I worked in a very small field, and having done work previously with a number of people, my external ended up being the only other guy in the country who I hadn't worked with. This meant I didn't really have much choice, although the guy was really nice, I'd met him a few times at conferences. My internal knew next to nothing about my subject area, but as my external was an expert this was ok.

I think that the choice of examiners depends on your project and getting a balance right, for example multidisciplinary projects could end up with no examiner knowing the field that well, and if you were doing say Biophysics your internal might be a Physicist and external a Biologist (or vice versa)

I've been doing a postdoc now for about 2 years in the same group I was doing my PhD, to be honest day to day doesn't feel much different, I work basically the same was I always did helping out the PhD students and project students and basically managing the lab. All of which I was also doing when I was a PhD student basically because there was never a Post Doc in the group before. The only obvious difference really is the fact that I don't have a thesis hanging over me, instead I'm writing papers, and instead of worrying about what I'll do when I finish I'm wondering if we'll get a grant to keep me on.

Ah sorry, when I first read your original post I missed the part about being teaching led rather than research led my bad.

I guess not having research based staff around makes things difficult. If the staff aren't very research driven how likely is it that the projects are new/novel work and meet the criteria for publication? For people out of the loop it's often difficult to keep up to date on the research area. Unless some of the staff are keeping up to date on developments in research I would imagine most of your time would be spent searching the literature perhaps only to find much of the work has been done before or proved/disproved already (depending on your field) and as such not suitable for publication. If this isn't the case I'd imagine you'd have alot of work to do to shape the work into a research paper. If the work is of a good quality you should be looking to publish in as good a journal as is realistic IMO, but I guess it depends on whether the deaprtment care more about quality or quantity...

======= Date Modified 21 Sep 2011 14:11:30 =======
I think you are right to be wary of this, I have never heard of anything like this before. Who is the person that is asking you to do this role? It sounds like someone in the department wanting to get more publications before the research assessment. I would check with some senior people in the department (head of dept, head or research & head of teaching that they are all aware and happy with this situation).

I would imagine that before publishing anyone's work you would need at least the permission of the student and the supervisor of their project for the work to be published and them to be happy for you to do it. You would also need to discuss the roles (authorship) before you start if you were to do it.

It does however raise a couple of interesting questions, firstly if the work is of publishable quality why hasn't the supervisor published it already? Secondly about your role, I guess if you were to do this work your name should go on it - in writing the paper you have made a significant contribution to the work, there is no way you should do this as a 'ghost writer' IMO. In order to do a proper job you would probably need to either repeat some of the work or verify the analysis, so need to have some experience in the area of study. Also as regards your position it hinders your opportunities to carry out your own research (which would almost certainly be of better quality). If I were you I would only accept such a role on condition that senior people in the dept are happy, you will get some credit and final say over which projects are of publishable quality and that you are allowed to carry out your own research for a significant proportion of your time. Whether or not you are in a position to make such demands is something only you would know.

I am aware of undergraduate work being published but it is usually as part of a larger project carried out (and verified) by the PhD students, postdocs or supervisor, before one of the more senior people in the group who has been working along side the student writes the publication

Thanks for the positive comments you're all right, I'm not bothered about missing out on this particular job, the project seemed good but I don't want to work for someone like that.

The problem is how things like bad A-level results may affect job prospects, a friend of mine who completed his PhD a couple of years ago has had problems getting jobs outside academia (because of computer sorting of applications) and has decided to re-sit his A-levels to help his prospects, this seems crazy to me. But I worry how much of a problem it could be given our combined experiences. I wondered if anyone else had encountered any of these problems?

My current contract is close to expiring and I've been applying for new Postdoc jobs, so far I've had 3 interviews, 2 of which when ok (although I didn't get the jobs), and the last one which was a nightmare which has really hit my confidence, where several things came back to haunt me. My current position is with my PhD supervisor so I didn't need to apply for it.

The application form required details of all qualifications from GSCE onwards, my results at A-Level were very poor and raised questions as to why someone with my subsequent qualifications had done so poorly at A-Level and how I had gone on to even go to university in the first place. My explanation was that there were a number of factors as to why I did so poorly which included the teacher failing to teach part of the syllabus, personal reasons (illness and death of a close family member) and the main reason being me not really having good enough study skills or working hard enough. I said that I felt by being offered a place at University I was given a second chance and I worked extra hard and developed better skills which have helped me achieve my degrees and PhD.

The second thing I was pulled up on was my publication list, he took offence at me listing a conference proceeding as a journal article, and he suggested I was being devious. I explained myself by saying that the article was submitted to a special edition of a journal but had to conform to the same regulations as other regular articles, so I considered it to be of equal merit, I thought this made it's classification quite subjective, and that I was not attempting to mislead them at most I was a little naive.

I was informed a few days later that I hadn't got the job, when I asked for feedback they flagged these issues. :-( Although the responses to these questions were off the cuff, having thought about them I'm not sure I would do much different if I faced similar questions in future. But I am now becoming nervous about how to present some of these things in future applications. Any advice?

My current contract is close to expiring and I've been applying for new Postdoc jobs, so far I've had 3 interviews, 2 of which when ok (although I didn't get the jobs), and the last one which was a nightmare which has really hit my confidence, where several things came back to haunt me. My current position is with my PhD supervisor so I didn't need to apply for it.

The application form required details of all qualifications from GSCE onwards, my results at A-Level were very poor and raised questions as to why someone with my subsequent qualifications had done so poorly at A-Level and how I had gone on to even go to university in the first place. My explanation was that there were a number of factors as to why I did so poorly which included the teacher failing to teach part of the syllabus, personal reasons (illness and death of a close family member) and the main reason being me not really having good enough study skills or working hard enough. I said that I felt by being offered a place at University I was given a second chance and I worked extra hard and developed better skills which have helped me achieve my degrees and PhD.

The second thing I was pulled up on was my publication list, he took offence at me listing a conference proceeding as a journal article, and he suggested I was being devious. I explained myself by saying that the article was submitted to a special edition of a journal but had to conform to the same regulations as other regular articles, so I considered it to be of equal merit, I thought this made it's classification quite subjective, and that I was not attempting to mislead them at most I was a little naive.

I was informed a few days later that I hadn't got the job, when I asked for feedback they flagged these issues. :-( Although the responses to these questions were off the cuff, having thought about them I'm not sure I would do much different if I faced similar questions in future. But I am now becoming nervous about how to present some of these things in future applications. Any advice?

I've got my viva in a couple of weeks and am wondering what to do to prepare for it. I'm wondering what other people did? Reading through my thesis and the key papers doesn't seem much.

Also I'm wondering what to wear for my viva, I'm male, both my examiners are also male, I want to wear something appropriate but comfortable, any suggestions?

Thanks the Word 2007 add on is great I looked for one a while ago but couldn't find one. Works perfectly!

I'm writing my thesis in word but need to submit an electronic copy in pdf format. Does anyone know any good methods of converting from word for to pdf form without anything being reformatted?

I had a program that could do it but it messed about with some diagram, eqns and other types of formatting (such as bold, italic and underline)

As I'm not sure what your circumstances are, it's difficult to determine what you mean by un-do-able. Your project might have hoped to achieve something positive and the results don't work out that way. I get the impression you're science based?? as long as the science behind what you are doing is solid and the research question is reasonable then a negative result (ie not finding link you were hoping to prove or whatever) is just as valid as a positive one.

Is that actually the rate once you pass your viva or a rate you'll be on until you pass your viva?

Most places won't employ you as a Postdoc until you pass your viva, but will allow you to work as a research assistant (on a lower wage) until you pass your viva when you go up to the Postdoc pay range. It seems that research assistants are typically paid ~£20-24K (depending on the university pay scale while postdocs generally start around the £27k mark.

It could be that what you've been told is the research associate wage you would start on (assuming you haven't had your viva yet) rather than the postdoc wage. This is something you should check out. Also if this is the case you should find out if/when you would move from one position to the other

As long as you get the requirements for funding (usually a 2.1) you should be fine. I finished my first degree (BSc) with a 2.1 and could have applied for a PhD straight away and have been accepted (I know a number of people who were). I decided I wasn't sure if I wanted to do a PhD so I did a research based masters in which I came close to a distinction but ultimately didn't get. I applied for a number of PhDs and was invited for interviews at all of them. So I don't think the degree classification comes into it. I think academic appreciate that there is a different aptitude required for a PhD than a first degree or masters.

If I were to give advice about applying for PhDs it would be to discuss things with the academics in your department even before any applications, let them know you are interested in doing a PhD and what area of your subject you want to do it in. If you already know speak to people about getting your masters dissertation topic in this field hopefully with someone that may have PhD places available. I know alot of people that have got onto PhDs from doing masters projects with their supervisor, but if that fails letting other academics know you are looking doesn't hurt

I think it's something you just have to get used to. I've been getting all this grief off my mates throughout my PhD. The thing with a PhD is that it's something that you don't understand unless you've been through it, and not many people have. They assume it's like an undergrad degree, where some courses allow you free time, which gives students a bad name.

At the moment (and for the last year) I've been working 70+ hours a week. Most of my mates with "proper jobs" work half that. I just point this out to them and have resigned myself to the fact that they'll never understand.

At the end of the day the decision is down to the examiners. Your supervisor won't be able to influence the decision that's made. But choice of external examiner has been made by your supervisor and as they are research associates and close, it is likely that they will have similar views of the field and similar ideas, and go about things in similar ways. Likewise you will presumably share similar views to your supervisor (and hence the examiner) meaning you and your examiner will in all likelihood look at things in similar ways, which should result in your work being viewed in a good light