5 quick and dirty tricks for the terminally busy researcher

This post is written by Dr Inger Mewburn, over at the Thesis Whisperer, who is struggling on a number of fronts to keep her research work cooking and stay sane.

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Short Cut Road (Photo by Nic McPhee – http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicmcphee/)

Busy-ness is something of a badge of honour in academia, but I am genuinely busy right now.

I fly 500kms to work and back each week, hold down a fairly demanding job, and want to spend some time with my family. When I am busy, ‘good practice’ goes out the window. At home, this means I stop planning dinners, cleaning behind the toilet, or pairing my socks. At work, I stop filing my references, tagging entries in my database, or cleaning out my inbox.

Chaos reigns but, curiously, things still get done. I’m a productive person who is deeply lazy, so I’m open to any and all hacks that make my life easier. This is a small selection of my quick and dirty research tricks. These tricks save me time and, if I can be honest with you, I use them even when I’m not very busy. I share some of these with you in hope that you will share some of your own in the comments.

Myths about research cultures

Water Dragon (Photo by Jonathan O’Donnell)

As I was digesting information about the funding cuts a few weeks ago, I read Kate Bowles’ considered piece on the folly of applying an “efficiency dividend” to higher education.

At the time, I wanted to blog more specifically on the idea of applying such a mechanistic and corrosive idea as an “efficiency dividend” to research institutions and the effect it would have on research cultures.

When I sat down to type it up, I realised that it would be a long, tedious rant that no-one would want to read.

What I thought might be more useful is a post focused on myths about research cultures, and letting these cultures’ specific, complex forms speak for themselves.

Universities and institutes scrambling for pieces of the (often shrinking) grant pie is a narrative as old as time. OK, maybe not quite that old, but certainly old enough to scar the past few generations of academics and researchers. There’s the constant hope for a slice of the grant pie; sometimes, we make do with crumbs and, at other times, we go hungry.

As the pressures of chasing the funding dragon bite deeper into research organisations, many in senior roles talk ever more loudly about building research capacity and structuring researcher development. These strategies are meant to result in better and more research wins (and outputs), and institutional hopes of establishing a research workforce that’s upwardly mobile for excellence metrics (e.g. Excellence in Research for Australia) or other metrics that might come out of the oven.

Before I spend too much time mixing metaphors about dragons, pies, and baking, here are five myths about research cultures I want to debunk:

Get me a project manager, stat!

Keystone (Photo by Jonathan O’Donnell)

A while back, one of our Twitter followers asked whether The Research Whisperer had any posts about project management.

At the time, I could only think of @jod999’s megastar post about what a Gantt chart is, and mine on whether you can fix a broken Gantt chart.

While Jonathan’s post was about planning and putting in place a feasible and ideal timeline, mine talked about the common mistakes and remedies for timelines that don’t behave.

Research projects are very much about project management, and that tweet nudged me in the direction of this post.

Project management skills are elements that many sectors require, and this means that there is a weighty bunch of pixels already dedicated to the topic. For a great recent post on research project management, read @evalantsoght’s “Smart way to manage a large research project” at the Next Scientist blog.

Rather than rehearse what many others have already said (better than I could), I want to focus on someone  you should consider requesting as part of a major research grant:

Get yourself a project officer or a project manager. 

How to make casual employment work for you

Dr Anuja Cabraal (@AnujaCabraal) has been a researcher for almost ten years. Over this time, she has worked on a lot of different topics, including learning and teaching, banking and architecture. Her favourite research areas are migration & identity studies and social & financial exclusion.

She is also a trainer and consultant with Nvivo, a qualitative research software program designed to help make the process of qualitative data analysis easier.

She completed her PhD in January 2011 in the area of microfinance and social & financial exclusion.

Anuja blogs about research methods and information sharing as Anuja Cabraal, A Research Enthusiast.

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Life as a casual can be very empowering, and it all comes down to attitude.

There is so much negative talk about being a casual in a university environment, especially from people undertaking, completing, or having just graduated with their PhD.

Robot in the sky (Photo by Jonathan O’Donnell; taken at the Ghibli Museum)

While I can understand it, and do recognise the challenges (I moaned about it myself, initially), I also made the most of it and have found a lot of freedom and excitement in the work I have been doing.

There is always the important issue of financial security, but I believe that if you put that aside and focus on the positives of being a casual (and, yes, they do exist), you can be in a position where finance issues resolve themselves.

The main thing to remember as a casual is that you have choice and opportunity, and these can be very valuable.

Getting the jump on 2013

Ce-le-brate. You. Must. Ce-le-brate.
(Photo courtesy of Catriona Mills)

With the atmosphere in most workplaces already in holiday mode, it can be hard to keep track of our research, or even pick up that next article to read.

While taking a break and recharging over the holidays is essential for good research practice and life balance, there are some things you can do right now – pre-holidays – to get a head-start on your research in the new year.

If you’re able to push aside the tinsel and dodge the flashing lights for this final burst of productivity, here are each of the Research Whisperers’ Top 3 End-of-Year research tips.

What I tweet

Captive audience (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

I’ve been asked several times recently about what I tweet and how I decide on things to push out there.

“How do you find so much stuff to say?” people ask, partly aghast, partly envious.

The questions were usually part of a broader conversation about social media and my enthusiastic embrace of Twitter. As well as my personal and Research Whisperer accounts, I maintain one for the research network I co-founded, the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN – @aasrn).

In any given week, I manage two Facebook pages, three Twitter accounts, and a website. This does not include the blogging and management of the Research Whisperer, or my personal blog.

What does this all mean (besides that Tseen is very good at over-committing herself)?

It means that I’ve become fairly good at dividing the streams of information for  different channels. It is, however, a constant learning process, and I’m still working out how to ‘clean up’ the demarcation between some accounts.

This post, focusing on Twitter, provides insight into how I’ve created the categories of information I do (and don’t) send out.

Who works harder?

Dr Angela Dobele is a creative, results-oriented academic with progressive career accomplishments in research, teaching and community engagement. Her research focuses on three main areas: word-of-mouth referrals (including technological communications), gender diversity, and teaching and learning. Angela’s teaching disciplines include electronic marketing, services marketing, new product development, marketing management and integrated marketing communications. 

As well as immersing herself in research and teaching, Angela is a Foster Dog Carer, enjoys Science Fiction and plans on taking music lessons (any day now…).

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Fight-Talk (Photo courtesy of FooDavid)

If you’re a female academic who thinks you’re working harder than your male colleagues, you may well be right!

Not only that, you might be working harder, but you’re less likely to be in the professorial ranks.

I was part of a team of researchers (from RMIT and Griffith universities) who found that, while women are shouldering the majority of the workload at each academic rank, they are under-represented further up the pecking order.

Our results show gender equity in terms of workload on five key workload measures, but there was inequality in terms of pay and status. It confirms what many already presume: it is still the case that fewer women are employed in senior ranks. These results suggest, despite policy reforms, inequity continues to be a problem in the Australian higher education sector.

Our study focused on business faculty employees, and showed that female senior lecturers – the ‘middle’ tier – are teaching an average 848 students compared with their male counterparts’ 229. The number of courses co-ordinated by senior lecturers was an average of 4 for women and 3.2 for men.

Despite shouldering much of the work, women are underrepresented in the higher ranks: senior lecturers, associate professors and professors. For example, in one of the universities studied, one fifth of the male staff were professors, compared with no women.

ERA: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Associate Professor Peter Macauley (RMIT University)

Associate Professor Peter Macauley teaches in the information management programs at RMIT University. Before starting at RMIT, he worked for 30 years in public, special and university libraries.

Over the past decade Peter’s research has focused on doctoral pedagogy, knowledge production, information literacy, scholarly communication and distance education.

With colleagues, he has been awarded ARC funding for two Discovery projects: ‘Australian doctoral graduates’ publication, professional and community outcomes’, and ‘Research capacity-building: the development of Australian PhD programs in national and emerging global contexts’. He publishes regularly in journals best suited to the readership for his research; some happen to be ERA-ranked A and A* on the 2010 list.

The Research Whisperer knows Peter as one of the good guys: a researcher with integrity and perspective, who tells it like it is. 

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Problematica (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

ERA, which stands for ‘Excellence in Research for Australia’, is similar in many ways to research frameworks used in other countries to evaluate the quality (and sometimes quantity) of the research output of universities and—indirectly—individuals.

In the United Kingdom, they have REF (the Research Excellence Framework); in New Zealand, it is the PBRF (Performance Based Research Fund), and many other countries have similar schemes.

In this post, I focus on the journal ranking component of ERA.

Officially, the ERA journal rankings were abandoned after the first round of evaluation in 2010. Unofficially, the ERA journal rankings are alive and well and used for all the reasons they were withdrawn: job applications, promotions, grant applications and other forms of peer review (the bedrock of academe).

Shut up and write – one year later

My app of choice – Pomodoro Lite

It has been about a year since the regular “shut up and write” sessions started on our campus. Jonathan O’Donnell wrote “Writes well with others” last August, and the number of on-campus groups blossomed to three open ones, then levelled back to one open and several ‘closed’ (e.g. School-specific) gatherings.

Elsewhere, across the East Coast and with at least one North American and one UK group that we know of, these sessions have grown and prospered. Many of the regulars swear by the meet-ups as prime productivity points in themselves, as well as  constructive triggers for more work afterwards.

I know this sounds a tad cultish, but it’s gratifying to see a new attendee’s glee at thwarting writer’s block or overcoming their spiral of procrastination after just one “shut up and write” session (that had, perhaps, two pomodoros spans – 50 minutes of focused writing, editing, or reading time in total).

Stepping out from the screen

#shutupandwrite (Photo by @thesiswhisperer)

Many of us are very proud of our virtual lives; some smugly so. I love social media, and am a great advocate of building a convincing and professional digital identity.

The transformation and enhancement of academic networks – whether you develop them over the years or hours – is there for the taking. Anyone with a bit of  initiative to explore and develop their presence consistently and astutely can ‘make it’.

Social media has fast-tracked my profile-building and sector expertise in a whole new profession in unprecedented ways; it has been immensely fun, and satisfying to feel as if I have a handle on the field after a year and a half in it. A small handle, it must be said, but a handle, nonetheless!

In Inger ‘The Thesis Whisperer‘ Mewburn’s case, her online profile and expertise has garnered professional rewards beyond her time in academe. As she has said:

I have had access to opportunities usually reserved for more experienced players. It would take me at least 10 years to achieve this kind of status and recognition through the normal academic ‘fame’ channels of citations and conference attendances. (On the right side of the digital divide)

When done with the right level of engagement, these kinds of interactions can easily become the majority of our networking and collaborative activities. Indeed, among colleagues in a single unit, it can be their prime form of communication day-to-day, with nary a glimpse caught of each other as they rush from class to meeting to working group to seminar.

There are times, however, when I wonder whether the case still needs to be made for regular face-to-face time (what’s that graphic and memorable term, gifted to us by cyberpunk fiction – meatspace?). Could it mean the difference between resolving and exploding certain situations?