Being a PhD student can get overwhelming sometimes, well, most of the time. There is pressure from needing to publish, you worry if your experiment or dissertation is good enough, and you worry about if you can go to the industry or continue in academia. As a fifth year PhD student, I would like to share a bit of what I experience. Not sure if there will be any useful tips, but I am writing this to let you know that you are not alone. Specifically for this post, I am going to focus on publications and experiments. Hi, I am the founder and developer of Galio Research!
TL;DR:- Publications matter, but chasing a "perfect" paper by endlessly adding variables and pre-emptively defending against every possible criticism is a trap with no end. Accept that published research is rarely flawless, and it's fine to have limitations as long as you're upfront about them and don't overclaim.
- One of the way scope creep can happen when advisors keep pushing "make it stronger" additions. Combat it by always tying new asks back to one question: does this contribute to the research goal? Push back professionally by framing pushback as questions, not refusals.
- Good research is research that gets finished (and published), not research that's endlessly perfected.
Are Publications Important?
Publications. It's something that we are told that we need to have to have a successful research career. I think the way things are set up right now, yes, that is a very important factor of having a successful research career. Just like a soccer player need wins under their belt in order to, say, move to a more prestigious club. It is a way for us to be validated as a researcher. Our work is a reflection of us.
Limitation in Research
With so much at stake, I personally always go down a rabbit hole of trying to "argument proof" my work. Add this variable, read more literature, what if the reviewer think this, what if they think that... The questions keeps going on and on. There will be no end if you keep doing this.
The way that I handled is to have a mindset shift. Understand and accept that no research out there is perfect. I used to think that if my experiment didn't account for x, y, and z, my experiment and result will have little to no merit. But if you look at other research papers, are they really perfect? They are not, and yet they are published. Not sure about you, but in the university that I am at, we have to do journal club and every week, the professor would just tear up the paper we read for that week. I often asked myself, "how do these papers get past the PIs and the reviewers if they are this bad?".
It is ok to have limitations in your research. It is bad to hide them. It is good if you identify them early and be upfront about them. Reach your research goal, don't over claim, and only claim what is true.
Scoping your Research
Does this contribute to the research goal?
The above question should always be top of mind whenever you are deciding something for your research. You want to add a new variable? You want to modify the questionnaire? Well, ask yourself first how doing those can contribute to your research question.
All research should have an established scope right from the beginning. That scope will act as your lighthouse, follow it's light and you will see shore. If not, you might get lost and your research will not finish. You just kept on adding and removing and adding again, there will be no end.
Usually a PI will ask you to do more of this and that. You have to understand that while you are working under them, it is good to have an opinion of your own and question it as well. Not in a disrespectful way, but in a professional manner of speaking. Wrap it in a question, "Would doing X be outside of our research goal?", "What will the findings of Y contribute to our research question?". Don't take it personally, tie it back to the research question. Tie it back to the initial reason why you are doing this experiment in the first place. This is part of the PhD process, you need to be able to think critically.
Well, what if they say, "this will make your research stronger" (or something along that line). Well, there will always be a way to make your research stronger, even after you make your research stronger for the 6th time. This is the line that you have to think for yourself. More often than not (probably), your advisor is right. There is a conversation to be held about the expectation of the experiment if this is the case. If it gets to a point where you just never stop or the "way to make it stronger" will take an extra 6 months or so, then a decision need to be made to either execute on it or include is as a limitation and add it to the "next step" section of the paper.
Remember, a good research is the one that gets done (and published).