudes, which we learn during the PhD. Once we address all the reviewer comments, we just need to show the editor and the reviewers all the work we’ve done 5 . This includes clearly labeling every comment, and cross-referencing them when needed, explaining what changes have been done in response to each comment, and where exactly to find them. This also involves looking for recent related literature that may have come out since the paper submission, and adding it where needed (some of it may actually help respond to the reviewers’ comments!). The only exception to this exhaustiveness may be the listing of every minute change that you probably had to do to make the whole paper flow and read well again, after all the changes; maybe just a couple of examples of this would suffice. The answers document need not be long just for length’s sake!
• Keep your integrity . By integrity, I don’t mean what is often found in the arts, the artist’s integrity that says “this is my work, and it should not be defiled by other people’s opinions!”. I mean the researcher’s integrity to find knowledge ethically and communicate it clearly. By following all the principles above, one can fall for the temptation to just stop all critical thinking and just do what the reviewers ask, word-by-word, even if it is clearly not the right thing to do. Rather, a researcher says “this is the evidence, this is the knowledge we got – let me explain it as best as we can, especially since people seem to misinterpret it in this or that way”. If you have to disagree with the reviewers, do so. Politely. Argue why you think it will not make the paper better (hopefully, using criteria other than just aesthetical taste), explain what is the intention you understood is behind their comment, and which way of addressing it you think is better than the one proposed by them.

Steps and principles I follow to revise journal papers

In the figure above you can see a summary of these steps and principles journal paper revision. If those are too many or too hard to remember, don’t worry. I hope at least you will take this away from the post: Revising is a learning process, but it is not about you personally – it’s the opportunity to craft a better vessel for your ideas.

Happy revising, and take care.

Do you also have tips or tricks about how to revise journal papers? What aspect of it you find most challenging? Let us know in the comments section below!

Header photo by nicmcphee .

I have never had a journal paper accepted without at least a round of major revisions, I think – and I have 14 of them as a first author (meaning, I was feeling the full emotional blow from those initial quasi-rejections). Plus, all the other papers I co-authored, which also were not fun to receive revisions about. ↩︎

LaPlaca, P., Lindgreen, A., Vanhamme, J., & Di Benedetto, C. A. (2018). How to revise, and revise really well, for premier academic journals. Industrial Marketing Management , 72 , 174–180. ↩︎

Disclaimer: this process represents what I have found works for me, in my field of research (educational technology) and other adjacent fields that I have certain experience with (technology, education, psychology). Yet, I have found similar advice in the literature about this topic (see the footnotes). In any case, as they say, “your mileage may vary” . Take especial care to read the concrete instructions from the editors about how to handle/format the response to the reviews (those will take always precedence). Probably it is also a good idea to check with your supervisors/co-authors whether this kind of process would work for them. ↩︎

Provenzale, J. M. (2010). Revising a manuscript: Ten principles to guide success for publication. American Journal of Roentgenology , 195 (6), W382–W387. ↩︎

Pierson, C. A. (2016). The four R’s of revising and resubmitting a manuscript. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners , 28 (8), 408–409. https://doi.org/10.1002/2327-6924.12399 ↩︎

Altman, Y., & Baruch, Y. (2008). Strategies for revising and resubmitting papers to refereed journals. British Journal of Management , 19 (1), 89–101. ↩︎

See Sharma, K., Alavi, H. S., Jermann, P., & Dillenbourg, P. (2017). Looking THROUGH versus looking AT: A strong concept in technology enhanced learning. European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning , 238–253. ↩︎

Or much more than a dozen. One study in a particular field found an average of 20 comments in each review they screened – see Law, R. (2008). Revising Publishable Journal Manuscripts. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism , 8 (4), 77–85. ↩︎

Williams, H. C. (2004). How to reply to referees’ comments when submitting manuscripts for publication. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology , 51 (1), 79–83. ↩︎

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Luis P. Prieto

Luis P. is a Ramón y Cajal research fellow at the University of Valladolid (Spain), investigating learning technologies, especially learning analytics. He is also an avid learner about doctoral education and supervision, and he's the main author at the A Happy PhD blog.

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• Published: 15 May 2024

Science–policy research collaborations need philosophers

• Mike D. Schneider   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3303-3664 1 ,
• Temitope O. Sogbanmu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8913-267X 2 , 3 ,
• Hannah Rubin   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0270-9182 1 ,
• Alejandro Bortolus   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3035-315X 4 ,
• Emelda E. Chukwu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3110-1678 5 ,
• Remco Heesen 6 , 7 ,
• Chad L. Hewitt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6859-6512 8 , 9 ,
• Ricardo Kaufer 10 ,
• Hanna Metzen   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0000-9116-3750 11 ,
• Veli Mitova   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4181-8170 12 ,
• Anne Schwenkenbecher   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2207-3043 9 , 13 ,
• Evangelina Schwindt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6693-9828 14 ,
• Helena Slanickova   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0003-5557-9654 15 ,
• Katie Woolaston   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7652-9347 16 &
• Li-an Yu 17  

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First, not all philosophers are ethicists. Philosophical expertise includes expertise in conceptual work: drawing out the necessary and sufficient conditions to secure desired conclusions given the concepts introduced in the statement of an argument. This work is especially valuable in teasing apart solvable — albeit difficult — problems in evidence-based policymaking from those that are impossible to solve. For instance, as part of an international collaboration on the epistemology of evidence-based policy 6 , we targeted the basic mechanics of decision-making during ongoing empirical research to cut to the heart of what it means for the policymaking process to proceed in light of current science. This enabled us to identify root causes of disagreement in policymaking: for example, placing different importance on different kinds of evidence, miscommunication or misinterpretation of evidence, or misunderstanding of the policy process. We concluded that without a particular type of transparency — transparency of reasoning — it is impossible to determine whether anything has gone wrong in specific episodes of evidence-based policymaking based only on studying outcomes of the policymaking process (R.H. et al., unpublished).

We also identified upcoming challenges in research within the biosecurity space by teasing out which residual questions for future research extracted during a survey of the literature were themselves formulated in such a way as will require philosophical expertise to solve. For instance, many of the extracted questions were identified as involving a give-and-take between values (for example, principles, ideals or morals). Merely allocating funding towards additional empirical research is insufficient in these cases, as answering questions concerning a give-and-take of values involves some amount of reasonable disagreement, must be negotiated among relevant parties, and cannot be settled by any empirical method. How to identify when disagreement is reasonable and how to properly incorporate values into science and policy are questions discussed by philosophers, generally in the research subfield known as ‘values in science’. Importantly, the philosophical work to be done is only effectively integrated with empirical research through active collaboration: scientific research and philosophical analysis can only adequately answer crucial questions at the science–policy interface in tandem.

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Acknowledgements

As fellows in ‘The Epistemology of Evidence-Based Policy’ research group at the Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung (ZiF) at Bielefeld University, all authors acknowledge funding from the ZiF under grant no. RG2023/1. Additional funding to individuals comes from Volkswagen Foundation Norbert Elias Fellowships (T.O.S. and E.E.C.); National Science Foundation grant 2045007 (H.R.); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Project 254954344/GRK2073 (H.M.); Dutch Research Council and Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science grant 024.003.025 (H.S.), and Proyectos de Investigación Plurianuales, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (PIP-CONICET) grant 11220210100507CO (E.S.).

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Department of Philosophy, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

Mike D. Schneider & Hannah Rubin

Department of Zoology, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria

Temitope O. Sogbanmu

Environmental Evidence Synthesis and Knowledge Translation (EESKT) Research Group, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria

Instituto Patagónico para el Estudio de los Ecosistemas Continentales (IPEEC-CONICET), Puerto Madryn, Argentina

Alejandro Bortolus

Center for Infectious Diseases Research, Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Lagos, Nigeria

Emelda E. Chukwu

Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

Remco Heesen

School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

Centre for One Biosecurity Research Analysis and Synthesis, Lincoln University, Lincoln, New Zealand

Chad L. Hewitt

Centre for Biosecurity and One Health, Harry Butler Institute at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

Chad L. Hewitt & Anne Schwenkenbecher

Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

Ricardo Kaufer

Department of Philosophy, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

Hanna Metzen

African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

Veli Mitova

School of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

Anne Schwenkenbecher

Instituto de Biología de Organismos Marinos (IBIOMAR-CONICET), Puerto Madryn, Argentina

Evangelina Schwindt

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

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School of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

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Schneider, M.D., Sogbanmu, T.O., Rubin, H. et al. Science–policy research collaborations need philosophers. Nat Hum Behav (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01892-x

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01892-x

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Electrical Engineering PhD

The Electrical Engineering PhD program studies systems that sense, analyze, and interact with the world. You will learn how this practice is based on fundamental science and mathematics, creating opportunities for both theoretical and experimental research. Electrical engineers invent devices for sensing and actuation, designing physical substrates for computation, creating algorithms for analysis and control, and expanding the theory of information processing. You will get to choose from a wide range of research areas such as circuits and VLSI, computer engineering and architecture, robotics and control, and signal processing.

Electrical engineers at SEAS are pursuing work on integrated circuits for cellular biotechnology, millimeter-scale robots, and the optimization of smart power groups. Examples of projects current and past students have worked on include developing methods to trace methane emissions and improving models for hurricane predictions.

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PhD in Electrical Engineering Degree

Harvard School of Engineering offers a  Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)  degree in Engineering Sciences: Electrical Engineering , conferred through the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS). Prospective students apply through the Harvard Griffin GSAS. In the online application, select  “Engineering and Applied Sciences” as your program choice and select " PhD Engineering Sciences: Electrical Engineering ​."

The Electrical Engineering program does not offer an independent Masters Degree.

Electrical Engineering PhD Career Paths

Graduates of the program have gone on to a range of careers in industry in companies such as Tesla, Microsoft HoloLens, and IBM. Others have positions in academia at the University of Maryland, University of Michigan, and University of Colorado.

Admissions & Academic Requirements

Prospective students apply through the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS). In the online application, select  “Engineering and Applied Sciences” as your program choice and select "PhD Engineering Sciences: Electrical Engineering​." Please review the  admissions requirements and other information  before applying. Our website also provides  admissions guidance ,   program-specific requirements , and a  PhD program academic timeline .

Academic Background

Applicants typically have bachelor’s degrees in the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, or engineering. In the application for admission, select “Engineering and Applied Sciences” as your degree program choice and your degree and area of interest from the “Area of Study“ drop-down. PhD applicants must complete the Supplemental SEAS Application Form as part of the online application process.

Standardized Tests

GRE General: Not Accepted

Electrical Engineering Faculty & Research Areas

View a list of our electrical engineering  faculty  and electrical engineering  affiliated research areas , Please note that faculty members listed as “Affiliates" or "Lecturers" cannot serve as the primary research advisor.  

Electrical Engineering Centers & Initiatives

View a list of the research  centers & initiatives  at SEAS and the  electrical engineering faculty engagement with these entities .

Graduate Student Clubs

Graduate student clubs and organizations bring students together to share topics of mutual interest. These clubs often serve as an important adjunct to course work by sponsoring social events and lectures. Graduate student clubs are supported by the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin School of Arts and Sciences. Explore the list of active clubs and organizations .

Funding and Scholarship

Learn more about financial support for PhD students.

• How to Apply

Learn more about how to apply  or review frequently asked questions for prospective graduate students.

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Lu Q. Le, MD, PhD, Study About Novel Method to Treat Tumors Featured on Cover of the Journal of Clinical Investigation

May 21, 2024 by [email protected]

Patients with Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) can develop aggressive, deadly cancer called Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor (MPNST). There is currently no effective drug treatment for MPNST. In the study, Dr. Le’s lab tested a strategy whereby the cancers were injected with a drug to activate the STING pathway that stimulates influx of anti-tumor immune cells (T cells) into the cancer. They then combined this drug with another drug that acts to release the “brakes” on the immune system, thus allowing it to fight the tumor. This combination treatment caused significant cell death and shrinkage of these tumors in the MPNST models. This study supports the testing of this novel treatment strategy in human clinical trial for NF1 patients with MPNST, an aggressive and deadly tumor for which no molecularly targeted therapy currently exists.

Learn more about the Le Lab’s research.

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