This question applies to any person having any idea to help PhD student as well as masters students who are willing to do their PhD in future. Some important skills are imperative to be able get a PhD and continue in research field succesfuly. I would like you to assist me in providing the most important skills for PhD student especially the one in Sciences (Physics).
Dear Agnes,
The ability to sit still and concentrate for some years is crucial. Development of skills in research methodology and a certain creativity and flexibility of mind are also important issues.
Attend and present at as many conferences as possible. They stimulate new ways of looking at your research problems, ensure that you have up-to-date information, and help you to connect with other people who are interested in similar subjects, as well as making sure the candidate is developing a profile as a researcher in his/her field.
Dear Prof. Ahmed A. El Tayyan,
Thank very much for the motivation.
Thinking and writing skills are needed, indeed writing is thinking, so that's a place to start. It is analytical cause-and-effect thinking that is so critical in research and it is not as straightforward as most of us imagine. One of the difficulties is that science is not intuitive and scientific thinking clashes with commonness and rule of thumb thinking that we habitually apply to everyday life.
Dear Agnes and other readers,
I mostly work in a field of psychology, but I guess (and know from literature) that there are many general skills that are similar across different disciplines. I often make “survival” workshops for the PhD’s or beginning scholars across the disciplines.
Here is my list (not ordered due to importance) what usually helps students to be successful in research:
a] cooperate with somebody who is more experienced and skilled (many professors cannot unfortunately do a good research because they are poor researchers themselves; also working in the same office with somebody hard-working helps a lot; the best way how to learn to think critically is to cooperate with somebody who has this skill);
b] work continuously in small steps (many students procrastinate and the quick work is usually of poor quality; great job is mostly done by doing something small every day or at least few times a week; I recommend students to start doing the most important things – like dissertation research – as the first thing in the day... so they will surely finish the small task before something “more important” foils their efforts; it should be at least one time-block which is usually about 2-4 hour long to make something substantial);
c] seek facilitation and help from the advisor or colleagues (doing research is time consuming and not much fun most of the time; most of us will never discover anything of great importance for human kind; students need to know that this is normal and not to panic and need some regular assistance now and then);
d] have a little bit of luck (this is a harsh truth... but luck is a big part of an “academic world” game and success; some topics seem also to be more “sexy” as others... nice book about the extreme popularity of a string theory which kills other topics in physics The Trouble with Physics was written by Lee Smolin; we can also help the “luck” to come. Some people are so pessimistic that “luck” will never come because constantly sabotage it);
e] love the research (internal motivation will help to overcome the many obstacles that will surely come);
f] “boss” who is result oriented (without somebody who wants to see the results regularly, the results may not come or will come very late or in poor quality... in cases when you are not a “self-sufficient” genius);
g] meet other scholars and students at workshops, conferences, meetings etc. (it is not only necessary to see others stuff or to present ours; it’s important to share our ideas, fears, obstacles; it’s great to see the “big names” and to find out that they are human beings with their own strengths and weaknesses... Because of this my colleagues and I organize an annual conference called “PHD Existence” in Olomouc, Czech Republic which is popular within Czech Republic, Slovakia and some other countries).
h] praise the failure and be courageous (failure is the normal part of the process and without failures there is usually also no success because we do only things where we expect to be successful which are often the things that do not need more research; so be courageous... don’t be afraid to do something with what others don’t agree if you “feel” the potential);
i] learn time-management (in the times of resources abundance and a lot of administration this is a must; especially ability to log-out from e-mail and not using a mobile phone; being able to find a comfort quiet zone where we can work without being constantly interrupted);
j] know the whole research process (it’s great to be focused but without knowledge of theory, statistics, methodology etc. it is hard to do something substantial because we do not see the “whole” picture; all PhD students should have at least average skills and knowledge of all necessary ingredients – it takes of course time but many things can be learned by “doing” on the go);
k] don’t spoil your name by doing a crap work (this maybe doesn't seem to be relevant but I recommend all students not produce anything – e.g. an article – that is of a poor quality (unless they are open about it and it is produced with the intention to make it better with the help of other scholars). Our name is like a “brand”. Once we start doing great things people will eventually like our stuff and will share it. Once we spoil our name by doing something crap or even commit academic frauds it may be too late. Of course when we start learning the research we can make many mistakes and will publish some lower quality stuff. But we should strive to improve over the time. I wrote an article that is focused on problems in publishing science – see my ResearchGate profile From burgers to tenure: Preserving quality amid the choices and dilemmas facing authors of scientific articles (I can send the full text when asked for).
l] leave academic and research world if you find out that it’s not for you (I find this to be a highly important life skill. Life is too short to do crap research that we do not like. The sooner students leave the better. Note: I recommend conducting research as good as possible for at least several months before leaving. Beginning problems and obstacles are normal and it would be pity to leave during this “trial” period).
That’s it, I guess... Maybe too many points but all are quite important. And I surely forgot some...
Best, Ales
Dear Dr. Aleš Neusar.
I really appreciate your contribution. Your answer is very helpfull and informative for all researchers. This will help a lot in my research. More advice are needed in research journey especially for PhD.
My pleasure .-) I like to help (due I was not as lucky during my own PhD). Ales*
Dear Béatrice Marianne Ewalds-Kvist,
Thank you very much. You contribution and advice are highly appreciated. This will help me a lot.
Dear Agnes,
When I wrote my thesis I was too concentrated on the hypothesis given by the professors. It took me years to develop a certain flexibility of thinking to understand that the problem was more complex than their hypothesis.
There are so many hurdles to a PhD, sometimes it will be great, sometimes you will wonder why you bother. Keep persevering, it is more a test of endurance rather than knowledge.
Before you start, i would suggest that you have to really want to do it and enjoy what you are doing, because it is an awful lot of time, effort and tears before you come out the other side.
Best Wishes
I think one of the best two skills you can have is time management and communication. At times your workload is light and it's easy to become complacent, but at other times the workload is enormous and you barely have time to squeeze in lunch. Sometimes it's possible to shift your workload around, but other times you don't have that option. So, managing your time becomes super important.
This is when communication becomes important. It's okay to say "No" when given an extra nonessential assignment. There are so many interesting options and ideas to explore that it becomes difficult to turn them down. However, it is important to communicate with your mentor about your goals and interests. This will help you to choose activities and professional development opportunities that will be the best fit for you.
Good luck and Best Wishes
perseverence and avoiding procastination would aid you lot as you keep going forward.
1) keep track of things you do . As its a study of 4 years, you might be overwhelmed by the great research work you read. keep simple notes of everything you do and it would aid you while writing thesis ,or to revise
2) Be patient, and believe in yourself. some times things go wrong ways, even though you gave your best,. take help from friends, and others who keep you strong
3) learn to get things done, ask for help when you need assistance. Collaborate with others who are working on similar topics, it would keep you motivated.
cheers and best of luck.
for computer science I think good programming skill is the most wanted skill for high studies and research in computer field.
The ability to research is a common thing all students need in all level of learning- this covers a number of subskills of course.
Dear Prof. Ivo Carneiro de Sousa,
Thank you very much for your support. I was really wondering many question as I am now at the beginning of my PhD. I am very happy as all provided answers to my question are so motivational, helpful and informative.
I am going to read all these document you provided for me and I am sure it will help me a lot. Thank you very much again.
Dear Ariel Katz,
Thank you very much. I am very grateful for your advice.
Be organised
Keep track of things/notes
Find mentors
Never give up. Perservere.
• managerial and leadership skills;
• the ability to communicate with the public;
• the ability to connect with foreign colleagues in networks;
• administration of projects;
• dealing with and understanding political circumstances;
• negotiating with business partners;
• cultural understanding.
[from a research paper]
Chalamalla Srinivas, very interesting his contributions to this debate.
To achieve a competent performance of PhD requires the mastery of certain resources to adequately deal with professional situations.
What are important skills for PhD students ( or candidates) to facilitate their success in research?
Agreed with the comments / skills shared by previous researchers / scholars. Beside skills, students also need to demonstrate the following attributes in order to ahieve their PhD research success:
Along with all these things, job security of the student should also be cared, otherwise the main aim goes in vein
A very interesting and pertinent question for any PhD student at any place. I totally agree with Ariel that Time Management is highly required and also with Dr. Pal that passion is required. I would like to add on it that for any researcher one has to have a strong observation power and memory. More you involve yourself more you facilitate your work. Recording of each and every activity small or big (hard or soft) at one place always at your reach will definitely facilitate the work. Analysing data critically, reviewing similar research and then identifying the gaps, discussing the problems with mentors or seniors will help one in addressing research problems. Moreover patience, discipline and attitude to apply the right knowledge and skill at the right place in right time may be a key to achieve pH D with in the given time frame or less.
Hello, everyone, I needed help in choosing a great Dissertations topic dealing with Lupus & Rheumatoid Arthritis, but I wanted to also add Electronic Health Records with that as well.
I need good research questions?
,
help please
This is an excellent question. The demands of PhD require the following skills: negotiation skill and ability to influence others. If you are not getting adequate support on the PhD journey you have to be assertive and yet remaining courteous and respectful. These skills should be evident in both oral and written communication.
The investigative competences acquire great importance in doctoral training, facing the demand to train creative and innovative researchers, prepared to solve with autonomy and flexibility the problems of their context, relying on the tools offered by the scientific method. It is one of the features that distinguishes the quality of teaching and learning in higher education.
A lot of diplomacy coupled with humility matters especially when you find yourself dealing with some forces who are anti academic progress who see you as a threat because you are independent minded and also been assertive.
I have recently been considering this very question. Apologies If I am repeating what others have wrote, but I will share a list I recently generated for my own purposes. Characteristics of suitable PhD candidates:
- Someone who is intelligent enough. (smart, but certainly does not need to be a 'genius').
- They need to be both intellectually curious, and creative (particularly because of the need to make a knowledge contribution).
- Essential to have/develop excellent (written and spoken) communication skills.
- They need 'drive' (as they will have to make sacrifices), as well as (intrinsic) self-motivation, and to be disciplined and productive. To re-emphasise , they should have perseverance, tenacity, and resilience.
- Are able to work by themselves autonomously.
As per my experience, the following may help to increase ones research capacity.
I utterly agree with Dr. Ahmed A. El Tayyan's submission on this discussion. You need to be humble, have a teachable spirit and always seeking for knowledge mostly in field of specialization.
Show great respect for your lecturers and especially all members of your supervisory team.
Dear respected Agnes,
Master and PhD students must be able to possess the follow for them to success.
Can do spirit...
Never give up spirit....
Humble spirit..
Willingness to sacrifice time for the program..
Best regards..
Kifilideen.
Dear respected Agnes,
Be loyal and obedient to your supervisor.. Never argue with him... He is your master and boss. Never lose contact with him at any point no matter what. Any work he asks you to do no matter how hard it is do it. Put in your best and meet up with deadline. With all these he will be there for you if even when u may not expect him to be there for you. Always remind yourself that the challenge and struggle are just for a time frame. It can not go forever. When you are done you are done. You will never go back to it rather it will make you to move ahead. This will keep you going during the struggle. It is not easy but some one just have to start it. People will discourage you but never look back until you achieve your goal.
Best regards.
Kifilideen.
Take into account that research is done under controlled conditions, while life is unpredictable, thus chaotic. Plan your work accordingly and develop an independent world view.
Hardest part of the work is to formulate the problem. Here the research scholar needs to do a very thorough review of the literature and be in touch with the supervisor to fix a few problems. The scope of the work should be as focused as possible and always revolve around a narrow domain with lots of know-how developed. Just about 4-5 years of patience, hard-work and dedication. Most of the time less holidays and celebration and more works days and effort. It shall reduce the work load gradually and increase output. No prejudice or grudge towards anyone.
Following are some qualities which I think must be there in a Phd candidate:
1.Respect his/her mentor/supervisor
2.Motivated towards a goal (i.e to achieve Phd Degree)
3.Make Mistakes and seek guidance and Learn from them
4.Attention the minor details ( to Read, Read and Read)
5.Ability to work alone
6. Be Autonomous
7.. Be Critical to find the gaps in research (comes with time)
8.Be Creative to find solution of how to fill the gaps
9.Good Time Manager (Deadline oriented)
10.Persistent (Slow and Steady wins the Race)
11. Self Disciplined
To add something to the long list, I would like to mention "flexibility" and "thinking outside the box".
Best of luck for everone,
Hamidreza Javidrad
There are several skills that a PhD student should be acquired, but personally, I believe that "being an independent researcher" is a crucial skill for a PhD student.
The PhD degree is expected to enhance the holder's capacity for sustained and exhaustive research, rigorous and methodical thinking. Thus, a PhD students has to be very analytical.
I am currently a Phd student in social sciences (law) and - imho - a valuable piece of advice I received is : communicate, exchange and discuss. First, it forces you to explain clearly what you think the problem to solve is (if you cannot, you need to go back to your research question) . Second, it enables you to receive feedback from colleagues not always familiar with your field and thus applying a different theoretical framework to your ideas. Third, they might know someone or have read an article that might be relevant to your research.
Orient your research ALWAYS towards publishing. Work on your skills to successfully write and publish as many good papers as possible. The name of the game is PUBLISH and get CITED.
Being able to distinguish good advice from bad advice (e.g. advice about how your study should proceed, a particular method to adopt, a path to take). It takes some time to develop this skill.
being able to "read" critically and "master" the intellectual heritage of his/her stream of research.
being able to balance work-life.
I think one of the most important quality of a PhD researcher is having good writing and language skills; the ability to express and organise ideas. Apart from this, one's organisational skills also play a pivotal role; organisational skills likes of planning and execution of work in timely manner, meeting deadlines and paying intentions to meticulous details.
Organizing of Ideas is being challenges for every scholar, that’s why since last 10 years quality of research work has gone down the line.
Critical thinking, time management and problem solving abilities
Work smarter and harder. Talk to your lab mates, professors, and other PhD students advice and for help. Be familiar with as many scientific techniques as possible to test anything you want to. But realize that not all procedures are as good as others. Some procedures are super popular but the failure rate is like 90% and there are better techniques but nobody uses those because they are a little more complicated with like a 50% failure rate.
Carefully define your controls and how you will make sense of what you observe on a relative scale. Talk to your supervisor even when you are struggling. Your supervisor has experience which will help you see the forest for the trees. Do experiments in parallel while you are waiting for another experiment to process.
If I have 7 data points, you can fit that perfectly with a 7 parameter function. But should you? It is not predictive at all. Overparameterization is not a virtue.
Try to solve a problem in the least number of maximally informative experiments.
Expect failure and learn from it. Question/Doubt most ideas, procedures, conclusions, etcetera.
Go home. You make mistakes when you are tired and these can be costly and dangerously. I try to avoid working with fire after 9 pm.
Drink coffee, haha. Yeah, though!
Everything you need to know about the skills, the written and the unwritten rules of any PhD from a UK educational system perspective.
Kindly check my well-received blog article
http://husseinbakri.org/skills-you-must-know-before-you-step-into-a-phd/
Hopefully this helps!
Learn some other skills e.g. I picked up programming (R) during my PhD... today i'm glad i did !!!
Transmit new ideas, present and expose the content in a didactic way, as well as organize and plan the communication process that occurs in the presentation of results.
Time management and setting priorities are extremely important skills students need if they are to successfully achieve their research and overall academic goals.
Readings
Research Methodologies
Writing and production capacity
Mastery of statistical tools
...
Besides what @Aleš Neusar said. As far as I know:
1. Learn how to make research. Start with easy but good questions but think about tough questions too and try to solve them. Have two tracks on your research timeline. One for educating your self the research area and climbing the career stairs. The other one is for your spirit and love of research. You might publish one paper in a long while but it will be a big stone in your entire career. Do not procrastinate your big ideas. Either somebody else will do it or you will forget it.
2. Learn about what is published in high-quality and good journals. Writing is one of the important techqniues any researcher should have. Develop the sense of accurate and focus writing, read about academic writing, read-only good quality papers, take courses, and listen to any advice on this side.
3. Develop a plan for your timeline. Not everybody has everything from good learning, awesome advisor, big fund, and access to unlimited facilities.
It will not come easy if you want to make good research. Learn the required skills one by one. Contact the right persons. Cut down your big idea into pieces and try to finish one by one.
4. Do not stop at one level. There is always a higher place to go for. Do not stuck with the highest level around you. Have your own standards.
5. Give to take. Research is about sharing and standing for humanity. It is also about collaborating with other people. Admit it. You can not master a lot of skills and subfields. Leave someone else to work on it and the results will be great.
6. Build up the place around you. If you in a missy place or a lot of problems exist, try to add some value to be there. Very high prestige places did not build themselves. Some remarkable people build it stone after stone until the whole world recognizes these places. Research is not only about producing good work, it is also about adding values and reducing materialism. What we benefit from making everything according to the book but we lost our humanity and soules. Further, this will return back for you as the place will be much better.
7. Science does not come with dignity. Produce high-quality papers while keeping your morals. Even more, raising up and stane for your students and friends. You may teach them with your acts much more than your words about science!
Thank you all for useful advices and @Amr Abdelbari is completly right.
Research, problem-solving, communication and some project management skills .
I believe that its the supervisor responsibility to give a specific topic for his students and teach them all the required skills through writing a research paper.
this is the craziest idea!!!!! research cannot be done just by learning some technical skills, real research I mean if you want to be a researcher in the future just follow your own way, choose the research topic by yourself!!!
reading is the most important input as we all know, so keep reading, PhD is a long frustrating process. only readying can give you some lights and hopes for success. The supervisor who is just giving you some guidance, he/ she doesn't have any responsibility of how you choose your topic. don't forget the research topic or your dissertation is the one you will spend at least 4 years to work, so have to choose the topic which you are more familiar, you like or you have to believe you can work on it. another very important things I want to mention here is that most of the PhD students think the PhD courses can help them to develop the research topic, yeah it is true, but have to remember before continuing your PhD you have to have a topic or idea in your mind for the further study, this is the only way to be successful in your PhD journey.
This depends on the nature of the subject in which a student is researching. Even in an art subdivision, students may need specific skills differ from what others usually need in other subdivisions. However, prior to start his thesis, a student needs to learn the methodology of researching in his subject. This includes techniques of deduction, induction, inference and how to connect ideas in order to reach conclusions. A student also needs to gain a reasonable ability of communication skills as well as knowing the main knowledge resources and how to deal with them. If the subject needs some computer packages for analysis purposes then a student need to be aware of them and learn how to implement them.
One of my main goals as a PhD student is to add new knowledge to my field. The further I dive into a subject the more I see how much work there still is to do. A doctoral journey and academic journey are not just about the pursuit of outside knowledge, but also about personal growth and discovery.
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