my philosophy: flexible, open-minded: do what you like, just contribute to the literature (and have some overlap with my research so we can work together)

work together, independent/directed study, 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

your 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; do not try to save the world at once

dissertation

(in DPPA as of fa25) 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may see https://github.com/theaok/phd (lots of great advice, tho little outdated; forked from someone's else github)

about dissertation proposal writing: one take on writing proposals

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

have more than one mentor; sure dissertation committee is 3, but go beyond that, collaborate with other scholars, senior and junior

it 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

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

deeper thoughts

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]

mechanics and workflow

avoid word, excel, spss, sas

data/stats: python or r (maybe stata) (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

scientific writing and style

do get yourself excellent "On Writing Well" book by William Zinsser!!

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 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

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

RU help (as of fa26): Cooper St writing workshops: https://writershouse.camden.rutgers.edu/programs/cooper-street/
Writers House Program Coordinator: Sienna Zeilinger:writers@camden.rutgers.edu

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, and 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/sensitivity checks etc.
But the actual paper is several pages only and 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 that is 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 do not have time to read the stuff that they do not 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.

workflow

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

1) 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

2) 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, say >=80hrs/wk; then take like 2 weeks off!

3) 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 have not looked at it for few weeks, you read it with fresh mind and you will discover many things are not there and not obvious/logical, because as you wrote it it was all in your head and could not tell earlier something was missing

A word on consistency. Yes necessaary in many classes like independent or directed study or dissertation hours: just cannot do nothing the whole semester and then crunch it in the final week of the semester, the reseach will not be great, as it needs time and maturation like wine.
But with research in general I would favor spentaneity/inspiration over consistency. Some advise to write like for an hour or few every day. It does not work for me, not even any limit for a week or month. I would rather do it when I am inspired. Likewise, I work much better on what I want to do and I tend to favor it over things that need to be done (still often really need to do what needs to be done).
What I find working best is working hard continuously for some time and then taking time off. When I was in my 20s and 30s I would even do 2 weeks or longer, I mean continously like about 80hrs per week. Now in my 40s I tend to keep it shorter than 2 weeks, a week or 10 days, and then at least few days break, otherwhise getting literaly sick.

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

it is 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 will not just be more productive, but also see things you did not 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 have not seen before because its all in your head and you do not 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 also 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 will drive yourself crazy

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

The scholars in your narrowly defined field will not be at your school. There is a handful of them, say 5-50, and they are scattered around the world--email them, they would be happy.

You are 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 are more upto date, more eager, and more in need to do research.

Can also try a well established senior scholar (published a lot and cited a lot), but make sure she is still productive (still is publishing recently in good reputable outlets). But avoid top top scholars like Nobel prize winners, they will not talk to you.

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

Your field does not know about you, unless you share. You share in 2 ways only: academic conferences and publications--the only way to take your work to the next level is through the feedback from your field.

Again, the top people in your narrowly defined field, say about 5-50 people, will not be at your school. Sure there will be people in related areas, but not exactly precisely in the very narrow area that you are in. Almost never you are 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, it is the only way to take your work to the world class level. And do not get discouraged, typically you will get rejected. I am getting rejected say 70 percent of the time after being in the field for 20 years. But you still get the priceless comments on how to make it better. Unless you get desk rejected, which still gives you some information.

keep your pipeline full

It takes about 3mo to get comments, even 6mo, write another paper and submit, keep it going, do not wait for comments to move on, you will 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 student 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. Realistically, to have a "publishable" paper (ready for journal submission), need more than one semester. Lets keep it going and work together next semester.

Sometimes, you may actually produce a lot of output but end up having an 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.

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! And make sure it flows logically.

tip of the day: print it out

Definitely print out your paper! You see things differently on paper. Rearrange, move parts around. Do reorganize, move text around. My advisor used to cut it up with scissors and glue back on the top of another sheet of paper. I am more modern and mark it up to move around: I would circle text that does not fit and put "1->", and then where I want to paste it I would write "->1", and then 2, 3, etc. I actually move text around when I type it in.

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

data, stats, inference, research design

if data

(btw there always should be some data; qualitative data is just rich quantitative data: can quantify everything)

incl emotions in songs, personality across states etc)

double check your final results like vis and tables with external data for accuracy, just google/gemini your output/results; also useful for US geographies: policymap.com (there is a free version) or socialexplorer.com (free on campus or vpn) and see if your results look the same, if not, there may be error; it is 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 data limitations (there are always some!)

make sure to obey replication principle: always have code (and submit it with assignments) that will produce final results that you have in your paper from the very raw data, ie the data you have downloaded from data producer; elaboration: https://theaok.github.io/dm/replication.pdf

per regressions follow excellent https://stats.oarc.ucla.edu/stata/webbooks/reg/; interactions: https://www.stata.com/features/overview/factor-variables/; marginsplot; and make sure to format output properly!! in stata can use: outreg2 or estout, and for descriptive stats can use logout: https://theaok.github.io/dm/exp.do

if survey research

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

do plenty of des stats before regressions for your key variables: stata:
sum var1 var2
ta var1 var2, mi
scatter var1 var2
hist var1

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

every paper needs basic descriptive stats for every variable: mean, sd, min, max

and always have to have actual survey questions asked to a respondent in the paper and it is also very useful to have a cross-correlation matrix of all vars, at least in appendix

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

do not 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 (fully standardized) coef, in stata:
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 interesting vars such as health and income in terms of effect as standard deviation

causality/endogeneity/self-selection

do not obsess about it as much as economists, but usually it is good to give it some thought

a great way to think about is to use INUS condition

at least discuss briefly and talk about causal mechanism/path, why would x cause y, and not the other way round, or some other z

less philosophically and more social sciency can think about and address: causality, endogeneity, self-selection

reaable ref: http://people.bu.edu/tsimcoe/code/Endog-PDW.pdf

publishing game: editors, reviewers, revise and resubmit

work smart, not hard, and have some strategy; pointers below:

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 cannnot 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 😃

A great way to deal with changes to paper is to put them into appendix or supplementary online material (som). Say in response to a reviewer that you took suggestions into account and put them in appendix or online supplementary material. Can put there changes to satisfy one reviewer but avoid dissatisfying the other. Almost nobody will read appendix or online supplementary material, so what is there does not upset a person, but it can be used to satisfy another person. And yes you will actually quite often find reviewers disagreeing.

Couple ideas how to figure out where to go with the paper:

How strong/mild is suggestion?

Editor is more important than reviewer.

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

In general try to satisfy as much as possible, disagreeing risks rejection. Think critically, which reviewer makes more sense and follow that.

Sometimes do disagree, especially if a person does not make sense (it happens often), 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.

if you have not publish yet

look at journal articles! for happiness: 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 in terms of everything!: amount of literature, type and depth and breadth of analysis, style and formatting, etc

your paper will be evaluated by people who published on this topic recently, probably in this journal (if editor thinks it fits the journal and likes it at least a bit and does not desk reject it)

always have abstract and keywords and always have "conclusion and discussion" section at the end

do make sure you are explicit about novelty / contribution to the literature, but easy on marketing (as in real world marketing / trying to sell) say in cover letter or in paper itself; fundamentally (like real world marketing) waste of time in a sense that it does not produce anything; better strategies: hot topics, new/cutting-edge approaches including data, and above all: 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 onto Google Scholar and Advanced Search (top left menu) 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 through them and fix up your paper and cite them abundantly; it is important to make sure to be in a good conversation with line of conversation in a journal you are submitting to; 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

Many journals would be interested in such work, 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"

RU has a deal with Elsevier to cover APC (article publishing charge) BUT do make sure first! (for Heliyon it does not 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! Many (most?) will only read abstract, and many will only read the paper solely based on title and abstract, so in a way title and abstract are actually the most important parts of the paper. The key info in title and abstract are your findings and main points you make, not background info or literature.

journal choice and rankings

see rankings: scimagojr.com, do not submit to top top ones like Nature or Science, not even the top general ones in a discipline (unless you have already published few articles), but do aim for decent good reputable journals, ie SJR>0.5 and IF>1

most papers (even above 90 percent) get desk rejected by editor and mostly for lack of fit, do see what the editors are looking for, read the editorial! (fun fact: I have never read one until I wrote one for SIR)

per fit: see which journal you cite a lot, especialy recent studies, or in which journal are the critical papers that you cite, again recent ones

authors that you cite a lot and or those that are closest to your study will be your reviewers (gatekeepers/judges of your success)

pro-tip: co-author with someone who published recently in the target journal

publish or perish: this is dead serious, if you do not publish, you have failed, and you will perish

presentations

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

focus on YOUR study and YOUR contribution; not background info or what others did

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, during the presentation)!!! the whole purpose of presenting is to get comments! (to enlighten the audience is typically secondary); if you do not 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/

research is a formalized curiosity, it is poking and prying with a purpose; poke and soak

use AI as a first stab at it, to write, code, etc, but do not stop there, edit and make it better and add from yourself; disclose use of AI, ideally by giving details such as prompts; and do check what AI did, it sometimes errs

job (real world)

do not do research all the time, do not be unemployed: "it is not what you know but who you know"

yup, unfortunately, we academics and especially junior folks tend to be idealistic (later we turn cynical)

but it is what it is; I mean not like 100%; more like 60-90% "who you know," so there is still good 10-40% "what you know," so it is not that bad

and still then long term reputation building is a lot about "what you know"

it is just in the short run early on and in the job-search-mode "who you know" is super important, and unfortunately often in academia we do not tell it younger folks

hopefully asap can switch off the job-search-mode to scholar-mode and focus say 80-95% on research (but beware of 95%-100% scholar-mode for extended periods of time, while it can make you famous posthumously and maybe even already in 10-50 years, it may also result in unemployment, poverty, and unhappiness

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/career-advice/teaching/2025/10/03/what-i-learned-advising-120-phd-students-opinion

my first question is always "What are your career goals?"

If they cannot answer that, I encourage them to do more soul searching. Do they aspire to be tenure-track faculty members? If so, have they researched the expectations for scholarly productivity? Do they want to work in a large corporation or government agency? If so, have they spoken to people in those roles to understand the advantages and disadvantages of such jobs? Do they dream of starting their own consulting firm or working in a well-established consulting company?

Then have they learned how to write proposals, provide deliverables and secure testimonial letters from satisfied clients?