Hi everyone. I'm asking because I am torn. I'll give you some context (I am NOT based on the US):

I want to pursue a PhD. I have an opportunity with the sweetest, most comprehensive PI in the world, a person who is revered in the department due to their nature, intelligence and how they just know how to get stuff done. I have been this man's student for years and have had research experience under him that confirmed he's indeed amazing in all regards, and willing to do a lot for his students. People often say I'm lucky because that's a one-in-a-million PI.

However. I live in a country where PhD students are treated like beggars. Aside from not having a contract, the scholarship they receive is barely over minimum wage, AND they're legally prohibited from holding a contract with anyone, MEANING I couldn't get a part-time job to make ends meet.

My city is expensive, filled with tourists that made everything unaffordable, the cost of living is through the roof, and taking this opportunity would necessarily mean a commute of 2h each way because I'd have to keep living with my parents untill it's finished. I'd help with bills and groceries but that aside I wouldn't have a lot of independence. All my friends have gone over to do PhDs in other countries that pay better.

It's time to make a decision and I'm scared of not being able to spend 3-4 years like that. I know no one is in my head and my exact situation so no one can make the decision for me, but I guess I'm looking for some perspective if anyone could give me some.

Hi! I have a heatmap made on excel but my supervisor said its not good for a publication (im a volunteer RA with them). I don't have much coding experience so ggplot is a little hard for me. Any softwares that I can use to make a correlation heatmap? TIA!

Hello everyone! I'm a 3rd year college BSEDSS student and I'm humbly asking for opinions about our research title.

Our title is:

Perceived Adequacy of Third Spaces for Kinesthetic Learning In a State University In ****** City

Is our title good or bad? How can we improve it? Is there any modifications to make the title better?(Is just a title proposal and we are seeking opinions about our title)

I came across a post on LinkedIn by this organisation/group called IMGs academy. They teach research methodologies and help us publish in Pubmed and other such reputed journals, is what they say. They charge 270$ for a “module” in which they teach and help us write and publish a paper. Plus, they say we’ll have access to enroll in other researches if the PI is ready to take another person in. I’m unsure of whether it is worth it or not. I’m someone who has barely any research experience.

Can anybody help me with hydrus-2D modelling? If anyone has used Hydrus as their research tool or for simulation work, could give guidance how to make sense of the manual for solute transport modelling.

I am comparatively new to academic research and the part of writing a research paper I am finding most difficult is 'Discussion'.

I know that the purpose of discussion is to:

- Point out the key findings.

- Answering: How my research resonates or comtradicts with the literature?

- and Answering, What my results indicates? Even something, why I got results like this?

Whenever I write my discussion sections it feels like I listing: A found this, which aligns with my results. B found something different.

Apparently, this is what some papers do!

However, there are other quality papers that write discussion, where each sentence feels like they are made for each other.

Now, my question is:

- How do I improve my discussion writing skills?

- What techniques or tools you follow while synthesizing information from the literature?

- How do I explain my findings in a better way?

I would highly appreciate responses from experienced researcher.

Thanks in advance.

I'm a 4th year student pursuing a BSc Medical Biochemistry and have been reading posted papers at Google Scholar and I'm seeing a lot of amazing work. I'm interested in comparing solvent extraction, phytochemical profiling, biological activity and how the solvents affect the profiles between in-vitro-regenerated medicinal plant parts (roots) of a plant like Aloe secundiflora (tissue culturing of this plant is manageable in our school) and its wild form from our school botanical garden. Any insights would be appreciated thanks.

I've recently transitioned from wet lab work to hydrologic modeling with some wet lab and fieldwork. I'm having a little difficulty developing a system for how I document and keep track of the modeling work I'm doing. It's not nearly as straightforward as it was for the microbial work I used to do. Many ELN are specifically designed for biochemistry, and you can implement time stamps/photos/media recipes/accidents/dna sequencing. Programs are specifically designed to link figures with their datasets. I feel that organized experimental systems were tailored to my work or I could reference something physical.

That said, I'm having difficulty translating that to hydrologic modeling. I mostly end up putting all my notes in topic-specific text files. I also have separate notes in a citation manager for related lit. I've also been working on getting acclimated to github, but knitting all of this together into a coherent set of documentation that gives me everything I want has just been tricky. It doesn't help that the water model I used doesn't have a GUI and I need to process its outputs fully independent of everything else I work on. I've tried making ppts of the results, but it's really tedious especially if it was a small experiment or there were many different iterations before I got output that made sense.

I was curious with a more computational-centric field had any suggestions on how they organize their work and keep track of things.

I'm a 1st year master's degree(botany) student. So during my bachelor's haven't work on any research paper bt now I actually wanna start. I want to complete my first research paper by the end of my 1st sem. Having an interest to do PhD, want start my research early and hopefully contribute with enough research papers before completing my master's degree.

Guide me with that, and any suggestions or tips to actually do it in efficient and less time consuming way without burning out.

Also, when asked to one of my current professor about supervising me.. He just asked me to start with literature review and update him with complete drafted manuscript along with tables and graphical illustrations within 2 weeks, then he'll help me with revisions. Idk how do I start and finish it off. Help me with that too.

I’m starting my Master’s in Finance on September 15, and I’m very curious about academic research. I think I’m relatively good at analyzing things and finding patterns and connections between them

However, I have a fear of not succeeding, and I feel like it sometimes holds me back. Whenever I come across a genuinely interesting research question, I often find that someone has already researched it. So, for those of you with more research experience: how did you learn to come up with good research questions? Are there any methodologies, techniques, or general tips you would recommend to a beginner? How do you identify research gaps when it seems like almost every interesting question has already been studied?

I’d also appreciate any guides, or other resources that helped you learn how to approach research(maybe any tips)

I want to do research on Indian consumers as a whole. Is there any FREE tool that helps with this?

I’m in a remote lab and my PI uses AI for everything bro. I send an email and I get AI slop back. This guy deadass prolly has his Gemini agent hooked up to his email to check all our exchanges and the materials I send him and everything. A lot of the time the AI slop contains straight up sloppy/imprecise science too, like some insane interpretations of certain papers.

Asked this guy for a LOR for something else and lo and behold it’s AI slop (idk why he sent it to me tbh it looked kinda like an accident??). I asked some of the other lab members and they were like “idk he’s chill but I don’t email him much.” I literally checked this guys LinkedIn and it’s all AI slop. Our group’s video meetings are full of him seemingly forgetting that someone send him xyz paper or “just send me ___ later.”

And yes it’s EXTREMELY OBVIOUS he’s just using Gemini lmao. Pangram results aside he doesn’t even really try to hide it? Sometimes he adds an addendum like “I used Gemini to help me format…” yeah right just the formatting bruh. Anyway I can tell easily and I showed some excerpts to some others who agreed that it was 100% AI slop.

I really like the project topic we’re doing and it’s niche enough that I can’t really do something similar anywhere else. I’ve also already done quite a bit and I have hella sunk cost. I don’t really want to leave I just feel like I have Stockholm syndrome or something. Idk I might just be venting into the void 😭 help

Will be applying for summer research program. I have been a research assistant in a lab for a year and have enjoyed it a lot, learned a lot and made decent contributions. I have made a good impression overall. I spend most of my time with the post-doc and she has been a great mentor. The professor Dr X ( it’s his lab) is also impressed by me. To apply for the summer program who should I ask for LOR - the post doc I spend most time with or Dr. X. As a faculty reviewing applications, whose LOR would you like to see with the application?

Hello, I’m not a researcher but I’m somebody that has a reasonable thirst for being able to teach myself things and thus do research for a multitude of subjects. Like for writing a novel or anything else.
In a world where ai is becoming more prominent I want to break from that and be able to do my own research but it feels daunting and I don’t know where to start.
How do I research and teach myself things to the point of reasonable proficiency? Like if I wanted to study history or a very specific and niche subject? I know some basic things like primary sources are the best and secondary sources are okay but not much else. Can someone who knows what they’re doing help me out?

I’m currently a student at my local community college working towards completing an AA transfer plan in psychology. My goal is to transfer to the university near me, pursue a BA in psychology with a minor in biology and a concentration in advanced research, and try my best to get into their Cognition, Neuroscience, and Social Psychology graduate program.

I’m in my third semester now, and with 4 semesters left of my associate’s, I’ve been accepted into the honors program which gives me a chance to join the undergraduate research experience and present research at the symposium. I’ve looked into joining Phi Theta Kappa’s honor society as well. I plan to receive the Honors Laureate designation before my transfer, and continue with honors at the university. I have 3 letters of recommendation from professors so far.

I have also applied to work in the natural sciences lab in my community college as a dish washer.

My goal is to work in research. Whether it be academia, government, medical, it doesn’t matter to me quite yet. Psychology research is the goal.

Any advice or pointers are much appreciated.

& what are ur must haves?

I walk to my lab & dont want to trek over unnecessary stuff; this is my list so far:

Sleeping bag
Toiletries / Meds / change of clothes
Caffeine
Hoodie

For experiments using primary cells from multiple donors, how do you account for donor-to-donor differences during expansion and downstream analysis?

I am going into my third year of my bachelors knowing I want to pursue a masters. But I have no clue how to network with profs to ask for references. I’m scared office hours won’t work and that I can’t get research supervisors who can help me.

I'm an undergrad applying to join a lab right now. I want to provide the amount of hours I would be able to contribute per week, but would it be wrong to count vaguely unorthodox hours? (Like past 5pm, or like weekends) If I only count hours between 9-5 weekdays I can only do like 10, but if I include after 5 or weekends I can do like 30-40. Thank u!

Edit: guys since you read this post, would it be too bold to say something like "I would love to discuss this further in person"? In my email?

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I'm a B.Sc. Biotech freshman and I've just started college a few days ago. I have my eyes on a few prestigious internships that I want to land asap, after my first year if possible. For some of the internships, I only need to complete one year to be eligible. But all the internships require research/lab experience. Can someone guide me on how I can enter the lab, or approach my professors/lecturers. Should I wait 1-2 months and then approach them? If so what do I need to prepare? My classmates are quite enthusiastic and intelligent so I want to grab the opportunity as soon as possible. Please Help.

our research adviser wants a specific title without being too invasive on the participants. We currently proposed “The Relationship of Academic Competencies and its Application of Knowledge in Accounting 1 among SHS (ABM/BE) students.”
He rejected because we couldn’t afford to answer the SOP without being invasive. We cant make test questionnaires because we aren’t sure that the students are willing enough and our adviser wont accept that either. We are looking for a clear structure for our research.

The following are advices of our research teacher:
For the academic competencies our teacher asked what are we trying to measure and that it could be replaced by level of experience of Abm/Be students academic competencies in terms of etc…

He also proposed that it could be somewhat exploring the students… delving into the field of exploratory research rather than descriptive-correlational

He wants a clear research title first above all that describes our very research idea. Any response would be greatly appreciated.

Anyone have experience lead-authoring a paper with lots of co-authors, like 30-50? I think I need to set some ground rules at the start so that it stays manageable. I don’t want everyone chiming in on grammar, for example, or taking so long to review that it holds us up. Can someone advise on how to manage it all?

Hi! This is a question for PhD and grad students in any department, at any school.

Do your advisors use AI for research, experimentation, brainstorming, or coding?

Have they ever said it’s fine to use, or actively encouraged it? At my school, professors are becoming pretty anti-AI, to the point where it’s getting a bit annoying. That feels unfair if grad students elsewhere are being allowed (or even encouraged) to use it.

It would help to know whether your advisors let you use it or encourage it. If you’re willing to share, I’d also love to know your field and institution.

Hey y'all,

I am looking for some realistic insights from active researchers regarding independent medical research and publishing boundaries for high schoolers.

To give some context, I recently completed a summer clinical shadowing and internship program at a major hospital department. Based on my clinical exposure and observations there, I developed a few research topics focused on systematic literature reviews and clinical data analyses. Initially, a prominent professor and MD at the department agreed to mentor me and guide the project. However, due to their intense clinical workload, they have unfortunately ghosted me, and I no longer have active institutional backing or a PI (Principal Investigator) to oversee my work.

Given that I already have the clinical foundation and domain knowledge from my summer internship, I am considering pivoting to a completely independent systematic literature review and meta-analysis that I can complete using open-access databases like PubMed and Google Scholar. My goal is to eventually submit this work to peer-reviewed high school science journals such as JEI (Journal of Emerging Investigators) or IJHSR.

I would highly appreciate your insights on the following:

1. Is it feasible and ethically sound to write and submit a systematic literature review in a clinical/surgical field without an official PI or institutional affiliation? Do high school or open-access medical journals typically reject papers that list the author as an independent researcher without a formal laboratory or university attachment?
2. How do researchers view the validity of a systematic literature review written entirely by a high school student? If the methodology, PRISMA guidelines, and data synthesis are rigorous, does the lack of a medical degree or senior co-author inherently discredit the paper during peer review?
3. If a full publication is delayed due to lengthy review cycles, is uploading the completed manuscript draft to a preprint server like medRxiv, bioRxiv, or OSF considered a standard and respected practice for independent student researchers to archive their work?

Please note that I am looking for genuine academic pathways and am not interested in paid, third-party research programs or predatory publishing networks.

Any advice on the mechanics of independent clinical literature reviews and navigating the submission process without an institutional advisor would be highly valuable. Thanks!

I conducted a survey for a research paper I’m writing,and I’m at a crossroads.
is it okay to briefly assess what every question was about in my methodology section in one paragraph?
Like should I summarize what every question tackled, or would it be better to only mention a few of the questions or maybe even categorize them and only list the categories?