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Undergraduate: I want papers, more papers, more papers.
Graduate: I want papers, more papers, JACSpapers.
Postdoctoral: I want the papers of HIJ (High Impact Journal).
If you are also studying chemistry, if you are also engaged in scientific research, do you have a strong sense of substitution when you see such a mental journey? This is the change of Huang Jiaxing, a professor of materials science in the School of Engineering of West Lake University, before he became an independent PI.
In West Lake University, we have always emphasized "not only papers", whether it is selecting academic talents or interviewing doctoral freshmen. However, behind every scientific discovery and every achievement transformation, it is inseparable from the support of academic papers.
It's not just a paper, it doesn't mean you don't read it, and it doesn't mean you don't publish it.
So, why should we publish this newspaper? As a doctor, postdoctoral or young doctoral supervisor, have you ever thought about this question? Has anyone discussed this problem with you?
On Tuesday night, Huang Jiaxing dug up his "first papers" in different stages at the WeSalon event sponsored by the Graduate Association of our school, and disclosed the true stories before and after each "first time" for the first time, which gave him a new understanding of the question "What is the purpose of publishing papers?"
This is the story and viewpoint shared by Qi Fei of Wit and Wisdom, so we sorted out this dry review for the first time. Teacher Huang reminded that this is just his family's words, but if such sharing and dissemination can stimulate everyone's thinking on this issue, it is also a meaningful thing.
Are you ready? Miss Huang began to speak.
0 1
Publish papers in undergraduate stage
?
Receive scientific research training
I studied chemical physics in China University of Science and Technology for five years, and generally entered the laboratory in the fifth year. I was a senior at 1999, and my grades were average. In order to gain research experience, I entered the laboratory in advance as a research assistant. At that time, I thought that my study was average, which showed that I didn't absorb the "input" of the country and society, but it didn't necessarily mean that my "output" was not good.
At first, I really thought that it would be very happy to start from a small role, help others, and even help people wash a beaker. Later, the doctoral student who took me may have seen that I was diligent and pulled me into one of his jobs. After the article was written, I read it carefully and occasionally helped to change one or two, and I was happy to do so. I feel that I have played a small role again. Finally, he and my tutor are willing to include my name in the author, and I feel very honored.
For the first time in my life, the pinyin of my name changed and appeared in international journals, which was extremely happy for me at that time and of great significance to my personal growth.
About half a year later, my tutor, Professor Xie Yi, said that you should not be satisfied with being the favorite behind the doctoral students, but should do it yourself, and gave me a stack of time tickets for the use of scientific research instruments and equipment (we call them "white slips"). At that time, as a small undergraduate, I had my own "white note", which represented the unparalleled trust of my tutor and made me excited.
Finally, I was lucky enough to make some discoveries of my own, and also had the opportunity to start writing my first author's thesis. I regard this article as my own treasure. I kept it in the laboratory for a month without thinking, and finished the first article of the first author in my life-what I found for the first time, explained it, then wrote it out and threw it away.
At that time, articles were mailed and reviewers' opinions were faxed back. Every time the phone call from the reception office comes in, I am happy to ride my bike to see whose article it is. To my surprise, the reviewer said that this article was well written-I don't know who the reviewer is so far, but I will always remember his/her encouragement.
Looking back, what is the significance of these articles? They didn't bring great technological innovation or theoretical breakthrough, and certainly didn't change the world, but they did record a new synthesis method in scientific literature, which provided reference for future generations. Personally, these experiences have given me great positive motivation in my life and provided me with very rare experience for my future scientific research. According to the popular view today, most of those papers belong to "low-impact, or low-impact factor papers", but those papers have made many people receive the first imperfect but relatively complete scientific research training in this process, providing a talent pool for the rapid rise of domestic scientific research.
02
Issue papers in doctoral study stage
Be a stepping stone to others.
Later, I went to UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) to study for a doctorate. At first, I followed the topic given by my tutor. After grinding for more than two years, I was almost abused to transfer.
Fortunately, in this process, my "true love" appeared-I pounded out a conductive polymer nanofiber, but this article was published earlier, becoming my first article in the doctoral stage and published in JACS, a magazine of the American Chemical Society. Science and American Chemical Engineering News (C & ampE News) wrote a bright spot for our work, and I myself later published several articles by the first author in this direction. This is the first JACS written by my doctoral supervisor in more than ten years. For me, this is simply the peak of my life.
At that time, many people thought we were lucky, such a simple job could send JACS: This is a small cut synthesis, which makes me feel so. But after a long time, I found that many people pay attention to this article. In fact, when we synthesize or prepare new materials, the simpler and more universal the methodology, the more people will be attracted to jump in and learn from you, which is definitely a good thing; If you don't teach your readers anything and people don't benefit from your work, do you always entertain yourself even if you publish star journals like Science and Nature?
Agnes Pockels was a self-taught German female scientist in18th century. She once said, "I am very happy to learn that my work is being used by others."
Their investigation. I think everyone's works should be a stepping stone for future generations, which should be a basic purpose of our publishing papers.
03
Postdoctoral articles
Learn to chew hard bones
I have been a doctoral student in the research group of Professor Yang Peidong at the University of California, Berkeley for three years.
This is my first post-doctoral article. We found that nanoparticles floating on the water sometimes automatically arranged into very beautiful and regular patterns during the drying process. I remember that the first time I saw these patterns under the scanning electron microscope was around 3 am. Students in Berkeley like to go up the mountain in the middle of the night to do electron microscopy, because electron microscopy is too busy during the day. Franklin and I in the same group looked at the electron microscope and looked at the night scene under the mountain with mixed feelings of sadness and joy: I'm afraid we can't figure out such a beautiful discovery.
As a tutor, Mr. Yang didn't flinch from us. Franklin and I struggle every week about what to tell Mr. Yang. Even after submitting the manuscript, we felt that we couldn't handle the opinions of the reviewers well, so we went to tell Teacher Yang to forget it and change to a relaxed journal. Teacher Yang didn't speak, but we felt a little ashamed. Let's grit our teeth and try again.
There were two ideas at that time. One is to use brute force, without too much analysis, and repeat savagely 100 times. Should we keep doing it? As a result, when we tried 10 times, we were about to collapse. Later, I felt that it was no good, but I still tried to analyze it seriously and rationally. What's the problem? I finally calmed down, analyzed and guessed from the beginning, and made several rapid simulation experiments. As a result, I found that I really might have caught the clue of the key problem. I told undergraduate Steve, would you like to stay up with me after dinner? If it succeeds, I'll take you to breakfast the next morning and have breakfast in that expensive restaurant.
As a result, the experiment went surprisingly smoothly. I wanted to stay up until 6 o'clock for breakfast, but I not only finished eating at 3 o'clock, but also found something new. Then the two of us sat in the lab until dawn to have breakfast.
So the experience of this article is also a "transformation" for me. My research from undergraduate to graduate is "mobile". If you can't beat me, I will run. In fact, it is easier to give up and quit when you encounter problems, because you can always find another one. If we enter a hot field at a good time, or happen to find a "gold mine", it will be "gold" at any time, but this lacks an experience of gnawing hard bones. The process of this article made me realize that hard bones can actually be chewed, and they are often chewed. Sometimes it's not that hard to find out. What I lack is a little persistence and confidence.
04
Send articles in PI stage
With more new ideas.
In September, 2007, I found a teaching position in Northwestern University. As a PI, I'm going to start making my own decisions. I'm the last level of the article. The obvious change is that my time is limited, I have to attend classes and do many other things, and my energy is limited; In addition, as an assistant professor, I think I should hold myself to the highest standard, only publish "useful" articles, and strive for every article to have an impact. I can consider publishing my first author's thesis as soon as possible to cultivate students' sense of accomplishment.
Later, our research group gradually formed some philosophy of publishing articles, or the same question: what are we publishing articles for? Sharing our scientific thoughts and discoveries with others and teaching others something is the essence of the article and the simplest purpose. At this stage, we began to have some new thinking:
(Excerpted from an editor's note published by Huang Jiaxing in the Account of Materials Research last year)
For example, we can also point out and correct the wrong cognition in the field by sending articles.
In addition to the common mode of publishing "new things", we can boldly point out and correct some mistakes, which of course requires our articles to be very convincing. For example, more than a decade ago, people found that graphene oxide films have very high rigidity, which is attributed to some magical properties related to two-dimensional materials, attracting many researchers from all over the world to jump into them for research. However, we found that this was actually an unfortunate mistake. The early work was to obtain graphene oxide film samples by using alumina filter membrane. Alumina will be corroded in weak acidic aqueous solution to generate trivalent aluminum ions, thus crosslinking negatively charged graphene oxide. In other words, a series of discoveries about the wonderful properties of graphene oxide are actually based on contaminated samples and cannot reflect the properties of the material itself.
Later, I heard from some teachers that some of their students were almost crying when they saw our article, because they finally understood why the previous works were not easy to repeat. Everyone suddenly realized that the basic assumption of the whole building was incorrect in the direction of graphene oxide. The scientific content of this article is super simple, based on an inorganic chemical reaction that almost all high school students have learned, but it corrects the understanding of a basic characteristic of graphene oxide, becomes one of our representative works, and also derives a series of articles with similar styles and functions.
For another example, we can also make voices and appeals by publishing papers.
This is a recent example. I wrote this when the epidemic was at home. The purpose is to analyze the common misconceptions about the virus, share some analysis of scientific problems in the epidemic from the perspective of materials science, and point out some research problems worth doing.
I was chatting with a very famous influenza virologist. He told me in front of me that the virus particle 100 nanometer was useless to wear a mask. I froze on the spot. The virus exhaled by the patient is definitely not naked particles. They are wrapped in a pile of things coming out of the respiratory tract. Of course, what the mask should block is not particles of 100 nm, but droplets or droplet cores of tens or even hundreds of microns. He froze, thought for a moment and said, you're right.
This matter is a shot in the arm for me. I found that people who used to study viruses actually had such cognitive blind spots. It seems that someone needs to do something about it. So I found my former classmates in the group at that time to study basic knowledge and literature together, and I was lucky enough to know some first-line doctors and biomedical experts in China. Before the order of Northwest University began, I wrote this paper together (calling on researchers in materials science and engineering to actively think about scientific issues related to the epidemic) and published it online on the day when Wuhan was unsealed.
Of course, it's fun to send papers sometimes.
We were invited to evaluate the work of Mr. Yu Shuhong of China University of Science and Technology, who used bacteria to synthesize cellulose nanocomposites. We realized that Mr. Yu did a good job because they humbly put themselves and bacteria on the same time and space scale and synthesized them synchronously with bacteria. This highlight suddenly reminds us of Minions, and an interesting title "Working with Minions" came into being. We like this idea very much, so we spent hundreds of dollars to find someone to draw pictures and hundreds of dollars to get the image authorization of the film company. This should be the first time that the image of a slave appears in all scientific documents. It's really fun, but it also implies scientific significance.
Another advantage of publishing a paper is that you can make friends in different places.
In 20 16, at the invitation of Japan Academic Promotion Association, he gave a JSPS lecture tour in Japan and visited 7 universities and research institutes from south to north. Before that, I basically didn't know my friends in Japanese academic circles. I was nominated as a professor at Kyoto University because I read one of my papers a few years ago and liked it very much. I took the initiative to visit my laboratory, first inspected my "personality", and then warmly invited me to visit Japan. In Nagoya University, I met a famous teacher and asked me directly that his research interests didn't seem to overlap with mine. I don't know what I want to talk about when I meet him. After a few words, he excitedly opened the bookcase, dug out a few pieces of paper and said, is this "yellow" you? It turned out that not long ago, he happened to read several papers published during my doctoral studies more than ten years ago, but I didn't expect them to be delivered directly to my door! Naturally, we chatted happily and became friends. Later, I went to the National Institute of Materials in Tsukuba. After finishing the report, a well-known professor came up to apologize to me and said that he had read one of my papers and refused, but just after listening to my words, he realized that he had not read my article carefully and made a wrong judgment hastily. I was moved by his frankness, and I lamented the fate drawn from this piece of paper. Of course, we have been good friends since then.
Finally, let's go back to our question: what are we publishing papers for?
I don't think every article has to change the world. Maybe we sometimes don't realize the higher significance behind our papers, but the bottom line and initial intention you have to keep is not to treat every article of yourself or others with the mentality of "brushing the bill". Congratulations on a "big article", which is natural, but there is no need to sell yourself short for a "small article". No matter how big or small the article is, as the first author, you must know your own works like the back of your hand, sum up your commitment and explain them at any time.
In addition to universities, there are many places, such as some companies or institutions that directly face key goals and tasks, and also carry out high-level scientific and technological research and development. I think there is an essential difference between scientific research in universities. Scientific research in the sense of "university" is to create public knowledge products for all mankind. The value of our work is often reflected in how many scientists can benefit from it and how to give back to society in the end. After all, scientific research in universities has educational attributes.
Therefore, the fundamental purpose of my students and I publishing papers is "education" in a broad sense-to impart our findings, inventions, experiences and ideas to other researchers and good friends in different places in the future, so that they can benefit from it and promote their work. So we publish for sharing, teaching and education.