Thought External Links
This webpage is dedicated to listing the links related to thoughts and current issues. You may also like to visit /pel, /cel, /mel, and /sel.
Table of Contents
Collections
Career
Career resources for PhD students Springer Nature All about PhD life Most articles are in a paywall. That’s bad!
Four golden lessons Steven Weinberg Springer Nature
If you want to be creative, then you will have to get used to spending most of your time not being creative, to being becalmed on the ocean of scientific knowledge.
Research
- How to read a paper Three-pass approach
- How to write (and read) a paper
Issues
Academia and Science
95 Theses against Germany’s Academic Fixed-Term Contract Act
This 95 theses explained how academic fixed-term contract hampers researchers and the future of science. I recommend reading it.
Capitalism Is Ruining Science 7 Sep 2018
Peter Higgs, the British theoretical physicist who in 1964 predicted the existence of the Higgs boson particle, told the Guardian upon receiving the Nobel Prize in 2013 that he would never have been able to make his breakthrough in the current academic environment.
Higgs said. “Today I wouldn’t get an academic job. It’s as simple as that. I don’t think I would be regarded as productive enough.”
Peter Higgs: I wouldn’t be productive enough for today’s academic system 7 Dec 2013
PhD Researchers
Early-career researchers are miserable at work 23 Jan 2023
Some 61% of respondents in 2022 said they felt that their workload was too high, whereas only 49% gave that response in 2019. “Working 60–70 hours a week is normalized and expected; if you don’t do it then you’re not a good researcher,” wrote one participant in the free-text section of the survey.
The scandal of researchers paid less than a living wage 02 Nov 2022
It’s hard to feel like I’m valued as a researcher when I’m worrying about paying for car repairs or getting groceries from the food bank.
Institutions need to re-evaluate their approach to PhD support. They could, for example, regard PhD candidates as employees subject to local living-wage rules.
Universities, funding agencies and governments know that today’s PhD candidates and master’s students will be tomorrow’s principal investigators and team leaders. They will be in academia, in industry, in the public sector and in non-governmental organizations. Research needs researchers to stay on to complete their studies — and that requires them to be able to pay their way.
Stress and uncertainty drag down graduate students’ satisfaction 24 October 2022
… survey say they spend more than 40 hours a week on their programme, and some are working for 70 hours per week or more.
Nearly half agree with the statement “There is a long-hours culture at my university, including sometimes working through the night.”
Forty-seven per cent of respondents said that the hardest part of being a graduate student was maintaining work–life balance.
How are PhD students meant to survive on two-thirds of the minimum wage? 20 June 2022
Being told to survive well below minimum wage, while making valuable contributions to society …, doesn’t sound like a fair go for those who have a go …
Updated on 18 Nov 2023
