If you're thinking of getting back into pharmacovigilance (which is, I would imagine, an area of increasing importance) then I suggest you get in touch with the MHRA or private companies who carry out that kind of work and ask whether a PhD would be beneficial or if not, what would? They may well be willing to sponsor you through a PhD if you seem like a good candidate. But be aware that a PhD requires a lot of motivation beyond just career progression.

Whatever you do, make sure your decision matches the specific kind of job that you want to get in to. Just because 'in general' there are more jobs for people with PhDs doesn't mean that your PhD will enhance your job prospects.

My first (uncompleted) PhD was in a lab and now I'm doing a non-lab PhD I still keep a 'lab book'. I don't write in it every day but I do use it regularly and not just for findings - I use mine to jot down questions I've got stuck on, things to ask, explanations of things I've understood, 'to do' lists etc.

You will be amazed at how much you forget as you go along if you don't keep records. And there can be useful stuff in the material that doesn't at first look important - you could overlook something if you only record what you perceive at the time to be 'important'.

As well as being a useful resource, my lab book does also give me a sense of progression - I'm stuck doing a lot of reading right now and sometimes it feels like I'm not getting anywhere, but the notes show I have actually been productive and moved on in my thinking.

This doesn't mean you should write down every little thing, but you need to make it into a resource that works for you.

Can you seek advice from someone at the uni who is independent from your supervisory team (post grad tutor in your department, student union advisor etc)? You have said you've requested that someone sits in on the meeting, but they might be able to give you additional advice.

UCL ranks alongside Oxbridge and Imperial with regard to research. It's well renowned internationally. I don't know about Durham but it's Russell Group so it's probably well respected.

Of course as a grad student sometimes subject/department can tell you more about the standings than the university as a whole.

It can be hard to work out what kind of thing to pursue if you have a number of apparently different interests. One thing someone once said to me that I've found quite useful is basically to try to differentiate between the things that make you go 'Huh, that's interesting - I'd like to see the results of that someday' and those that make you go 'Oooh, that's an interesting question. *I* want to find out the answer'. Another thing to consider is the kind of tasks you enjoy/find frustrating, as different types of research have different day to day existences.

Have you ever considered something that might sort of bridge the two interest areas/methodologies, such as veterinary epidemiology? Otherwise, I'd echo the advice to get some practical experience of each.

Really interesting to see such a 'cultural'/discipline divide on this issue. I'm based in medical science/biostats and a lot of people in these fields consider the general principles of open access publishing to be a really really good thing. Here are some of my thoughts/experiences:

- Lack of journal access is not just limited to former polys. I've just finished an MSc at a small, very specialist institution which most people outside the field have never heard of but EVERYONE around the world working in this field knows of and considers to be one of, if not THE, best institutions for that kind of thing. Yet library budgets were finite and journal access was pretty poor compared to the heavyweight multi-faculty university I was at before. Open access has been a boon for me this year.
- A lot of my fellow students will be going off to do work in low and middle income countries where research is poorly funded. If they don't have access to the research that enables them to produce good quality research/policy in their own countries, that's a reinforcement of the baseline inequalities some of them are trying to tackle.
- A lot of funders (e.g. Cancer Research, and I think Wellcome) require publication in Open Access journals on the grounds that publicly funded research should be publicly accessible. There was a bit of a dodgy phase of transition when it was unclear how this would work financially, but I think you can now write publication costs into grant applications.
- Subscription journals can be quite prone to 'publication bias' - they need to sell themselves so sometimes there is a preference for the headline-grabbing, paradigm shifting work, meaning that good quality but less revolutionary work gets overlooked. In clinical medicine, having access to as much of the data as possible, even negative results, is really really important for making informed clinical and policy decisions. Open Access journals such as PlosMed will publish anything that is good quality peer reviewed research, regardless of editorial agendas.
- On a technical point, because there's no concern about printing costs as it's all online, Open Access journals often don't impose a word limit or a max number of publications per month, which is useful!
- Following on from that, it's arguable that in some fields the rapidity of growth and amount of research coming out means that even if every good quality paper was accepted, existing print journals wouldn't be able to cope with the throughput, leading to the necessity for more journals, more subscriptions etc.
- Impact factors change over time. A paper I contributed to was published in PlosMed. Admittedly we did try a couple of subscription based higher impact journals first, but when they turned it down (not because of the quality of the research) we went to PlosMed as it was regarded as a better journal than some of the print ones which would have cost us nothing.

I can see that it's a model that won't necessarily translate well to arts/humanities where a lot of work comes from independent researchers who couldn't foot the bill (and it remains to be seen whether journals in those fields would adapt to accommodate this). But with some fields there's almost an ethical issue with not having stuff freely accessible to all, and I would say that this was particularly the case in medical sciences.

That does rather sound like they're expecting to publish your work once you make those revisions. I don't think you'll be able to get out of it at this stage without possibly causing upset. Sorry.

But be glad that you've had something accepted! That's a big hurdle!

Forgive me - it was rather late when I wrote my original post, and I didn't fully register that you'd been invited to *resubmit*.

If that is the word they actually used then I think that gives you a get out clause, as you're no longer in a negotiation process with them unless you do resubmit it to them. If, though, it was more of a case of 'yes we'll definitely publish your paper, pending these corrections', I'd be more cautious, as that is where you could get into trouble if they think they have a claim on your work.

So read the T&Cs you agred to at submission, and exactly what the editor response was, and if it's clear that you're not tied to them in any way then go ahead and pursue other options.

There will probably be terms and conditions of submission which prohibit or discourage this. At the very least it would probably be considered quite rude. People have spent time reading and critiquing your work for no gain to them, so if you turn around now and say, 'actually I don't think this journal is worthy of my work' you could do your reputation a lot of harm.

Also, just because you think it might be accepted by a better journal doesn't mean it would be. At least this way you're on the way to publication.

I would suggest carrying on this time and making a note to be more discerning in your submission choice for future work.

Your best bet would be to contact some relevant universities and ask them. Or ask Edinburgh - is there a reason you can't do more modules there?

Helpful hint:

You application will be more successful if you send it to an actual supervisor, rather than a bunch of people on the internet.

Also, giving the impression that you've thought about what it is you're applying for might result in a greater chance of success.

Good luck.

Don't do it! You really don't need to be taking out subscriptions at this stage (if ever!)

As I understand it, your reason for wanting to take out subscriptions is because you perceive that your interview would have gone better had you been better read. Did you actually receive specific feedback that said that? You might be misreading the situation - perhaps the interview went well from their point of view but there was another candidate who just happened to be better. I would definitely recommend getting feedback if you think there might be something you might improve on for a future interview.

But back to the original question. You don't need to be an expert on a topic in order to apply for a PhD. Becoming an expert is what happens *during* the PhD. To make a good application you need to have a feel for the key issues in that area, where the thinking is currently at etc. But you could probably get a feel for this from a handful of review articles and a book, plus reading some free abstracts. Reading a few papers by your interviewers never harms. But definitely don't go subscribing to loads of journals at this stage - as soon as you become a PhD student, vast swathes of literature will be free for you to access.

With regard to the Open University - it might not be a bad idea at all to investigate one of their course. Firstly it would give you student status and the associated benefits, but also it might help you develop your confidence, particularly if you've been out of academia for a while. Plus a module or two on your CV surely wouldn't do any harm.

Good luck with your applications.