What should a Ph.D. student do if their scientific writing doesn’t seem good enough? Is there any way to improve it?

(Adapted from an answer I gave several years ago to this question on Quora) I’m assuming you are actively writing. If not, you must start there. Here are some things I have tried to follow to improve my scientific writing: Understand the basic parts of a scientific paper. This might sound trivial, but it is the … Read more

A Systematic Guide to Literature Reviews

As a graduate student, I’ve looked at hundreds of research papers. Over the years, I realized the necessity to develop a system for myself to effectively keep track of, organize, and process – in a word, harness – all this knowledge. Further, I realized I needed to have a system that made it easy to … Read more

An Authorship Framework for Research Papers

Authorship disputes are a persistent problem in academia, and they often lead to feelings of resentment. These disputes are a waste of energy, discouraging, and (mostly) avoidable. To reduce the chance of disputes in my lab, I reviewed a couple of journal papers on authorship guidelines and an example or two that other labs had … Read more

My System for GTD Inboxing

This post outlines the system of inboxing that allows me to keep track of everything, or at least most things. These apps and methods are a result of trying many different things over the years. Todoist: I use Todoist as my task management tool. For inboxing, I use Todoist’s task inbox. I just type in … Read more

How I Use Rocketbook: A Review

Rocketbook (RB) is a “smart”, reusable notebook. I decided to try one out because I was tired of taking pictures of my “traditional” paper notebooks and having to flip back through a bunch of junk pages to find something I wrote last week. I purchased the Exectutive size (6″x8.8″) from Amazon. I am happy about … Read more