also see https://theaok.github.io/swb/final_project.pdf

my philosophy: flexible, open-minded: do what you like, just contribute to the literature

independent/directed study/work together/dissertation
can start informally over github/email/zoom even in summer or more formally in class or take independent/directed study course with me, and then dissertation

big picture

you paper must be very similar to a handful of papers already published, if it is not, if you have not found such papers, then very likely what you are doing doesn't make sense

do something small, doable, advance knowledge by little bit; dont try to save the world at once

dissertation

register for dissertation hours 56-824-790 "DOCT DISSERTATION" (not 56-824-720 "DISSERTATION DEVELOP") after passing qualifiers (its all same dissertation hrs no matter whether before or after proposal); and need like 15 hrs (as GA get 5yrs of funding)

dissertation is not just a long paper, but rather professional development, from student to scholar (get to the point where you can disagree and challenge me, where you feel confident enough to be equal or better)

may see https://github.com/theaok/phd (lots of great advice, tho little outdated; forked from someone's else github)

for dissertation examples see autonomy and the good life, regional quality of life in eu and a bunch: https://www.acqol.com.au/publications#theses

literature/references: beef it up! need few hundred; dissertation is about becoming an expert in the field, and you need to read a lot to become one

other thoughts

one take on writing proposals will take committee a month or so to get back with you with comments on draft; also do talk to them early, check in periodically every few months on key ideas/junctures especially those they specialize in, the idea is that committee contribute to build up early in the process and their footprint perspective is deep in dissertation, they are mentors, too

an explanation of my role: the main goal is to produce new knowledge and become independent researcher; challenge me: be a collaborator, not just a student

it's expedition not a sprint; i'll try to be patient, supportive yet demanding; beware of my quirks: too much data and code?; don't forget theory, literature, deep thinking

be careful/picky choosing supervisor [productive but human], protect sanity [socialize, nature, time off, exercise, unwind], and survive academic culture [politics, exploitation; make sure you benefit clearly and early]

maybe its better to have 3 paper format, unless you are into book writing

mechanics and workflow

dont use word, excel, spss, sas

data/stats: python, stata, r (no excel, spss, sas)

writing: either latex in github or overleaf.com or google doc (just one doc with everything in it! and then just keep on updating it (it keeps versioning automatically: File-Version History))

workflow

not that impossible other way, but seems most productive (at least for me): 3 main stages

conceptualize, figure it out, get the idea formed, ideally do start looking at the data and literature and get basic things figured out, make a lot of notes: this can be done at various intervals here and there

actual production: this one you have to have blocks of uninterrupted time! something like tens of hours, say 30hrs over Sat and Sun, (with some sleep between); and then more blocks like that; probably around 50-200hrs, as continuously as possible; indeed best just have like one or two full weeks to nail it, put it >=80hrs/wk; then take like 2 weeks off!

finally, polishing, reorganizing, redoing some of it, focusing, simplifying, etc, like 1st stage can be done here and there

set it aside and read in few weeks: if you haven't looked at it for few weeks, you read it with fresh mind and you'll discover many things are not there and not obvious logical, because as you wrote it it was all in your head and couldn't tell earlier something was missing

use appendix or supplementary online material (som) a lot

In fact most of the paper should be there Look at top journals like Nature, Science, PNAS: most of work is in appendix or supplementary online material (som) it may be 20, or even 200 pages: all the details, elaborations, and supplementary analyses, robustness checks etc. But the actual paper is several pages only, typically just 1-3 tables/figures. Only the most important and critical ones that make the point and tell the story; all the other stuff thats useful but not necessary to make the key point/tell the story is postponed to appendix/som. We obviously have info overload, do not overload your readers, be as concise and to the point as possible. People dont have time to read the stuff that they dont have to. Readers just want to learn new stuff as quickly and efficiently as possible. Rare few who want all the details and intricacies will find them in appendix/som.

scientific writing and style

RU help (as of fa25): cooper st writing workshops https://writershouse.camden.rutgers.edu/programs/cooper-street/ writer's house Sienna Zeilinger Program Coordinator writers@camden.rutgers.edu; and Gaylene Gordon gmg143@camden.rutgers.edu, the Graduate Writing Assistant https://undocumented.camden.rutgers.edu/current-students/writing/

Do get yourself `On Writing Well` Book by William Zinsser!!!

And see https://theaok.github.io/swb/final_project.pdf maybe esp sec:"links: good research in words of others"

avoid opinion; use evidence: either literature or data

format tables and graphs so they look like those from journal articles

each table/figure must have a number and *self-explanatory title/caption* (you can understand what is going on just from reading the caption) and it must be referred from text by number! see again, published research for examples AND make these tables tight--cut decimal points to 2 or 3, and decrease spacing and padding so that table is tight and compact

do work continuously but not for too long

warning: thinking/academic work is bad for your body!!
do a test: sit on laptop for couple hrs continuously (typical to get anything done), then get up and note how weak you are!
and have enough of these couple hrs blocks over time and you deteriorate greatly in general, not just physically, mentally too--sure easy to see why working in a mine with a hammer is bad for you, but so is thinking/academic work!
thin line: do need uninterrupted blocks of time, eg all Fri, all Sat, all Sun at 14hrs per day, BUT then do other stuff like outdoors, exercise, social connection--if you do research all the time for too long it will damage your brain

its actually good not just for happiness, but also for productivity to take a break; have like a week or two without looking at it at all, and then when you come back you'll not just be more productive, but also see things you didn't see earlier; BUT before you take a break wrap up to have it in a decent shape; AND do make notes what are the next steps and things TODO when you come back

Let it sit for 2-3 weeks. Or even longer, few months (after the class, of course). When you come back you see things you haven't seen before because its all in your head and you dont realize whats on paper and whats missing where (your head v paper).

manage complexity: be flexible and opportunistic, simplify!

simplify, be flexible and opportunistic (do whats easy and doable now) eg readjust your hypothesis to data, keep the big complicated stuff for later, likewise per my comments: do *NOT* do everything i ask for: much or most of my comments should be put towards the end into "limitations and future research"

research is a process of managing complexity--simplify, make it easy on yourself, do something that is doable, postpone big ideas for later; never try to do everything now perfectly, you'll drive yourself crazy

do talk to scholars in your field that you know about from the literature

The scholars in your narrowly defined field wont be at your school. Threes a handful of them, say 5-50, and they're scattered around the world--email them, they'd be happy (unless its a top top scholar like Nobel prize, they wont talk to you).
You're both passionate about the same thing; coauthor! Most scholars need coauthors and would like to have a new one. Ideally get a junior scholar to team up: PhD student or assistant professor, they`re more upto date, more eager, and more in need to do research.
Can also try a senior scholar, but one thats productive, well established (published and cited a lot).

paper is useless if held in a drawer, share it with the world

Your field doesn't know about you, unless you share. You share ONLY in 2 ways: academic conferences and publications--the only way to take your work to the next level when you get feedback from your field. Again, top people in your narrowly defined field, about 5-50 people, wont be at your school. Sure there will be people in related area, but not exactly precisely in the very narrow area that YOU are--almost always you're not doing the exact same narrow area from the exact same perspective as scholars at your institution.

Comments from your narrowly defined field are priceless--again the only way to take your work to the world class level. And dont get discouraged, typically you'll get rejected, Im getting rejected say 80perc of the time after being in the field for 20 years. But you still get the priceless comments on how to make it better!

keep your pipeline full

It takes about 3mo to get comments, even 6mo, write another paper and submit, keep it going, dont wait for comments to move on, you'll be stuck for months, *KEEP PIPELINE FULL*, I always have at least 3 papers under review at any given time.

usual comments on first draft of paper

I am mostly happy with your drafts, but, lets not be complacent and work more and try to publish it; really need to push it ahead and put much more work into it to have a good final product.

Try to be objective: this is not op-ed or opinion, try to be scientific and present also contradicting information or other points of view. Make sure your text is connected to your analysis! It flows logically.

Sometimes, you may actually produce a lot of output but end up having unfinished project: this may still be an A if there was a lot of work involved. Indeed, often, naturally, producing a good paper takes a lot of time, and it is better to have it unfinished than force it finish and produce something mediocre

tip of the day: print it out

Definitely your paper! You see things differently on paper. Rearrange, move parts around. My advisor used to cut it up with scissors and glue back on the top of another sheet of paper. I'm more modern and mark it up to move around: eg I'd circle couple paragraphs and put `1->` then where i move it i put `->1` and then 2,3 etc. And when i type it in, i move stuff around. Do reorganize, move things around.

Also print out your key literature, and mark them up.

data, stats, inference, research design

if data

double check your final results like vis and tables with external data for accuracy, say https://www.policymap.com/ (there's free version) or socialexplorer.com (free on campus or vpn) and see if your tables/vis look the same, if not, there may be error; it's very important to double check, the worst thing to do is to report wrong numbers, and can happen to anyone, so really have to double check

think about data quality: measurement, validity (incl construct), and limitations

make sure to obey replication principle, eg absolutely have to have (and submit along with assignments!) a dofile or python script etc that will produce final results that you have in your paper from the VERY RAW data, eg data you have downloaded from the website; elaboration https://theaok.github.io/dm/replication.pdf

per regressions follow excellent https://stats.oarc.ucla.edu/stata/webbooks/reg/

per interactions: https://www.stata.com/features/overview/factor-variables/

Linear Regression Models with Interaction/Moderation-Stata
marginsplot format output properly!! if stata, can use: outreg2 or estout and for descriptive stats can use logout https://theaok.github.io/dm/exp.do

if svy res

make sure your var is coded right way!
codebook varName, tab(100)
eg often var is -9 for missing!!
have to recode that!eg:
replace varName=. if varName==-9

do plenty of des stats before regressions:
sum var1 var2
ta var1 var2, mi
scatter var1 var2
hist var1

at very least every paper needs descriptive stats for every variable: mean, sd, min, max

often need to reverse var, so that higher val means 'more' or 'better' and it`s intuitive eg happiness 1(lo)-3(hi), not 1(hi)-3(lo); install user written command:
findit revrs


always have to have actual survey questions asked to a respondent in the paper!

if GSS

just get the full cumulative data set 1971-24
use lookfor in stata to find vars
lookfor satis
to match both 'SATISfied' and 'SATISfaction'

use website https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/ to identify vars: click 'Search Variables' eg: 'hope' and click say 'hopeless', see on right it says 'Related Variables' so you can snowball and catch them all on your topic

dont forget about practical/substantive sig!

think and interpret the magnitude, eg: flextime has a large effect on happiness-the size effect is about as large as that of household income, or about as large as a one-step increase in self-reported health, such as up from good to excellent health: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11482-017-9525-8

also may have beta coef
regress happiness male city health income age age2, beta
so then interpret whether your key var of interest is large or small in magnitude as compared to other key vars such as health and income

causality/endogeneity/self-selection

always think about and address: causality, endogeneity, self-selection (at least discuss briefly, talk about causal mechanism/path, why would x cause y, and not the other way round, or some other z): http://people.bu.edu/tsimcoe/code/Endog-PDW.pdf

publishing game: editors, reviewers, revise and resubmit

work smart not hard and have some strategy; some pointers below Remember the editor makes the decision, not reviewer.

And in general in later rounds of reviews the edits to paper are lighter and lighter

If some comment really takes you away and makes it into a new paper, say so in response to reviewer! Thank her for comments, but say that it will be a new paper, so it cant be fully accommodated here. And then indeed in the future you may write that another new paper. I did few times. Then you have 2 papers 😃

Again one way to deal with it is to use appendix and or online supplementary material--can put there stuff to satisfy one person but avoid dissatisfying the other. Almost nobody will read appendix or online supplementary material, so whats there doesn't upset a person, but it can be used to satisfy another person--can say in response to reviewer that you took suggestions into account and put it in appendix or online supplementary material

And yes you will actually quite often find reviewers among themselves or with editors disagreeing.

Couple ideas how to figure out where to go:

How strong/mild is suggestion

Editor is more important than reviewer

Some reviewers are more important than others (some are students some are very senior scholars), and so reviews are not equal, some are weighted more than others

In general try to satisfy as much as possible, disagreeing risks rejection

Sometimes do disagree, especially if a person doesn't make sense, but always be super polite and respectful

(The more senior you become, the more you may disagree; not just that you know more, but you risk less, you already have many papers published and going on)

Think critically, which reviewer (or editor) makes more sense and follow that

if you haven't publish yet

look at journal articles! for happiness: johs journal of happiness studies, ariq applied research in quality of life; and in general for social indicators such as trust and freedom: sir social indicators research

and follow their lead! your paper should look like the recent ones from journals in the field in terms of everything!: amount of lit, depth and breadth of analysis, style and formatting, etc

your paper will be evaluated by ppl who published on this recently probably in this jou; and editor who likes stuff thats published recently

(class papers: do decide explicitly on journal and say it in the paper (and give reasoning), say as a footnote to the title)

make it look like a paper in a targeted journal!

always have abstract and keywords!!

always have "conclusion and discussion" section at the end

marketing is kinda cool like trying to sell it well; but waste of time in a sense that it doesn't produce anything; better strategies: hot topics, new cutting-edge stuff incl data, and great/novel ideas

if not from the beginning at least towards the end of paper production, spin it towards a given journal, say: you are shooting for Public Opinion Quarterly, go into google scholar and advanced search (menu on top left) and search for what you write about, say: abortion published in Public Opinion Quarterly: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=abortion&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=&as_publication=Public+Opinion+Quarterly&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C31 and there is a bunch! do make sure to go thru them and fix up your paper and cite them abundantly--if you submit to a given journal important to make sure to be in a good conversation with line of conversation in that journal; also these are going to be the reviewers and judges of your work--authors that publish in that journal

do start with very small/incremental contribution or even replication only

eg Heliyon:

Any paper reporting scientifically accurate and valuable research, which adheres to accepted ethical and scientific publishing standards, will be considered for publication. As such, the journal also publishes manuscripts reporting negative/null results, incremental advances, and replication studies

(and RU has a deal with Elsevier to cover APC (article publishing charge)) BUT do make sure eg by contacting the journal (for Heliyon it doesn't work)

title and abstract are important

want both title and abstract to reflect paper main points as good as possible. Title and abstract are very important! Some people will only read that and many will read the paper or not solely based on title and abstract, so in a way these are actually some of the most important parts of the paper. The key is your findings and main points you make, not background info or literature.

journal choice and rankings

see rankings: scimagojr.com

read editorials! eg see mine in SIR

per fit, see which journal you cite a lot esp recent studies, or as per critical paper(s) for your study (and these will be your reviewers)

co-author with someone who published recently in a given journal!!!

(qualitative is just rich quantitative data)

journal: johs, sir, ariq; or the other field you study, eg drugs, spirituality, housing, etc: papers are typically a connection of two fields: you main IV (eg urbanism) and DV (SWB), so can ship them to either fields journal

publish or perish: this is dead serious, if you dont you have failed, you'll perish

present

do fit within time window, sharp, you will be cut off

focus on YOUR study and YOUR contribution; not background info

not too many slides like 1 per minute, 15 min presentation like 15 slides

not too many lines per slide like <=12

do take notes (right away)!!! that's the whole purpose of presenting is to get comments! (to enlighten audience is typically secondary) if you don't take notes, you will forget the comments

AI

focus on creativity, critical thinking; automate what can be automated https://www.forbes.com/sites/danfitzpatrick/2024/06/30/chatgpt-forces-universities-to-adapt-or-retreat/