======= Date Modified 17 Dec 2009 11:40:39 =======
From the top of my head, I quite enjoyed Zadie Smith's "On beauty". It also includes some entertaining bits on academia (humanities), although if you're looking for distraction from academia this might be a turn-off..

======= Date Modified 17 Dec 2009 05:40:42 =======
Hi Kezia! Thanks so much for posting, I really think I know what you mean. It's very encouraging to hear that you were successful in asking other academics for advice! What kind of stuff have you sent them, chapters, research proposals, sketchy ideas? I have been thinking about that too but was a bit uncertain whether it's an "accepted" practice and whether people are generally ok with such requests.. and then many here on the forum have pointed out the risk of your work getting "stolen" (although I'm not sure my ideas are so grand for this to be an immediate risk, but it's probably also worth thinking about). And generally I think I'm also wondering how much of a draft is it allowed to be, so that others are still willing to comment rather than prefer to just cringe in private, if you know what I mean..

Recently I managed to get one prof from a different uni interested in a side project of mine (a conference paper on a not-immediate-phd topic) and sent her a manuscript, she promised to comment, let's see if it'll happen, but I really hope so. I've yet to ask outsiders about my actual phd project though.

Many thanks for sharing your experiences!

thanks a lot sneaks, it's amazing how comforting it is to know others are in the same situation. Can really relate to your situation. Hopefully we both find someone willing and able to comment constructively at some point.. sigh.

======= Date Modified 16 34 2009 11:34:08 =======
Hello!

While many of you seem to have been very lucky with your supervisors and the quality of supervision, I was wondering whether there's also others here on the forum that were less lucky in that respect. How do you get on and what's your strategies for getting useful feedback?

I'm pretty much on my own with my project. While my supervisor generally seems to think that my project is worthwile, he doesn't really engage at all with what I do and rarely has any kind of feedback to offer. He has sometimes been critical about my approach and ideas, but in a way that made me think his concern was to test whether I have any reasons at all to do x rather than offering genuine feedback/criticism -- which all in all is not really helpful. Furthermore, the things that immediately concern my project are not really part of his expertise, and so I'm generally not very motivated to ask him for advice. I sometimes have given him stuff to read but he rarely reads anything I give to him. Methodologically he is of no help either, I'm afraid. I've recently managed to publish a paper, and it seems to me he thinks I'm fine by myself, so he's even less interested in what I do.

I've anticipated this situation before I started my phd, and the reason I'm putting up with this is that I'm thinking whatever the situation, it's me who's got to do the phd in the end, and even a perfect supervision won't change the fact that the phd is my own independent piece of research, and I have to take responsibility for what I'm doing. I thought that it's quite common that the phd-situation is not perfect and if it's not supervision then there's most of the time other aspects that add to the challenges of the research.

I haven't changed my opinion on this, but at times I admit I'm getting somewhat envious of those who've got great supervision and are nicely integrated in some research group etc., and I feel my learning process would be so much more efficient if my supervision was a bit different. On the other hand, it's probably motivated me more to teach myself stuff, given me a lot of freedom to shape my research project, enabled me to read very widely and generally be quite independent, but still I'm pining for critical, constructive, supportive, coherent and thoughtful feedback/criticism.

My general strategy so far has been to look for feedback or answers elsewhere, but it's of course not so unproblematic to ask complete strangers for advice on research matters. I've been to a summer school, which was enormously helpful. So far I've only presented on one conference, but that was a side-project rather than my actual work.

Anyone else in a similar situation? How do you feel about it and what are your coping strategies?

Appreciate any input.

thanks chrisrollinski -- i decided to take the risk in the end and sent them a draft copy. As you also said, since I've presented it on a conference, I thought it might be ok to take the risk somehow, or then the core ideas where presented there already, so in a way it has been already out in the open. In addition, the project really is a side-project and thus even if some ideas get stolen it won't endanger my phd project.

but of course i'm hoping that instead of any scooping i'll get useful feedback and can improve the draft and perhaps still try to publish it somewhere.

Thanks everyone for their comments, you've given me very helpful food for thought and made me really think long and hard about this.

======= Date Modified 08 Dec 2009 07:07:57 =======
Thanks everyone for their input! Hope you don't mind if I warm this one up again.

So i got the feedback from the journal guest editors (I submitted it to a guest-edited special issue) and the paper was rejected. The e-mail was very short and general, unfortunately ("the second part needs more work") although generally keeping a positive tone (but this could of course just be politeness).

The paper was a side-project of mine that's not directly phd-related. I'd still be interested in improving it and perhaps sending it elsewhere again. However, I really don't have many people around me that can give me useful feedback. My supervisor is generally hands-off and even more hands-off with this paper that's not from my phd. At the conference where I presented the paper, there was so little discussion time in my session that the feedback didn't go beyond general politeness, and now the editors' e-mail wasn't more detailed either (I asked them if they have more detailed reviewers' comments I could look at, but no reply yet).

I've been craving for some more substantial feedback on my work for a long time, and therefore I saw this interested professor from another uni (see above) as an opportunity to finally get some (hopefully) useful comments. The main tenor here on the forum is however to not share work since the risk of being scooped is real. Of course I'm also nervous that I'm sharing crap work with someone senior and the damage this might do.

So now I'm really rather confused as to how to deal with the dilemma of needing feedback to improve and the risk of others stealing your ideas etc.? Quite a frustrating situation.

Any other people here with disinterested supervisors who have found any solutions to this dilemma? Does the fact that the paper is not directly phd-related make it safer to share in your opinion (even though I'd really like to try amending it and submitting it elsewhere)?

"sociological abstracts" is one imo quite useful database, here is a description: http://www.csa.com/factsheets/socioabs-set-c.php

In order to access it, I think your university will have to have a subscription to it, perhaps check with your uni library.

Thanks Leanne, Bilbo and Cleverclogs for your swift and helpful answers.

Yes, perhaps I should have given more details to explain the situation a bit better. The paper was originally a conference paper, and the person in question found the abstract on the net and was interested and therefore asked whether they can have the paper.

However, in the meantime I've submitted the expanded version of that conference paper to a journal, but haven't heard back from the editors/reviewers yet.

The fact that the paper was presented at a conference would perhaps make it "safer" to share it, but that version was rather underdeveloped compared with the journal manuscript version, therefore I hadn't really considered sharing the conference version -- but perhaps that would be one alternative?

I admit I'm quite flattered that this person is interested in the paper, also because my supervisor is so hands-off and I haven't really got many to give me feedback, and that person is quite well-known. (But on the other hand, the paper was a kind of side-project and not really phd-related, so that feedback wouldn't make too much difference on the lack of feedback otherwise).

Argh.

perhaps this is a silly question and I'm being unnecessarily overcautious.

But -- I've gotten a request from someone I don't know (personally) to look at a paper I've submitted to a journal (and I haven't heard back from the journal yet).

Do you think it's ok to give them a copy of the submitted paper? I doubt the person in question would "steal" any ideas, but I wonder if it's problematic to circulate work that's under peer-review at the moment?

Many thanks for any comments.

in my first (and to date only) experience with academic publishing, I was not allowed to rephrase anything anymore at the proof stage. The editors had specific queries that I was asked to address, and above that I could only ask for some typos or formating issues to be corrected. They explicitly said that rephrasing etc. can't be done. But it probably is again a bit publisher/journal dependent, perhaps best double-check whether you find some info on that in the proof "guidelines" or else e-mail the editor(ial assistant), they should be able to help you.

======= Date Modified 18 Nov 2009 07:51:26 =======
======= Date Modified 18 Nov 2009 07:50:58 =======
but don't forget to doublecheck the algebraic sign after the E: are you sure it says 3.400E1 in your output -- and not 3.400E-01 ?
(at least I've encountered the e-notation in Spss more often with very small numbers than with big ones)

3.400E-01 would then be 3.4 x 10^(-1) = 3.4 x 1/10 = 0.34

======= Date Modified 13 Nov 2009 13:01:04 =======
This view implies that the number of "capable" people always directly corresponds to the number of places that a research council happens to fund -- which is a very naive assumption in my opinion, as it disregards the contingency of policy decisions about the number of places available and takes it as some kind of "natural" given.

Thanks, teek, you have my sympathises too, sounds like a rather unpleasant situation you're in..! It's so hard to know beforehand whether or not some plan will work out, I guess part of it is simply the nature of research! Anyway, I hope you'll find some way out of your muddle..!

Postgraduate studies in the country where I do my phd aren't very structured at all, so there's no committees etc. I do have some people I sometimes talk to about my project though. I think my dilemma is in a way my own fault, because people have told me that this part is perhaps too much work for just one of three core parts, but I'm still too tempted still by its potential outcomes to simply ditch it. I am too stubborn to let go of it before having tried it out to the end, but at the same time can't shake off the fear that I might not be able to use it. Argh.

just a little vent.. i'm working on my first core thesis part, which has a social-historical nature. Am trying to translate the core information from a certain type of primary sourc from the last few decades into a series of diagrams, which I then hope to analyse for my first chapter. But now the sheer number of these diagrams and their complexity is really daunting on me. Thing is that translating the information into diagrams itself is a lot of work and I'm far from finished with it. I'm just horribly afraid that I could spend loads of time on something that won't actually bring the outcome I hope (perhaps because it's still simply too complex for a neat abstraction/analysis).

My supervisor isn't really much help, as he never really reads what I give him or engages much with what I'm trying to do..

I think I'll just plod on and hope for the best -- but is anyone else here worried about doing something that might turn out to be useless/a waste of time ?

======= Date Modified 11 Nov 2009 16:50:34 =======
Mhm, footnotes and line numbers really are no problem in LaTeX. Perhaps you can try it out, and if it works for you, you could try asking your supervisor whether they can come up with a different way to comment on your work. I would assume that if there's actually line numbers in your text, it's fairly easy to write the comments in a separate document and refer to the relevant pages and line numbers of your text. Of course it's a bit of a threshold to change to another system, but if you're really having problems with word I'd say you could just give it a go and see how/whether LaTeX would be an option for you.