Interesting - and I always thought an MRes is not a taught masters ...

Any masters student, irrespective of specific degree, should have at least one supervisor. After all, you even get one for your undergraduate dissertation. Other than that, it's up to the uni, I guess. I had two supervisors, a senior lecturer as the primary one and a professor and head of the division as the secondary one. I got most one-on-one support by the primary one, and we occasionally met with the secondary one to report on the project, to benefit from his wealth of research experience, resolve administrative issues, and simply to report on progress, since it was a research project in his division that he decided to fund etc.

But I did a research masters without a taught component ('MSc by Research'), so things are probably different for you.

Irrespective of how experienced or inexperienced your particular supervisor may be, for any research degree there should be two supervisors, a primary and a secondary one. At least that's how it is handled at my uni (I am about to finish an MSc by Research, just like you). In addition my uni has independent committees that regularly meet with each postgraduate research student to monitor their progress and resolve issues that you may have with your supervision.

I don't think it is much of a problem that your supervisor just finished their PhD, especially considering you are 'only' doing an MRes, not a PhD. The same went for my supervisor, who despite being relatively senior had never been a primary supervisor before (he is a clinician who went into academia relatively late).

But IF your primary supervisor is lacking in certain areas (e.g. knowing about organisational stuff), then there should definitely be a second point of contact for you, like a second supervisor.

I am conducting a systematic review and have run all my database searches (PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Cochrane CENTRAL etc.) I am now in the process of searching for grey literature, which there seems to be an endless ocean off.

The problem is that I find it difficult to locate a large number of relevant conference proceedings. E.g. I have decided to check conferences and symposia run by e.g. the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry etc., but I struggle finding out about their conferences. The RCP website has a small list of their annual meetings run since 2007, but that's it. I am pretty sure they have already had conferences way before 2007, but cannot find any information on them on their website. The same goes for other organisations in the field of my research - I'm lucky if their websites have any sections containing any conference proceedings at all.

Does anyone have any advice about finding such proceedings in their entirety, i.e. all of them for every year? Otherwise I will probably have to resort to contacting the organisations directly ...

Having silently followed this thread so far I'm gonna throw myself in the line of fire now and admit that I'm with Dunham and find many of the reactions to his post pretty ridiculous.

The OP wrote:

"My experience as a woman is that there isn’t an equal playing field for us. Society just takes, takes, and takes from you. We get little support be it on the home-front or at work. It is easier for the guys to progress at work because they get a lot done for them – dinner, laundry, baby-sitting - all they have to do is focus."

In reaction to that Dunham

a) clearly acknowledged that there are a lot of inequalities left, and that we have to continue to work on reducing them.

b) was in no way aggressive or hostile.

c) simply criticised the OP's rather simplistic view that science and research are a man's world and that a man gets everything served to him on a silver platter as long as he just focuses.

I wouldn't say I find it insulating, but it is definitely a bit of a childish view. I have to admit that a) I am a man (definitely a disadvantage in this discussion as it somehow tarnishes ones credibility on the issue) and b) I am not yet at the stage in life where I and my peers marry, get children etc., so I cannot recount a lot of first hands experiences of relationships and research. But I know from my surroundings that in the year 2016 a lot of couples actually share housework, share caring for the kids etc.

If you're a woman in science and you feel you are being weighed down by responsibilities while your partner is getting ahead, then that's a problem with your relationship, not research. Tell him to do the dishes, tell him to watch the kids some days a week and get on with your research.

Haven't been able to get the article for pd1598, so he still requires your help ;)

I am about to start a fully funded MRes in Neuroscience and the project (focused on treatments for opioid abuse) will include a systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence before the actual quasi-experimental part.

My institute would like to get me trained up for that and send me on a course. I initially planned to just take one at my own university, but my supervisor and most people in the institute seem to have a very strong opinion that a lot of training on systematic reviews out there is basically ****, delivered by people who think they are qualified to do it but actually aren't :D They want me to get trained to a high standard (the word 'Cochrane level' was thrown around) and my task is now to find a good course, preferably one that lasts several days, and offers decent value for the money. I have found three so far (York, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and Nottingham), but have no idea which one is best.

So I would be grateful for any suggestions on good courses that include content on both systematic reviews and meta-analyses :)

Tried through my Scottish uni and former Australian exchange uni - no luck here either, sorry.

Wow, that sounds pretty depressing. Wherever you look the neurosciences are described as an emerging field, and then researchers are treated like this ...