Evaluating Potential Research Advisors and their Science.

Science is a way of approaching problems in the natural world that involves asking questions that are testable (hypotheses).  This requires observations and gathering of data (qualitative and quantitative), and then analyzing this information. 

To qualify as science, these observations and data must be published and publications must include information regarding methods used.  This is a means to allow others to retest and draw their own conclusions – these maybe consistent with the original ones, but this is not always the result.  This is where things get interesting!

There are many ways to explore your interests in science, including classroom, laboratory, and field experiences.  You should, however, go beyond passively waiting for your life’s interests to be presented to you, and look beyond your own (small) world that is UW-Oshkosh.  One convenient way to do this, that wasn’t available to previous generations, is to search online for topics and scientists that are doing the type of work that interests you. 

In Earth Sciences, GeoRef is a very useful tool to explore topics and scientists. 

    1. Go to Polk Library’s web page.

    2. Under the “My Quick Links” section (right side of library home page), choose Geology as the area you are interested in.

    3. Go to the Georef link.

    4. Input (copy and paste) the name of the person you wish to check out.  Start with someone you know and perhaps work with already.

    5. Under “Select a field”, choose: AU Author.

        • When you do this you get a complete list of all types of publications. 

        • You now need to eliminate the “noise”, A.K.A. conference abstracts, because they contain almost no data, no methods, and are un-reviewed (unscreened).  Abstracts are just statements that someone is doing, or thinking about doing, research, but information presented may or may not be correct, important, or meaningful.

        • If someone you are thinking about working with in graduate school has lots of abstracts, but few publications, this is considered a “red flag”. 

        • To do this, choose “Exclude Abstracts Only” on the left side of the page under “Refine your results”, and then hit “Update”.  {Be aware that this doesn’t exclude some conference abstracts considered “extended abstracts” such as those for the Institute on Lake Superior Geology meetings– but these are not scientific publications.}


    6. See what papers the scientist has published (Master’s and Ph.D. theses don’t count).  Do the papers sound interesting?  If so, then you may want to download them to explore further.

    7. If the title(s) sound(s) interesting, then see what co-authors are listed.  Are any of the co-authors students?  This is a very important consideration – you want to work with someone who is going to make sure your work gets published!  You may have to do more detective work to find this out (download the paper; go to the scientist’s web site; do a Google search for the names).

    8. For the scientists you evaluate:

            • What is their record of scientific work (number of scientific papers and over what time period)?

            • Summarize the areas of their research. Are students co-authors on their scientific papers?

    9. Now that you know how to evaluate researchers, explore various topics that you are interested in and use the technique outlined above to narrow down potential graduate advisors.

 

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