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Together with Miguel Abambres , Tiago Ribeiro , and Ana Sousa I've recently published a preprint titled "Research Counts, Not the Journal". As we're exploring post-publication peer review and the use of preprints, working only open access and bypassing for-profit publishers, this paper is on OSF Preprints and open for discussion on ResearchGate . I'd be grateful if you find a moment to read the paper and share your thoughts with us on its contents! Here's the abstract of the paper: If there is one thing every bibliometrician agrees, is that you should never use the journal impact factor (JIF) to evaluate research performance for an article or an individual-that is a mortal sin'. Few sentences could define so precisely the uses and misuses of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) better than Anthony van Raan's. This manuscript presents a critical overview on the international use, by governments and institutions, of the JIF and/or journal indexing informatio...

Together with Miguel Abambres , Tiago Ribeiro , and Ana Sousa I've recently published a preprint titled "Ineffective Obsessions in Brazilian Academia and Proposals Towards Meritocracy". As we're exploring post-publication peer review and the use of preprints, working only open access and bypassing for-profit publishers, this paper is on OSF Preprints and open for discussion on ResearchGate . I'd be grateful if you find a moment to read the paper and share your thoughts with us on its contents! Here's the abstract of the paper: Albeit its constitutional claim for quality, Brazilian academia has largely been referred to as unmeritocratic and academic hiring is still inward-oriented. Lattes platform, a public curricular information system, reflects elements of this protectionism. This article assesses two ‘obsessions’ in Brazilian academia: (i) the ‘mandatory’ Lattes CV, and (ii) the candidates’ assessment criteria in public tenders for faculty positions. Severa...

Some PhD students wait until the very end of their studies to spend three (miserable?) months writing their thesis. Others work in a more gradual way. I spent about 1,5 years on writing (while still finishing up research tasks as well). To have an idea of which method is most common, I ran a poll on Twitter on this topic. You can find the wake of this poll here:

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer , your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands. If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic! As a post doctoral researcher, you can be hired on a project for 1 or 2 years, on a topic that is different from the topic you worked on during your PhD years. It may feel daunting to start all over again, and do it in less than half of the time you needed to do your PhD. As I've worked on a number of different topics during my post-doc years in Delft (including my "new" research line on load testing), I'm here to demystify the process. First of all: remember that you ar...

I recently ran a poll on Twitter to learn what are the most common challenges with academic writing. While a quick poll with only four options to answer is a very limited approach, I did learn that my idea that "finding time for writing" is a challenge for many. For me, too, it is what I struggle with most. I try to block two hours each morning for my writing, but with everything I still need to write, it often feels like those two hours are not enough. Here's the poll and its wake:

I've mentioned it before, but after defending my PhD, I felt sad and experienced some "withdrawal" symptoms after being very focused on my PhD. The first paper I wrote after defending came together very slowly. I defended in June, still had until September on my PhD contract (but no project defined yet at that point), didn't know if I'd be able to remain working for TU Delft (and fretted about it, a lot), and would only start my new job in November in Ecuador (and could pretty much do any research I wanted there, which was scary as well). I wanted to know if my experience is in line with others, so I ran a poll. You can see the wake of this poll and the results here:

Do you always wonder about the clothes you should pack for a conference? The fact is, in academia, the dress code for conferences is less defines than in some other fields of work. I already wrote a post in the past about my essential conference clothes , but my view is quite limited by my field. To get a better understanding of conference dress codes, I ran a poll on Twitter. You can find the wake of this poll below: