How Not to Suck at Creating an Online Presence

Admit it. You have Googled yourself. And depending on your degree of shame, ego, and self-worth you may have felt guilty about doing so. But every employer, client, collaborator, romantic partner, creditor, and nearly anyone else who needs to know you has first started by exploring your online presence. As an academic or graduate student, your online presence is likely to be the primary tool that people use to investigate and judge your impact on the field of research and suitability for opportunities.

View your online presence through the eyes of people who may want to work with you. If your name is Zolton Murphy Lipschitz, then your online presence is wide open for you to develop. If your name is John Smith, then you may have difficulty having your presence appear within the first 20 pages of Google search results. I once Googled a prospective student and found out that she had the same name as a porn star (I am sure that search got me on a special list at the university). She then began including her middle name prominently as she developed her online presence. As someone with a common name, I know that Steven Shaw is a famous photographer, magician, swim instructor, food critic, personal trainer, athletic director, college football official, college professor (but not me), and many other things. Steven Shaws are everywhere.  My goal is to differentiate myself from others who would be seen on the Google search of my name and to appear somewhere on the first page of such a search.

An even more important aspect of your online presence is to ensure that the image projected is one that you wish to create for people who may want to work with you. As an academic, I have a lot of leeway in the nature of this presence. It is acceptable and even desirable for academics to be quirky, prickly, whiny, and opaque. Yet, most of my students are preparing to be psychologists who work with children. These students must have an online presence that is scrubbed clean. They may have to work hard to ensure profanity, photographs with alcohol or drugs, sexually explicit or suggestive pictures or messages, and even excessive sarcasm and cynicism are minimized in an online presence. Frequent self searches are necessary as photos can be tagged (on Facebook and other sites) by others and appear online without your knowledge. For the most part, there is some wiggle room for graduate students. Colleagues and the general public expect to see some pictures with your significant other or having a glass of wine with friends. That is what young people do, so just show some discretion. However, a picture of me (a middle-aged guy) drinking with students (mostly young females) will send the wrong message for most audiences. That said, education and psychology are among the most difficult professions in which to manage an online presence because parents are entrusting their children to you as a professional and are rightly cautious. Consider what you are communicating about yourself.

Although academics have much freedom, there been high-profile cases of untenured and tenured professors losing their jobs due to tweets, blogs, and other aspects of their online presence that have offended their employers. I am fortunate to be at a university that does not micromanage online presence. However, I try not to comment on religion, politics, or sex. I also usually do not advocate for social issues as they are often entangled in politics. Of course I have opinions that are not too difficult to infer based on my tweets, blog, and website — but I try not to express them directly. It is also generally not in my nature to attack or troll others, but I make an extra effort to ensure that none of my comments can be perceived as insulting or diminishing others. The goal of my online presence is to convey hard work, continuous efforts to improve myself, the value of scientific thinking and quality written expression, a normal and relatable human, and someone who values the efforts of students and colleagues. There is no question that I could do more with my online presence, yet I try to provide a reliable message to establish a consistent personal and professional brand.

I know some students and colleagues who completely ignore the concept of an online presence and generally leave it to the fates. Withdrawing from social media and other online outlets for fear of making an error or minimizing their importance is equally as problematic. I am not a digital media or online expert. However, I wish to control the narrative of how my thoughts, work, and general message are received by colleagues and the general public. If you do not control your online presence then someone else will. How you are perceived is essential to advancing in your career and communicating your message to the appropriate outlets in such a manner that it will be heard, respected, and valued.

Professional and Social Divide. The hard part is that the Internet does not care whether your pictures are intended to be social or professional. Facebook posted photos from your last vacation are intended for you, your family, and friends. But clients may view these photos as well. I recommend setting privacy settings on your social media accounts so that only approved friends and family can have access. Try your best to make the professional and social divide clear for all those investigating your online presence.

Social Media. There seem to be some informal rules concerning social media outlets. Linkedin seems to be primarily for business. In this setting, a highly disciplined and entirely business focused approach is recommended. Facebook is mostly social. Yet, businesses and academia often use Facebook to engage with the general public. Twitter is an effective communication platform for developing learning networks and reaching specific audiences. The primary problems with Twitter is that in 140 characters responses can be created and sent quickly and it is easy to be misunderstood. Be sure to double check tweets before sending. There are a host of other social media sites. Each has its own quirks. It is still best to keep most of these accounts private and control who can view them if there is any chance at all that your desired professional narrative would be diluted or undermined by social media.

Research Portals. Research portals such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and others provide outlets for academics to place research products online and available to other scholars. These portals are valuable for communication and dissemination of research articles within a scholar’s area of research. Research portals are safe and essential aspects of the scholarly online presence. The weaknesses that research portals are not typically used by the public and do not lend themselves to knowledge transfer and communication with professionals outside of field study.

Websites. Standalone websites are static and serve as a repository for information about scholars as professionals and as people. Static websites have the advantage of providing full control over the message.

Audio and Video. The use of video through dedicated YouTube channels and other mechanisms is a valuable way to get messages across in a convenient approach. Lectures, demonstrations, and PowerPoint plus lecture can all be effective mechanism for communicating information to a wider audience. Likewise digital audio files can be stored on websites and used as a method of relaying lectures and small talks to others.

There are certainly digital media planners, strategists, and other extraordinarily knowledgeable people who can assist in the development of detailed strategies for improving one’s online presence. However, online presence has become as important to an academic career as a CV. Be clear, be strategic, and have an understanding of how you want to be perceived by employer, client, collaborator, creditor, and nearly anyone else who needs to know you. Be cautious not to get carried away with the time spent in developing online presence. You run the risk of spending more time developing an online presence than doing the actual work that you are trying to publicize, transfer, or otherwise disseminate. Be mindful, strategic, and have an effective online presence that allows you to control the narrative of who you are as a person and as a professional.

SR Shaw

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How not to suck at reviewing articles for scholarly journals

The well-known writers of fiction and science often report that the best way to be an effective writer and to write a lot is simply to read a lot. Nearly all graduate students and scholars consume an amazing amount of written material. Usually we read professional material because it is necessary scholarship for the specific project that we are currently working on or general reading simply to keep current with the field of study. This reading is usually rapid and interpreted at a surface level. However, for reading to make an essential contribution to becoming an effective writer the reader must think deeply and critically. Many departments or labs hold a “journal club” in which a specific paper is discussed and analysed in a group format. I would estimate that more is learned in a single journal club discussion than in multiple lectures or many rapid and surface readings. Another form of deep and critical reading is the evaluation of articles for scholarly journals. Engaging in peer review is one of the best methods for the development of skills as a writer and scholar is to review articles for professional journals.

There is much criticism about the value of peer review as a measure of worthiness for publication in selective scholarly journals. This occurs most frequently in the social sciences where assumptions are often not clear and social and political agendas implicitly carry more weight than anyone would care to admit. Despite bias and random error I still support peer review as the strongest method of advancing the science and scholarship in any field of study. Although decision-making for publication ultimately lies with the journal editor (or associate editors), peer review not only strengthens the quality of published papers, but also requires the deep and critical reading that inspires productivity and writing skills of the peer reviewers.

When requesting that a scholar be a peer review on a submitted article for publication, journals are maddeningly unclear on exactly what this review should look like. Further complicating matters is that different journals emphasize different types of reviews. Some journals would like the reviewer to suggest an editorial decision such as reject, revise and resubmit, accept with major revisions, or accept with minor revisions; while other journal specify that the peer reviewer is not to make an editorial decision. Some journals provide scoring rubrics that may provide structure, but may not be relevant to the format of the specific paper being reviewed. Are there common features that a peer review should contain that not only provide a valuable service to the profession but can facilitate the deep and critical reading required in the development of an outstanding graduate student and scholar?

The first question is how does a graduate student become a peer reviewer? I know one professor who is on eight editorial view boards and has his graduate students write all of his peer reviews. Although this is ethically sketchy (okay, it is flat out wrong), it is a great opportunity for his students to engage in the peer review exercise. Many journals have a small student review panel that is designed for graduate students to be peer reviewers and have their reviews evaluated and mentored by journal editors or associate editors. Finally, many journals are so overwhelmed with articles and with so few available reviewers that they accept graduate student volunteers as peer reviewers. Thus, for many situations it is a matter of sending information concerning your availability, expertise, and a CV to an editor. My experience as an editor is that the best reviews I get are from graduate students, postdocs, and faculty members within their first three years of the job. The big shots and established scholars are often unavailable; or tend to write short, dismissive, and lazy reviews (there are notable exceptions to this gross generalization). Most editors are excited to have anyone volunteer to be a reviewer.

Many reviewers focus on relatively unimportant details. Emphasis on APA style, manuscript preparation, and grammar usually indicate that the reviewer has not given the paper the deep and critical reading that a strong review requires. Although poor writing can be annoying, as long as the major points are clear, then the writing can be revised and journals have copy editors for a reason. Excessive amounts of energy spent line editing are usually wasted. Manuscript preparation can be identified as a problem, but is rarely a strong reason for rejection.

There are two major areas of focus: internal and external. I follow generally the same process for all reviews. Step one: has the rationale for the research question been established and couched in the current literature. This step involves a logical flow of scholarship. There does not need to be a running history of every single study done on the topic, yet the need for the current study needs to be clear. Step two: the overall research question and specific hypotheses need to be clear and well stated. Step three: methods must be appropriate to answer the research questions and hypotheses. It is surprising how many studies using sophisticated methods and analyses and answer a valuable research question, but the methods do not answer the question that was developed in the introduction. Step four: do the results logically flow from the methods and are the best possible way to answer the research question. Step five: are the conclusions consistent with the results. This is basic article reviewing 101, but I would estimate that over 80% of papers are rejected because the rationale for the study is not established or there is no logical flow to the sections. By the way, being the first article that studies any topic is not a rationale (many times no one else has studied the topic because it was not worth studying). Most commonly, the conclusions do not logically follow from the results. I am also somewhat amused that many conclusion sections include a limitation segment that is overwhelming. Just because the author acknowledges that the paper has significant weaknesses does not mean that those weaknesses cannot be used to reject the paper. This complex and critical part of the review represents the internal aspects of a review and are necessary, but not sufficient, for an article to receive a positive evaluation.

The external part of the review s most difficult for graduate students and new reviewers. This is the “so what” question. The majority of papers I see published within psychology do not seem to have answered the so what question. These are papers that are perfectly internally consistent with logical flow from problem identification to literature review to research question and hypothesis to methods to results to conclusions; yet, the final results do not make a significant contribution to the field. If an article does not advance the field of study, then there is no need for this paper to be published in a scholarly outlet. Leave program evaluations, button sorting and bottle washing, and other tedious minutia to government reports and grant reports rather than publication in a scientific journal. The external part of the review is where experience can be a great benefit. Reviewers need to not only know their own specific and narrow areas of expertise, but understand where the frontier of knowledge is and what type of studies are required to advance that frontier. There is nothing wrong with an inexperienced reviewer seeking guidance or consultation from a more experienced person when preparing an article review.

Here are a few key features to remember when preparing your article review:

• The goal of the review is to improve the paper. Therefore, the tone of the review is to highlight the changes necessary to make the paper a publishable one. My personal style does not focus on struggling to find a strength of the paper or providing moral encouragement. My style tends to be along the lines of, “in order for this paper to be publishable the following changes must be made…” Sometimes those changes are significant and include redesigning of the experiment and collecting new data. However, common comments such as, “This paper should be reviewed by a native English speaker.” Or “This paper was clearly written by a graduate student.” Are not productive and should be avoided. Taking the tone of speaking directly to the author with the goal of improving the paper is most productive.
• Most journals have a section for confidential comments for the editor. This is the space to advise the editor concerning publication status.
• When a rubric is provided by the journal, please use that rubric. Many associate editors and editors adhere closely to the results of the rubric when making final decisions.
• In a recent change, I have begun to attach my name to all reviews. Reviews are a form of scholarship. Reviewers also need to make sure that they are completely accountable for everything stated in a review. This is also a reminder to make all reviews helpful and productive for authors and editors alike. A couple editors have taken my name off of the reviews before sending to the authors. However, being accountable for our work is a good idea.
• Some journals have begun providing feedback to reviewers. This is a wonderful idea. All reviewers could benefit from feedback and improvement in their manuscript reviewing.
• Typically, reviews range in length from one to two single-spaced pages.
• Reviews usually require two to four hours to complete.
• The time that editors require for the completion of a review has been reduced significantly over the last few years. Six weeks for a review used to be the norm. Now the expectations most commonly range from 14 to 30 days. It is better to turn down an opportunity to review a journal, then to not be able to complete the review during the time allotted. A simple “I cannot get this review completed in the time allotted, but would like to review an article in the future” is sufficient.
• As soon as the invitation to review an article is accepted, then schedule approximately one half day to complete the review in your calendar or to do list.
• As mentioned before, it is acceptable to receive consultation or advice from others with expertise in the area. It is also completely acceptable to consult with the associate editor or editor if you have any questions about the preparation of your review. Although reviewers are supposed to be blind as to the name of the author, many times reviewers can figure out who the author is. Under no circumstances should you consult with the author of the paper on any topic.

By conducting a deep and critical review of papers in progress, graduate students can gain insight into preparation of manuscripts, data reporting, and development of research studies. There are a host of lessons that can be learned in a positive direction (e.g., being inspired by an especially creative research design or particularly useful turn of phrase) or in a negative direction (e.g., appreciating how certain forms of expression can be superfluous or misleading). Receiving practice reviewing articles for journals is not only a service to your profession, but serves as an excellent mechanism to improve your research and writing skills.

S. R. Shaw

@Shawpsych

How Not to Suck at Saving Your Soul

May 2, 2015

The dismissive, arrogant, negligent, and emotionally abusive supervisor is so common as to be the clichéd default of the academic world. Academic Twitter has become a therapy couch from where the cries of aggrieved graduate students, wailing of terrified junior professors, and loud calls to tear down the entire system from adjuncts (and many others) are heard. Fortunately, there are many sources of academic kindness, understanding ears, and sage advice available to those who are being run through the spin cycle of an early academic career. I would like to be more positive, however the vast majority of young academics eventually fall into four large categories: those who quit graduate school or leave academic life altogether upon graduation; those who become successful and acquire the dismissive, arrogant, negligent, and emotionally abusive behaviours that they experienced as a graduate student and a post doc; those unable to find satisfactory employment and struggle with serial postdocs or adjunct work; and those who successfully obtain tenure, but are then experience existential crises as to what to do with the rest of their careers and lives. None of these options are especially appealing to an aspiring academic. All four outcomes can be corrosive to the soul. I believe it is possible (but not easy) to have a fulfilling academic career, a good life, and keep your soul intact.

For me there are only two ways to survive academia and keep your soul intact. Those are: to have an appropriate and well-established set of personal perspectives and priorities; and to be kind.

Perspectives and Priorities:

Perspectives and priorities are difficult to establish and usually require hard knocks, experiences, and a clear worldview. The value of having effective perspectives and priorities is that the rejection, being treated unfairly, or any number of slings and arrows of academia can be disappointing; however, they are not personally devastating. To survive it is necessary to shake it off, learn, and move on to the next task armed with better skills and knowledge.

Perspectives are the points of view that establish exactly what is truly important to you. This process is different for everyone. I have what I refer to as “hard earned blessings.” For example, before entering academia I was a school psychologist for 16 years in schools, hospitals, and private practice. During this time I was cut by a teenager with a knife, bitten by a six-year-old (and still have a small scar), many of my patients in pediatric oncology succumbed to their illnesses (exactly 33), performed CPR twice (both with unsuccessful outcomes), came home with vomit or blood on my clothes several times, and was the first person to tell many parents that their child has intellectual disabilities or autism. Putting things into perspective, a rejected manuscript is just not that big of a deal. I also have a lightness of being about my career and little career ambition. That is, I do not worry about it much, am happy to be employed, and have the joy of doing the work that I want to do. I simply do the best that I can, try to improve every day, hope that is good enough, and if it is not then I will get another job. My perspective is not for everyone and may be unique, but be mindful about your perspective.

Establishing priorities also comes fairly easy for me. I am fortunate enough to have been married for 23 years and still going. I have two teenage children who are healthy. They are the priorities. Nearly every student has experienced me rescheduling a regular meeting to take a child to the dentist, attend a school function, or go to one of my wife’s office functions. Just last week I missed our lab party in order to register my younger daughter for extra math tutoring at school. I am sure the party was much more fun without the boss present. Nonetheless, everyone who works with me knows that I need to be home at a reasonable hour on most nights so I can cook dinner for my family, take the dog on a long walk, and be present almost every day. I certainly could publish more papers or do more travelling in order to become a high status or famous academic (or maybe not). To what end? To be a rock star academic (*snort laugh*)? I am never going to be rich and famous because I have a different set of priorities and I am happy with that. All families and professionals prioritize features of their lives differently, but this is what works for me and I am comfortable with it. However you establish your priorities, the most important thing is that you are comfortable with them.

Kindness:

Trying to change the culture of academia or the behaviour of a challenging colleague is not an especially fruitful endeavor. We have to live with a career that can be capricious at times (like most careers); and an environment that often seems to reward arrogance, Machiavellian actions, and prideful behaviour. Railing against this environment is fine for outlets such as Twitter, but an exhausting way to function on a day-to-day basis. The only inoculation against the soul corrosive nature of academics is to be an unwavering and expanding island of kindness.

Somehow kindness has been conflated with a lack of scientific rigour. I believe strongly that one can be demanding, rigorous, and have the highest possible expectations without in any way sacrificing or diminishing the humanity of colleagues or students. There are times when students mistake the negative evaluation of their work for me being unkind to them personally. This is not the case. It is extremely rare for me to think poorly of a student simply because some of their work is not up to my expectations—I just don’t. Some exceptions are lack of work effort, unethical behaviour, not behaving in a manner that supports the team, and making excuses; but these are rare events. I see my job as that of a teacher. Some lessons are hard and unpleasant, but I will not lose perspective and will support students in their effort to reach their own objectives and my expectations. If I do my job well, then all students know how much I respect them and wish for their success. This is simple. “This work needs to be better. Here is exactly how you can make it better. Good. I believe in you and I know you can make these improvements.” Kind, demanding, and rigorous. I believe strongly in the three principles of Chinese Zen leadership: clarity, courage, and humanity. When you lose your humanity or forget the humanity of others, then you cannot be a leader or teacher. I view the clarity principle as that of scientific rigour and expectations; and the courage principle as the insistence that clarity and humanity be connected.

There is always snarkiness and even some pathology in the academic world. I have teased people by telling them that academia is one of the few jobs in which you can be successful with close to zero social skills. Those who have forgotten their humanity and appear to receive pleasure and status from making others feel less are extremely sad people. They have had poor role models, are insecure, and lack perspective of the value of their opinions. The response to these people needs to be kind as well. I recall my first conference presentation at which I was insecure about how to handle the dreaded pointed and unfairly harsh question. My mentor told me to say, “I am having difficulty interpreting your comment and question as being productive. Could you please rephrase the question so that I may interpret it more productively?” In this way the questioner must either reword the question so that it is easier to address or acknowledge that the purpose of their question was not to be productive. I have never had to use that response, but it is nice to know that it is still there.

As a professional, I am mild-mannered and take all efforts to find a compromise solution to any conflict, which demonstrates clarity, courage, and humanity. However, I will call out individuals who consistently behave in a destructive manner. I will not reject their papers or deny their funding, but will recuse myself from any participation in their work in any way. If there needs to be a confrontation, then I am completely comfortable with that tactic. But destructive behaviours will not be allowed to pass. We need to remove the professional reinforcement for being an asshole. They are not eccentric or delicate geniuses, but are damaged, damaging, and are an impediment to the advancement of their field of study.

I do not believe that most academics are destructive or pathological on purpose. They simply believe that kindness takes additional time and energy that they do not have. My belief is exactly the opposite. Kindness is free. Be generous with it.  My worldview is that everything good in my life is because my intention is to help others and everything bad in my life is because I thought of myself first. Not everyone shares this world view. But, kindness is pragmatic. When I am kind to a student they will work harder. Fear and bullying are poor long-term motivators. Scholars who are fearful produce mundane studies of minutia rather than fearless advances of knowledge. This is the difference between fanning a spark into a flame and extinguishing the spark. When I model kindness to students, they learn to expect to be treated with respect. They become kind when they are placed in a position of authority. This helps to create a culture of a team or lab that is creative, fearless, collaborative, and highly motivated. They produce quality ideas and return energy to me through their enthusiasm, ideas, and work habits.  Kindness is a simple and productive investment of my time.

Conclusions:

As seen on academic Twitter, there is a not-completely-met need for kindness in the academic world. There are many examples of professionals attempting to expand academic kindness via social media (e.g., the Twitter accounts of @CitizenAcademic; @AcademicKindnes; @raulpacheco) and in their personal behaviours. Kindness is not a personal characteristic only. It is a winning strategy for developing individuals and advancing thought within a field. Unfailing kindness in conjunction with perspectives and priorities are the best ways for saving your soul as an academic and being a productive contributor to your field

S. R. Shaw

@ShawPsych

How Not to Suck at Co-authorship

December 30, 2014

Among the most common sources of conflict between supervisors and graduate students involve credit for authorship in scholarly papers. Although most professions have formal guidelines concerning the ethics of authorship and order of authorship, it is fairly rare for supervisors and students to read these ethical practices. Read your professional guidelines for authorship or read these solid papers: http://www.apa.org/science/leadership/students/authorship-paper.pdf and http://www.apa.org/research/responsible/reflections-authorship.pdf. At McGill University we have an excellent website devoted to issues in graduate level supervision. However, I am not sure how many supervisors or students read and follow the suggestions (http://www.mcgill.ca/gradsupervision/supervisors/roles-and-responsibilities/expectations). Most commonly, students are left to negotiate issues of co-authorship with their supervisors. Yet, the primary problems are that students do not know what is reasonable, have little leverage in negotiation, and are not clear as to the expectations of authorship.

Culture
The culture of the University and scientific field sets the context for graduate student authorship. For example, it was once extremely common for university professors to receive university credit for publication only if they were the first author or sole author of a published paper. In these cultures, graduate students rarely received appropriate credit for their work or were completely shut out of any authorship. Fortunately, most universities value student authorship and professors receive significant benefits from having students as first authors and co-authors. Most supervisors behave in the way that they were trained. As such, some supervisors have been trained in this old-fashioned model and make it extremely difficult for students to receive co-authorship. Also, different fields of study have different norms concerning authorship. For example, papers in medical journals are generous with authorship. It is not uncommon to find papers with 15 or 20 co-authors. This is in contrast to the humanities, where single-author publications are often the norm. Although there may be general professional guidelines for what constitutes authorship understanding the philosophy of the University, training and philosophy of the supervisor, and culture of the field of study are critical contexts for graduate student authorship.

What Typically Constitutes Co-authorship
I have a research lab in the field of school psychology. Most of my students plan on going into clinical practice after graduation. As such the motivation for most of my students is to become competitive for national and provincial fellowships and bursaries. Career prospects are more dependent on their clinical skills than their publication record. This culture makes for far less competitive attitudes toward publication and students are much less stressed in my lab than in other fields of study. Because I have a large number of graduate and undergraduate students in my lab, it is easiest to have general rules of what constitutes co-authorship.
• Authorship is earned by anyone who makes substantive contributions to the product.
• Data entry, line editing of manuscript, statistical analysis, brainstorming of initial ideas, data entry, and locating research to be cited do not necessarily constitute a substantive contribution.
• Substantive contributions involve design of the project and writing of the manuscript.
• Authorship and order of authorship are negotiated before the project is begun.
• Renegotiation of order of authorship can be initiated by any contributor of the project at any time. A consensus among all co-authors will be attempted before any change of order of authorship can take place. The most common situation is that someone who has planned to have a small role turns out to a larger role in the project and I recommend that that person moved to a higher level of authorship. And in these cases, consultation and consensus building with other authors is sought.
• Authorship and order of authorship are not dependent on seniority or status. Undergraduates, new graduate students, or collaborators external to the University are equal. The exception is that as lab director, my default order of authorship will be to serve as the last author.
This is a fairly new approach in my lab. Most of my previous work was with medical professionals from outside of the University. I am now in the process of developing a self-contained lab culture within McGill and within my lab. So far, so good. However, I may need to revisit this topic when flaws in the system are uncovered.

There are generally four types of projects in my lab. The first type is a Masters or doctoral thesis. For this type of project one student conducts and carries out all of the substantive work. However, they may receive administrative or other logistical support. The expectation is that any published manuscripts derived from the theses will have the student as first author and lab director as second author. The second type is an invited or theoretical paper. These are projects in which I take initiative and do most of the substantive writing and organization. I may invite students to make contributions or assist as second or third author. The third type is a substantive literature review. We tend to write one or two papers of this type each year. Although such papers are difficult to write and organize, they are good opportunities for new students to learn the literature extremely well and make an early and substantive contribution. Typically, a senior level student runs this project, is expected to be first author, selects and manages a team of co-authors, and negotiates roles and expectations with each member of the team. These papers often have four or five co-authors. The fourth type of paper are the single-study projects. These papers are typically the easiest to write. Like in the literature review paper, one student is designated as the lead student who selects the team for that project. We tend to have small group paper team meetings. This is where the 2 to 5 co-authors meet weekly to discuss progress and make plans for the next stage.

Becoming a Co-author
New graduate students know that authoring papers that are published in refereed scientific journals or presented at professional conferences is the currency that will make them competitive for fellowships, internships, postdocs, and desirable academic jobs. I have had many students approach me or an advanced graduate student and say, “Do you have any papers that I can be a co-author on?” This is not an effective method of entrée into co-authorship. Two better ways to become a co-author on a paper are to say, “I have an idea for a paper and would like to talk it through with you.” Or “I see that the lab has a paper in progress and I believe I can make the following contributions to that paper.” Initiative, preparation, and the presentation of new ideas communicate that the student is prepared to make a substantive contribution that is worthy of authorship. Earn it.

Revisions and Journal Communications
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of publishing scientific papers for graduate students is communication with journal editors. Most submitted papers receive a final decision of accept with major revisions or reject and resubmit. Both outcomes require a detailed, point-by-point description of how the revised manuscript meets the specific concerns of the editor and reviewers. This is a task that requires experience. There are cases where writing the letter to the editor is my primary contribution to the published paper. Communicating with journal editors may be the task in which I work most closely with students. We often sit side-by-side as this letter is discussed, planned, and composed. This task seems to be a rite of passage for students in my lab. When a student receives an editorial decision and says to me, “I’ve got this.” And I say, “Yes, you can do this on your own.” Then that student is ready to graduate and engage in independent research.

Communicating Expectations
I have written in previous blogs about the importance of interviewing and understanding how supervisors work before entering a graduate program agreeing to a supervisory relaitonship with a professor. I still think that the biggest mistake that many students make is selecting a supervisor based on a shared content area of interest. Although content is important, supervision style and match with student needs is even more important. Students need to research to determine how many of a professor’s publications have student co-authors and how many students have first authored publications. Moreover, professors should be asked about the expectations and supervisor support for publications. Some supervisors work closely with students, meet weekly, and are actively involved in every aspect of data collection and writing. Other supervisors may meet with students as little as twice per year. The expectation is that students will figure out how to conduct research on their own when given maximum independence and freedom to succeed. Students should know what they are getting into. A list of yearly expectations developed between student and supervisor in September is extremely valuable and is required by most universities. Revisiting these goals and evaluating the success in meeting the goals at year end is equally as important.

Quality of Work
We talk a lot about writing in the lab. Helping students to revise and improve their writing is a part of this process. I expect their work to show care, professionalism, and expertise. But I do not expect the work to be perfect. I refer to any project as the project or the paper, not your project or your paper. Keeping a distance between the work and the person takes practice. But I want the students to be open contributors to a paper and not paralyzed by perfectionism, ownership, and criticism. Students know that a heavily marked up paper is a good sign—it means I was engaged enough to meticulously consider every word. A bad sign is that the first three pages are heavily marked up, but later pages receive few marks. That usually means that I got bored. If each draft is better and more clear than the last, then I am happy with the progress of the work of my co-authors.

Conflicts and Problems
I am not a fan of drama in research. Life is too short for avoidable drama, stress, and strain. Projects are planned out so that we meet deadlines without having to do all-nighters. Cooperation rather than competition is stressed. Authorship is negotiated in advance and everyone knows what role they have to play in order to earn their authorship. The intent is that preparation, planning, and a culture of open communication will head off any conflict. However, conflict still occurs. Most conflicts occur within a project team. There is a perception that one member is missing deadlines, doing poor quality work, or trying to have other people do their work for them. I hope I have made it clear that letting down your team is among the worst offenses possible in my lab. I have had a student resign from a project because they did not feel they could meet the demands. I appreciated that sentiment. And that student went on to be successful on other projects. However, I have had students who simply did not reach the levels of work quality expected, had interpersonal problems with other members of the lab, or believe that their work merited first authorship. Meeting surrounding these problems are private. We attempt to renegotiate expectations and develop a plan for remediation. That plan is also sent to students via e-mail to provide clarity, mutual agreement, and create a paper trail. Sometimes students are asked to seek a different supervisor and other times students choose to leave voluntarily.

Students are encouraged to be open as to their limitations of time and energy. I do not mind when a student requests to renegotiate a deadline due to a conflict with exams, conferences, exhaustion, or other issues. I also encourage students to seek help or renegotiate when a task proves to be beyond their current levels of expertise (usually because such situations are due to my error). Stress and anxiety are also common for graduate students. Some students receive reduced research expectations if we agree that too many research projects may be overwhelming. Recall that I am in an accredited school psychology program with a large student class load, and field and clinical practica experiences, in addition to research. As such allowances are made for the time demands of their program.

Summary
Co-authorship does not have to be difficult. Problems are almost always due to conflicting needs and misunderstandings. Keeping students from earned co-authorship due to massive ego, power issues, or control is simply evidence of unethical and poor supervisory practices. Some old school professors have been socialized along these lines. Trying to force a professor socialized in these practices to comply with the ethics in university policies concerning co-authorship is unlikely to be resolved in a positive way for the student or the supervisor. Receiving co-authorship on a scientific paper does wonders for the confidence and careers of students. Witnessing and contributing to student success is one of the best parts of being a supervisor.

S. R. Shaw

How Not to Suck at Being a Male Supervisor of Female Students

Often I make recommendations for graduate students or supervisors. This entry is about sharing problems that do not have a one-size-fits-all solution. As always, I am not an expert and clearly do not have everything figured out. There are errors, failures, and horrible decisions on my part. Hopefully, these stories will be helpful for others.

One of the many benefits that I have received from being a scholar on Twitter is that I follow a large number of female scholars and experts in feminist theory. This has been an eye-opening experience. I have been made aware of the challenges that female scholars face. I am more than a little embarrassed that I had no idea that female scholars routinely face harassment, lack of earned respect, intimidation, hostile environments, threats, and even physical dangers. As an academic, we are diminished by losing such intellectual talent to this environment. As a human, we are just diminished.

Many of my role models are female scholars such as Nadine Lambert at UC-Berkeley, Marta Bogdanowicz of University of Gdansk, and Brenda Milner of McGill University. I am in a field that is mostly female in clinical practice and increasingly female in academia. We are fortunate to have many female leaders and a strong culture of outstanding and respected female scholars. Although admittedly naïve, I understand that my female students face challenges and risks that male students do not; moreover, they may also face disadvantages because they have a male supervisor.

There are some basics that have nothing to do with gender. I have a general philosophy to hold people to high expectations, give support, and treat everyone with respect. Independent, initiating, and strong people tend to have better outcomes. All students have different goals and I negotiate expectations to meet our mutual needs. If they are not meeting agreed upon milestones, then there is private remediating and renegotiation of goals, establishment of a paper trail of efforts to fix problems, and possible dismissal from my supervision for those not responding.

The culture of the lab is that students work together in a supportive environment. Senior students are expected to model appropriate behaviours and mentor the newer lab members. I often ask for student feedback and input into who to accept into the lab. Empowering students to make decisions helps to create leadership, ownership, and a productive work environment.

There are some issues that are explicitly related to being a male supervisor of female students. For example, some supervisors are extremely close and are even personal friends with their students—especially same sex students and supervisors. I feel that I can never do that with my students. I am not sure that developing such close personal relationships with students is a good idea in any case. Nonetheless, I tend to be friendly, but distant from my students. It is rare for me to have lunch with a student, I do not go drinking with them, and we rarely get together when at the same conferences—unless we have shared professional duties. I like these people. Under different circumstances we could be friends. I am not worried that anything inappropriate would happen; yet heteronormative assumptions are strong and suspicions of male mentors and female students are commonplace. However, avoiding the perception of favour toward a specific student or the slightest suspicion that there is a personal relationship that goes beyond the professional will hurt the reputation of that student and the dynamic of the lab. This distance cannot be only for female students. I keep the same distance from male students as well. It does not seem right to be distant from female students and go out drinking or watching sports with male students.

An unfortunate occurrence is when female students have learned that their best method of working with a male supervisor is via flirtation. This has happened with me on three occasions that I perceived. I never had a thought that this flirtatious behaviour was directed at me or constituted a sexual invitation. These students have simply learned that they can curry favour, reduce expectations and workload, or gain some other advantage when working directly with males who are in a supervisory role. It is too bad that there is a culture in place that taught these students that flirtation is an effective set of behaviours. These students are extremely smart, so clearly this strategy must be effective. I even doubt that they are consciously aware of how their behaviour is perceived. At first, I attempted to protect myself. I never met with these students with my office door closed, kept a physical distance, and avoided these students when possible. Because I am mentoring future professionals, this form of self-protection was irresponsible and maladaptive on my part. We now discuss professional dress and body language when required. Touching hair, excessive laughing, too close of a personal space for the culture, touching the person with whom you are speaking, and revealing dress are not the behaviours of professionals. Good listening skills, appropriate friendliness, and developing a repertoire of productive non-verbal behaviours are the goals. So long as there is no question in anyone’s mind that my sole goal is to improve the professionalism of my students, these approaches are successful in assisting the supervisory relationship to return to equilibrium.

A major fear for me as I moved from clinical work to academic work is that I did not want to become a clichéd creepy middle-aged professor or be perceived as such. I am aware that Just to bring up the topic is a bit creepy. I know four male professors who routinely sleep with their students. They often move from one university to another and are widely acknowledged to be toxic and destructive. That is a level of creepy that I cannot comprehend. I know most of my students would lose respect for me and leave my supervision. Even away from campus, I know many middle-aged professors who troll professional conferences for grad students. I do not typically judge. I know many married people who have same-time-next-year relationships at conferences and that works for them. Hooking up with a younger person is also generally fine, but students are different and I get judgey as hell. The power differential between professors and students is so large as to make these hook-ups seem predatory and generally icky (and many times just pathetic). Being at a conference and out of town are not excuses to engage in unprofessional behaviors that are often destructive for students. My students are adults and do not require a protector or big brother, but we have open discussions about professionalism and reputation management in supervision and at conferences.

My goal is to have open communication with students. I would like them to feel as comfortable as possible to let me know when my behaviour is not appropriate. Most are and some are not at that level of comfort with me. Yes, they have told me that a joke was not appropriate (once) or I should not have written something on Twitter (a few times). The intended atmosphere is that students are free to criticize me or make suggestions. These are not secret issues. We have open discussions about conference behaviour, when students feel that have been treated unfairly on campus or in field work, which aspects of the work environment make them less than fully comfortable, and any concerns about safety. Because I have a good sense that I am fairly naïve and a bit clueless (and am really trying to be smarter); open conversations on the topic of fairness, treatment, and issues in cross gender supervision are all on the table for discussions public and private.

For example, in a previous post on this blog I made a mindless and off-the-cuff comment about women in yoga pants. I received a couple of long comments from readers criticizing that sentence. I did not intend to offend, but I was upset that the comment overshadowed the point I was trying to make. That makes it poor writing, which is an egregious error. We discussed this among a couple of lab members. The consensus was that no one was personally offended, but it was a poorly chosen example. They teach and I will improve.

This is a pragmatic issue, not really a social justice issue. I am not nice. Yet, I know that I will consistently attract and retain the best and most diverse students because I listen to my students. The students in my lab will be more creative, hard working, motivated, and productive because they are valued. I will do my best to support students’ relationships, marriages, and families. I do not understand how a hostile or anti-woman environment makes for better science. This is a marathon and not a sprint. Students will have better long-term career outlooks when they are happy, fulfilled, and have balanced lives.

My primary goal is to support and sometimes push students to accomplish more than they ever thought they could possibly achieve. I am not sure how many opportunities and experiences my female students lose by having a male supervisor. I am not sure if they lose confidence or feel less valued or less supported than my male students. They know that I am a white guy who is privileged and somewhat out of touch; but I understand the responsibilities that accompany my role. The intent is that by having open discussions and keeping basic rules of interaction clear, that I am communicating that I respect and value all of my students. The labbies are wonderful in supporting me to become a better supervisor. The essence of mentorship is shared learning. Continuously seeking to improve, keeping a culture of student co-ownership, and willingness to listen and change are hopefully as important to the people in my lab as anything that our research creates, discovers, and uncovers.

S. R. Shaw