Researchers face a number of challenges when conducting scientific projects. From identifying the right ideas to pursue, to developing and testing new solutions and properly communicating project outcomes, there are a number of problems that commonly happen. Fortunately, there is also a set of skills for early career researchers to master that are valuable to overcome inherent challenges.
Time Management. When pursuing an academic degree and contributing to a scientific project, time requirements must be carefully considered. Fellowship applications and manuscript submissions often have strict deadlines associated to them. Missing those will eventually lead to major career changes. Early career researchers might feel overwhelmed with a long list of activities to complete –including references to read, and procedures for data collection and analysis to master– still, by identifying a list of tasks it becomes easier to concentrate efforts according to initial research goals. Strategic plans help to ensure steady progress, and adopting a “divide and conquer” approach, by targeting one task at a time, reaching larger goals becomes more realistic and doable. For instance, focusing on writing one paragraph (or a section) at a time, instead of an entire dissertation, tends to be more feasible in a short period of time. Stipulating a plan with both activities and deadlines, and checking the progress periodically help researchers to organize the daily tasks and to be on track more often. Time management techniques, such as the pomodoro technique, setting alerts and reminders in a calendar, and relying on positive rewards for reinforcement can be also helpful strategies to keep focusing on activities that matter the most.
Communication. Be it written or verbal, communication skills are essential when planning, executing and presenting a project. Reporting accomplishments and challenges faced help team members to synchronize their efforts and to decide how to proceed with a project more informedly. Using proper language and clear communication ensures that all team members correctly understand a project status. While excellent communication skills are not easy to master quickly, continuous development is desirable. Activities that help in the process include:
- Reading Regularly. help writers to learn how to structure the text, to acquire novel vocabulary, and to identify sentences, expressions and terms that are appropriate to convey the intended message.
- Writing Regularly. besides practicing writing regularly, writers should ask for advice from mentors, peers and advisors to proof read manuscripts and provide feedback. Writing centers are valuable resources, as well as the reviews received from committee members for manuscripts previously submitted. Reading out loud snippets of text and drafts of documents help to check the reading flow and to identify hidden spelling errors more easily. Online searches and previous publications can be informative for reference as well.
- Presenting. prepare the presentations in advance, record the practice talks, rely on a written script, use flash cards to organize the lecture, illustrate the slide set, manage time, behave in a professional manner, stand up, take the stage, gaze and engage with your audience, modulate your voice tone, and try to be empathetic with your public.
Organization. keep track of the steps you follow in your research for regular documentation, maintain all materials and relevant documents in structured ways, ensure to back your data up, adopt meaningful and consistent naming conventions for files and documents, comment your code and reports as necessary, and lastly don’t forget to describe in detail your procedures to facilitate reproducibility, ensure transparency and documentation.
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