Careers

Junior scholars have always needed to curry favour with their seniors, but quantifying research impact exacerbates the problem, says Jonathan R Goodman

Most postdoctoral researchers will end up working outside universities – postdoc adviser Emma Williams has some advice on the tricky business of applying for jobs in different sectors

More sharing of impact will improve understanding of how it can be promoted and evaluated, says Peter Tufano

Emma Watton and Sarah Stables share insights from their research on, and personal experience of, how job shares can help women secure senior roles and also benefit universities

Manchester president says women should focus on their strengths when applying for jobs, not worry about how they fall short compared with male predecessors

University believes new criteria rewarding selfless behaviour will ‘focus minds’

Negative perceptions surround the head’s role, but those who have taken up the challenge speak of a range of benefits, write Navé Wald and Clinton Golding

Academics’ deep identification with their work means that the failure of a book proposal, grant application or promotion request can cut deeply. But in a competitive profession, such knock-backs are inevitable. Here, six academics recall their most traumatic rejection – and how they got over it

‘Monk mornings’, work sprints and withdrawal from social media helped Benedict Probst become hugely more productive

Complaints about journal editors’ decisions ignore the root cause of the research assessment problem: career structure, says Richard Sever   

Scheme means universities can spend levy money on own training for lecturers instead of seeing it claimed by government

Universities must improve their career development support for professional and support staff, says Alex Holmes

A report offers academics advice on the increasingly vital – if daunting – business of sharing their expertise via the media

Researchers examined a sample of CVs and found that scholarly dishonesty extends to job applications

Preliminary results of EUA survey suggest three-quarters of responding institutions draw on much-criticised metric

The pursuit of impact remains controversial, but it has opened doors to more varied careers, says Andrew McRae

Brian Schmidt says academia is losing brightest researchers because they cannot endure ‘intolerable’ precarity throughout their thirties

A lecturer describes how her university failed to act when she was racially victimised by a student receiving mental health support

There are plenty of pitfalls to be aware of when using slides in a presentation – academics in the know give their top tips

Individuals should be able to choose their own work-life balance depending on their life situation and level of ambition, says Lee Cronin

Mounting workloads and mushrooming publication output are making the task of staying abreast of the latest developments in the literature ever more difficult for academics. Here, eight researchers reflect on their own approaches and offer their tips

Robert MacIntosh offers some tips on dealing with the deluge of student reference requests – and on how to get a decent one yourself

Summer is upon northern hemisphere academics. But its cherished traditional identity as a time for intensive research is being challenged by the increasing obligations around teaching and administration that often crowd out research entirely during term time. So is the 40/40/20 workload model still sustainable? Respondents to a THE survey suggest not. Nick Mayo hears why

Leiden University acted unlawfully, a court has ruled, in using anonymous letter to discredit an applicant for a professorship

Michael Kosterlitz tells THE how colour blindness shaped his career and why Nobel winners shouldn’t be taken too seriously

Asking people to prepare for a 10-week course that might not run is too much, says an anonymous early career academic

Even in disciplines in which research is inherently inexpensive, ‘grant capture’ is increasingly being adopted as a metric to judge academics and universities. But with success rates typically little better than one in five, rejection is the fate of most applications. Six academics give their tips on how to improve the odds

Giving short online talks for a general audience offers benefits for individuals, subjects and the entire profession, says Kristen Sadler

Recent confusion over The Lancet’s stance on green open access highlights the difficulty for support staff in preparing researchers for the new rules, says Alice Gibson

With such wide disagreements in grading, the research excellence framework’s gravity for careers is unjustifiable, says Philip Moriarty

Corruption, poverty and inequality can’t be tackled by weakening the state and driving academics abroad, says Mark Aspinwall

Promotion criteria requiring top researchers to also be good teachers and managers undermine the nature of universities, says Andrew Oswald

Giving those in professional services a sense of identity and purpose in increasingly complex institutions are among keys, experts say

The president emeritus of Nanyang Technological University says be prepared to answer endless questions and learn to control your ego

Data on almost 2,500 computer scientists in US and Canada suggest ‘prestige’ of PhD institution does not influence number of papers they later produce

Pam Denicolo, Dawn Duke and Julie Reeves answer some of the most common questions preoccupying doctoral candidates about the biggest day of their career to date

Robert MacIntosh considers how university staff should approach the management merry-go-round of vice-chancellors, pro vice-chancellors and department heads

Work to encourage team science is gathering momentum, and a recent Academy of Medical Sciences report highlights key steps to be taken

Impostor syndrome, feeling misunderstood and pressure to stay on top can plague many academics. Magdalena Bak-Maier advises how to prevent them derailing your efficiency  

For those reliant on EU funding, seeking appointments at continental universities is the only sensible course, says Peter Coveney

Queen guitarist Brian May completed his PhD after enjoying rock stardom. Jack Grove looks at how doctoral dropouts can land second chances – and supervisors can help

A student’s mysterious accusation of racism saw P. K. Newby removed from her course – and another woman lost from the leaky pipeline

Diana Mitlin, professor of global urbanism at the University of Manchester, shares her tips on working with politicians and government officials

Since the 1970s, an increasingly competitive job market has come to advantage the already privileged

Scholars offer their advice on the art of promoting research online

Scientists and medics have the best chance of reaching the top job in the UK, leaving other disciplines looking for answers

With many doctoral candidates unhappy and reporting mental health problems, Emma Pierson suggests ways supervisors could reduce pressures

Why other academic disciplines have not also introduced such markets is a ‘very good question’, organisers say

As a new report reveals dissatisfaction with mentorship for female researchers, Jack Grove asks where responsibility lies

Study based on fields of astronomy, ecology and robotics suggests huge drop in duration of scholarly careers

ProfHub plans to let applicants rate universities – and allow anonymous leaks – about the academic selection process

Whether you approach an editor in person, over email or on the phone, make sure to tap into their passion for the subject, writes Nature’s Magdalena Skipper

Hearing that an editor does not want to publish your work can be crushing, but learning from the experience can make you stronger

Scientific excellence must mean more than ‘how good someone is with a round-bottom flask’, conference hears

The humanities professor discusses her passion for human rights, how universities can work with refugees, and learning to stop apologising

Satisfaction with postgraduate research declines significantly over course of programme, survey reveals

A new teaching year has just begun in the northern hemisphere. Eight academics reflect on their experience of lecturing, and offer their tips on opening students’ eyes – and keeping them open

Scholarly prose can be verbose and unclear, and can obscure the point you are trying to make. Joe Moran offers his top 10 tips for writing well

Research will suffer from the collapse of professional development into financially fixated assessments of ‘capability’, say Gill Evans and Dorothy Bishop 

To spare doctoral candidates protracted and unproductive efforts, Tim Marler and Dean Young suggest a pragmatic route to successful completion, while, below, Julian Kirchherr advocates a quick-and-dirty path to a viable thesis