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Editor-in-Chief Ron Driggers provides insight into how to position yourself for a successful career while still in graduate school.
© 2016 Optical Society of America
Over my career, I have had the pleasure of receiving outstanding mentorship and guidance from people I respect immensely. There are about 10 mentors in my field whose impact has rippled across the country, and even around the globe, through their technology innovations and, more importantly, through the work of thousands of people they have influenced. As a result of their influence, I formed my opinions on the graduate student’s path of publishing.
The following are only my opinions, but I noticed recently at an OSA leadership meeting that a good number of OSA publication leaders share most of these views. Here are my recommendations:
- 1. Pick a high-interest (significant) area of study if you can. In practice, this might be hard to do since you are likely to be at the mercy of your advisor. Junior faculty members have a harder time assessing important research topics for significance than do senior faculty members. Spend some time asking senior researchers in the area what they think of various topics. My master’s and doctoral research publications were read by only a handful of people because the subject was very narrow and not interesting to a large electro-optics audience. This situation will limit your citation count as well as your personal h-index (how many of your papers have significant citations). Failing to choose a high-profile research area is not catastrophic, but making a good choice can help your career in the long run.
- 2. Perform the research necessary and publish the papers necessary to graduate. This is your primary goal while you are in school. Your goal is not to win the Nobel Prize in graduate school. Instead, your finances, your family, and your future opportunities are depending on you graduating. I’ve met some students and faculty members who were struggling to finish even after 8–10 years, laboring under the impression that their work needed to be much more significant than was actually necessary. Determine the minimum publishable unit (MPU) for your research area as well as how many papers are required for graduation—and get them done. You can do your groundbreaking work later.
- 3. Publish often when you are early-career (graduate student and newly graduated). Your colleagues and potential supervisors will evaluate you on paper count, among other things. Do not fall under a false sense of accomplishment right after graduation and stop publishing (it may affect your career negatively). Later in your professional development (mid-career), your citations will carry a great deal of weight. As you advance into more senior positions, recent paper counts will not matter as much and you will be evaluated through citations and your h-index. In later career stages, most colleagues I know do not worry about paper count and they primarily publish papers that have a significant impact (i.e., way beyond an MPU). After 30 years working in the area of optics and electro-optics, I usually have two to three significant research ideas a day that, if I had time to pursue them, would probably be of interest to the community and any resulting papers would receive a good number of citations. The same will happen to you as you get to know your field as well or better than the other senior researchers.
- 4. Go to conferences and present papers as often as you can while in graduate school and afterwards. This is where you will listen to senior researchers in your area, meet new colleagues, and present your ideas. At conferences you will find out if your ideas are sound or whether you should modify them. By networking at conferences, you will find mentors and meet friends and colleagues you will know for your entire career. My guess is that there are very few successful senior researchers who did not participate in conferences in a significant way earlier in their careers. By mid-career, you should know many, if not most, of the researchers in your area by name. Make a point to identify the right conferences and meet the right people when you are there.
Of course, the opinions above are my own and not everyone will agree with them. It is important to note that scientific journals have varying thresholds for novelty and significance and some journals will not accept MPUs. As the editor-in-chief of Applied Optics, I also want your most important groundbreaking work that will be frequently cited and downloaded. In reality, it is a balancing act that works, in which journal quality is maintained and we graduate the most promising students who are needed by the community.
Ron Driggers
Editor-in-Chief, Applied Optics