The uni have just changed the rules for theses without giving any notice. We are no longer allowed to use the standard 'for educational purposes' exemption from copyright. All of the area boundaries I've used in my mapping are crown copyright (although the data which was mapped is my own) and can be used for educational purposes or non-commercial research, but the uni will no longer recognise this. I'm not impressed and it could have serious implications for my work.

Hmmm... I'm not sure what to advise on that. Have you spoken to your sup?

Found out today that my paper got accepted, yay

for your paper.

Yes I have spoken to my supervisors. They hadn't even spotted the change in the document that was sent round, so it was bit of a surprise to them when I mentioned it. I need to write to whoever owns the copyright and ask for permission even though I shouldn't actually need the permission and it's just the uni who have decided that I do. If I can't get permission then I have a problem...

Wonderful news BB2!

It looks like I might do a bit more work today - trapped in the office by the rain!

I've just had a right fright. The whole of the 17,000 word chapter which I was finishing suddenly just vanished of the page and I wasn't even touching the keyboard or anything.

It wouldn't let me 'undo' the change so I couldn't get it back, but I've managed to retrieve yesterday's version off the back-up system. this kind of thing isn't very good with the submission deadline looming...

Oh dear

How's yours going, BB2?

Oh dear, I'm nowhere near that stage, but for my master's one I was emailing it to myself copying it to my mp3 player and to CD fairly regularly.

Do you know what happened (so you can avoid it happening again?)

hello

I finished my PhD a couple of years ago (mathematics, Nottingham Uni)

for those who are still writing, you can do it :-)

Slowly and (not) steadily

I thought you were already working as a RA, Vectistim? I'm confused now, because I thoguht you'd got your PhD several years ago before you started as a post doc?

No I don't know what happened. It literally vanished in front of my eyes. I was sat holding a cup of coffee (not touvhing the keyboard or anything) and the page suddenly became blank. The IT team have no idea either. All I can think of is that it must have tried to autosave and gone wrong. The computer isn't very keen on me because I have a tendency to push the limits on its RAM and processing power...

All our stuff gets backed up automatically twice a day, and I do copy onto my pen drive at the end of each day. I don't like having two versions actually accessible at the same time because I managed on a previous chapter to accidently swap versions and didn't notice for a couple of days by which point all the files had been resaved and I'd lost an earlier chunk of that chapter which had been on the other version.

I'm still feeling a bit juddery from my fright!


That sounds like mine...

I know people who have been PT RAs and PT postgrads but have worked on their PhDs full time...

The best way is to be a PT PhD student and work on it full time. Result = more time to complete

It may require stretching the stipend a lot to cover the extra years

I don't like computers.

No, I did escape into the real world for some years first and am in the second term of my PhD.

I feel ready to throw Stata out the window.

Is that some sort of stats package?

It _looks_ like I'm going to end up playing with some version of Logo to play with models for the next ever.

we were banned from using stata......

How is everyone else getting on?

There hasn't been much activity on this thread?

This is clearly testament to how hard working PhD students are!

I got an invite back to my old Uni to give a talk about postgrad study

I know there's not been much activity - that's why I asked how people were getting on. BB2's becoming a bit of a stranger at the moment, and I haven't seen much of the rest of you either...

for your invite back to your old uni.

I'm trying to write a conclusion for one of my chapters at the moment, but it's a bit too complicated...

my supervisor has finally got round to finishing off one of the papers from my thesis...... (nearly 3 years after I passed)

hopefully I will be famous soon in the journal of the royal statistical society :-)

Why is your supervisor doing a paper from your thesis, Elf? It's your thesis, so surely you should be doing the paper and having your name on your work, not your supervisor? All of the things I've published so far from my MA/PhD have been written by me and have my name on them.

he's not writing it, he's covering it in red pen.

Ah. Okay. So it is being published by you and not by him, then?

The student and supervisor would normally be co-authors of the publication, surely?

well it's definitely got my name on it. In my field there are usually 10 or more authors on a paper and they're quite regularly written alphabetically.... so I'm not the first in the list, but then again neither is my supervisor so hey ho.

I know it's not the best situation but that's what happens.... at least I will finally have a paper

Not normally - unless it's been a completely joint research project, and that's pretty unusual. The things I've published have been based on my ideas and thinking and my fieldwork, not my supervisors' research (which is totally separate from mine). One paper which was discussed in more depth with my supervisors has them in the acknowledgement along with the ESRC who have funded my PhD. Maybe it varies between areas, but in the area I work in it is very unusual for a supervisor's name to appear on a paper - and when it does, it is usually taken as an indication that the student wasn't actually capable of writing to the required standard and the supervisor has therefore written the paper for them. Papers do sometimes have joint authors, but these tend to straddle different research projects and then bring them together in a more conceptual/theoretical piece. Most papers in my area are single authored, and joint authored papers often don't 'count' in terms of your publication record when you're applying for jobs and things, in the same way that contributions to edited books don't count even when it's a complete single-authored chapter.

I think this very much depends on the subject area, in my area (=maths) the above is almost always true.

And in my area (=a social science subject) it definitely isn't!

Guess it depends on the field and the supervisor! My sup has done most of the writing for my paper

We can settle with this:

The student OR supervisor would normally be co-authors of the publication.

So what's in it for the supervisor?

A warm fuzzy feeling?

At some point, I have to find a job. I'm rubbish at science.

For now a xmas temp job would do..I have no skills.

What will I do with my life?

No you're not : you wouldn't be working on this amazing PhD if you were rubbish.



I think a good many of us have been there Claudia, until the right job comes along. Again, you clearly have skills, and very useful ones.



Be successful. You clearly care, and you'll get there. All the best.

I will have to address this at some point too

I have one idea

I do like the idea of cycling all day

First conference paper submitted today, so all being well that will be a free holiday to Singapore in April (they've already accepted the abstract).

And here it seems to be the case that the supervisor goes down as a co-author.

Sounds good, vectistim Singapore, wow I've never been to an international conference... not unless Glasgow counts But I didn't present there anyways

They're quite keen on us globe-trotting here - someone with the same supervisor has just come back from Beijing. A little closer to home there's the possibility of Budapest towards the end of next year, but funding seems to be getting tighter.

The annoying thing is the huge time lags invlolved between registering, abstracting, submission and actual conference.

But surely that just gives me plenty of time to do the actual work I've said I've done in the abstract!

Gotta love conferences for free holidays - especially closer to home ones with lots of friends - last year 25 of my group took over a hotel in Germany for a week, had a great time. Lots of cocktails in the bar Also plenty of people to chat to over coffee/dinner - easy to avoid scary academics you don't want to talk to!

Hey, don't knock, I'm helping organise a workshop in Glasgow early next year .

* goes back to working on a paper for Toronto next summer *

What's up Flossie?

My thesis.

Thesis writing isn't a sensible thing to do.

Theses are bad

Hi... I'm crashing the thread, as I'm not doing a PhD.. wondering if anyone's doing a PhD related to literature who would be willing to chat to me about it... I've decided I want to get a PhD, be a lecturer, and spend my life doing research and writing papers... but I don't know where to start.

I'm in second year of my BA now, and don't know if I'm thinking about this early, or way too late, I'm pretty ignorant on the subject in general. Any help and advice would be appreciated...

I'm answering this from the position of being in the second term of mine funded by EPSRC.

In your second year? I presume this is term 4 of 9 then.

If you're looking to do a (English?) literature PhD the first thing that springs to mind to be is the funding issue. AIUI its rather easier to be funded for some sort of scientific research that has (at least/most) the potential to be of practical use. I would suspect you need to be comfortably into the first bracket to be in with a chance of getting what funding there might be available.

You'll then be looking at studying some fairly small item fairly intensively for three years, so any idea what the general area might be for that?

Co-incidentally Reading has an open-day on Wednesday so the website is a bit set up to provide some initial answers that may be of use. http://www.reading.ac.uk/life/life-pgopendays.aspx

It may also be of use to look at the PhD Studentships advertised on jobs.ac.uk

And it would probably be worth asking on the forums on here