Quantifying the obscurity of academic writing

 Occasionally The Economist publishes nice graphs capturing social and economic trends. Here is one.

It is part of a nice article

Academic writing is getting harder to read—the humanities most of all

The downward trend in the humanities and social sciences is dramatic and perhaps not surprising.

I was surprised that in the natural sciences the trend wasn't worse. The Flesch reading ease score goes from about 26 around 1960 to about 18 today. 

However, this metric misses a lot. It only measures the number of words per sentence and the number of syllables per word. Thus, it is not sensitive to the amount of technical jargon or to overall clarity.

A few things I have learnt from professional editors

 Until a few years ago I had never engaged with or received feedback from my writing from a professional editor. This is because the only genre I wrote that involved an editor was papers for scientific journals. But the editors of journals are not really editors in the literary sense. They are more like gatekeepers. Colleagues and collaborators may provide feedback on written work, but again they are amateurs.

In the past few years, I have been writing some popular articles and a popular book and have been part of a writing group. In the process, I have engaged with several professional editors. They were getting paid to make my writing better. I have learnt a lot. Here are a few of the things. On the one hand, some of this may not seem that relevant to scientific articles and grant applications. On the other hand, think of the joy of reading a beautiful scientific article, such as those by Roald Hoffmann. Think of how many papers you try to read and you cannot figure out what they are actually about. Also, I think this is particularly relevant to writing review articles, somewhat of a lost art.

Can it be shorter? Most of the writing I have worked with editors on had a strict word limit. I struggled to stay within it. However, the editors forced/helped me in two ways. First, the fixed word limit helped me structure the work and be realistic about the volume of content. For example, for my Very Short Introduction, I broke down the 35,000-word limit to ten chapters, each of about 3500 words. This made the writing quite manageable. Second, editors helped by cutting out content that was not essential, even when I loved it. Third, editors rewrote some of my sentences making them both shorter and clearer. Seeing their improvements I became aware of some of my bad habits.

Find your voice and tell a story. We are all unique and each piece of writing is unique and is making a unique point. Don't try and be someone else. A grant application needs to make the case that your proposed project is unique and that you are uniquely qualified to do it. Your writing will be more engaging and compelling if it expresses your unique perspective and there is a natural narrative.

A few of these suggestions overlap with some of Stephen King's writing tips. 

Quotes to entice and entertain the reader

Some authors make use of epigraphs in their books. An epigraph is a short quotation at the beginning of a chapter that aims to set the stage for what follows. My general observation is that many of the epigraphs are rather obscure and the connection to the content of the chapter is not clear. Perhaps, I am just too ignorant about classical literature, or perhaps some authors are just trying to be too clever. But, sometimes I think they are creative, enticing, and even humorous.

I tried having a go at using epigraphs for Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction. Unfortunately, after doing this I discovered that epigraphs are no longer allowed in the VSI series.

Anyway, I had fun doing it and so here I present the epigraphs I came up with.

1 What is condensed matter physics?

… thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” … [they] called the bread manna. [Manna sounds like the Hebrew for What is it?]  It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.

Exodus 16 

2 A multitude of states of matter

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” 

Hamlet

3 Symmetry matters

The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree...

Aristotle, Metaphysics

4 The order of things

John Milton, Paradise Lost

5 Adventures in Flatland

Points, Lines, Squares, Cubes, Extra-Cubes — we are all liable to the same errors, all alike the Slaves of our respective Dimensional prejudices

Edwin Abbott, Flatland

6 The critical point

Aristotle answers: "Because only particulars can be perceived, and science is of  universals." ...out of numerous particulars the universal becomes evident.

George Henry Lewes 

7 Quantum matter

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." 

Richard Feynman

8 Topology matters

A mathematician who does not know the difference between a doughnut and a coffee mug is a topologist.

9 Emergence

F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The rich are different from you and me.” 

Ernest Hemingway: “Yes, they have more money.” 

10 The endless frontier

"New frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier.

John F. Kennedy

What do you think about epigraphs? 

Can you give a book in which you thought they were particularly good?

What do you think of those above?

I welcome alternative suggestions.

Is this a good book preface?

 I have never written a book before. Hence, I have never written a preface. For what it is worth, according an article on Masterclass.com, Writing 101: How to Write a Preface for a Book, 

In one or two pages, an author’s preface is meant to:

• Explain why the author chose to write about this topic
• Reveal their motivation and inspiration for writing the book
• Describe the process of researching the topic of the book
• Outline the process of writing the book, including any challenges and how long it took.

Based on this I wrote the following draft of a Preface to Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction. 

Preface

I love learning new things. I find joy in understanding, particularly if it is profound and important.  I love trying to communicate that understanding, particularly in ways that may appeal and inspire. I find beauty in ideas, images, and stories. I am a “big picture” person. I love seeing connections, whether deep or anecdotal, between different pieces of knowledge. Hence, it is not surprising that I was excited when I discovered the Very Short Introductions series. My eclectic interests are reflected in some of the VSI titles on my bookshelf including Marx, Depression, Complexity, Adam Smith, Water, Corruption, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and Epidemology.

Condensed matter physics is one of the largest and most vibrant sub-fields of physics. It is a rich source of ideas, concepts, and techniques that have cross-fertilised with not just other sub-fields of physics, such as elementary particles, but also other scientific disciplines (chemistry, biology, computer science, sociology, economics) and engineering (electrical, materials, chemical). In the past thirty years, the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded thirteen times for work on condensed matter. In the past twenty years, eight condensed matter physicists have received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 

The last thirty-five years I have worked in condensed matter physics: learning, teaching, and researching. I have come to love the discipline and to appreciate its’ importance, intellectual richness, beauty, and coherence. Given there are now more than 500 titles in the VSI series I was surprised and disappointed that there was no title on condensed matter. There were titles on subjects such as Magnetism, Superconductivity, Crystallography, and now Soft Matter, that are related to condensed matter, but they miss the unity of the whole discipline. Hence, I am glad to have the opportunity to contribute to the series.

Condensed matter physics is all about emergence; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. A system composed of many interacting parts (atoms) has properties (a state of matter) that are qualitatively different from the properties of the individual parts. This commonality is why condensed matter physics has had such a fruitful cross-fertilisation with other sciences. It is arguably the field with the greatest success at understanding emergent phenomena in complex systems, particularly at the quantitative level. This is not because condensed matter physicists are smarter than sociologists, economists, or neuroscientists. It is because the materials we study are much “simpler” than societies, economies, and brains. 

Even after I finished a undergraduate degree in physics in Australia in 1982, I would not have been able to answer the question, “what is condensed matter physics?” There was no such course at my university. The only related one was in “solid state physics” and I did not take that course because the lecturer was boring and incompetent. I then went to Princeton University in the USA to pursue a Ph.D. in physics and ended up working in theoretical condensed matter physics. But, even then I don’t think I was clear what the field is really about. In hindsight, I think this failing arose due to my own lack of attention to broader intellectual issues.

In the past two decades several circumstances have shaped the emergence of the shape and content of this book. One of the best ways to learn and understand a subject is to try and teach it, particularly to novices. In 2000, I started working at the University of Queensland and I was assigned to teach a course for second year science undergraduates entitled, “Thermodynamics and Condensed Matter Physics.” As is too often the case in universities the curriculum for this course did not arise from of a grand and coherent educational vision but rather from historical circumstances involving politics and personnel. Nevertheless, serendipity is a powerful means of discovery. Order can emerge from chaos, and beauty can rise from ashes. In most undergraduate programs, condensed matter physics is only taught in the third or fourth year, if at all, and usually as an elective for physics majors. This is because courses build on advanced subjects such as quantum theory and statistical mechanics, and the associated mathematical machinery. However, many of the most important ideas in condensed matter can be understood without reference to these advanced subjects. This is the approach I take here, with some of the material drawing from the experience of teaching that course. 

In 2009, I started writing a blog, Condensed Concepts: Ruminations on Emergent Phenomena in Condensed Phases of Matter. A great beauty of blogging is that you can write about whatever you like and in whatever format you choose. I have now written more than two thousand posts on diverse topics, including technical commentary on specific scientific papers, presentations to school students, history, university politics, job advice, philosophy of science, and the relation of condensed matter to other sciences, from biology to economics. Blogging improved my ability to write for a broad audience and clarified my thinking about condensed matter physics in a broad intellectual context. Some of the material presented in this book is loosely based on my blog posts.

Over the past decade I have had significant and fruitful intellectual interactions with colleagues in a range of disciplines including law, economics, sociology, history, engineering, anthropology and biology. This has been facilitated and stimulated by being part of several informal networks (local, national, and international) of academics, with a particular interest in the relationship between our academic disciplines, Christian theology, and human flourishing. This has clarified my understanding of my own discipline and how to discuss it with those outside.

Condensed matter physics as a research field is not just defined by the objects that it studies (states of matter in materials), but rather by a particular approach to the study of these objects. The aim is to address fundamental questions and to find unifying concepts that can be used to describe and understand a wide range of phenomena in materials that are chemically and structurally diverse. My aim has not been to write a popular summary of the main topics covered in a textbook. Rather it is an essay that I hope brings joy and appreciation and a desire to learn more. I have chosen to emphasise concepts rather than trying to explain technical details. 

To make the book more interesting and engaging in most of the chapters I have consciously included several elements. A key concept, some connection to everyday experience, an interesting anecdote, a technological application, and a connection to another discipline. There are no mathematical equations and many figures.

This VSI is shaped by an important intellectual legacy that should be acknowledged and only became apparent to me when much of it was written. In his wonderful recent biography, Mind over Matter: Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many, Andrew Zangwill states “more than any other twentieth-century physicist, he [Anderson] transformed the patchwork of ideas and techniques formerly called solid-state physics into the deep, subtle, and intellectually coherent discipline known today as condensed matter physics.” I hope that what I have written does honour this rich legacy of Phil Anderson (1923-2020).

I have really enjoyed writing this book. I hope I can convince you that condensed matter physics is fascinating, significant, exciting, beautiful, and profound.  

What do you think? Is this a good Preface? Would this motivate your aunt or your colleague in law to start reading the book?

Questions to ask about possible writing projects

When considering a writing project it is good to think about the nature and feasibility of the project. Here my focus is not on projects a typical scientist has to do such as writing a thesis or writing research papers. Rather I'm concerned with optional projects such as writing a review article, a popular book, a popular article, or a book chapter. I find the following questions helpful. The answers may be inter-related. Hence, answers to the earlier ones may need to be revised after answering the later ones.

What is my main message?

The goal is not to write a book or an article. The goal is to communicate something, something that is important and interesting.

Who is my audience?

This will really shape how you write the piece and where you try to publish it.

Am I the best person to write this piece?
In different words, who is my competition?

What is my real goal? 

To have fun? To enjoy the process? To learn something new? To become rich and famous?
To fulfill the tenure requirement of my university for "public engagement"? To get lots of citations? [Review articles are a good way to do this.] To show the general public why condensed matter physics is such a rich, exciting, and important field? To showcase my latest research results?

Clarifying your goal is necessary to answer the next question.

What is the likelihood I will achieve my goal?

Some of the goals above are much easier to achieve than others.

Besides me, who thinks that this project is a worthwhile endeavour?

Sometimes we are not very objective or realistic in our plans and aspirations. We may even delude ourselves about the importance of the proposed message, our ability to communicate it, and the likelihood of achieving our goal. Hence, an objective evaluation by more experienced colleagues and editors can save us time, pain, and disappointment.

What is the genre? What is the medium?

Is it a blog post, a piece in The Conversation, an article in Scientific American, a review article in a particular journal, or a textbook?
By the medium, I mean who will be my publisher (broadly defined)? Anyone can write a blog post. But if you want to publish a textbook you need a good publisher and contract.  For example, I am writing Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction;  it is part of a series with a well-defined genre. The medium comes with some editorial support, marketing, and distribution.

What are model examples that I can use for inspiration and for comparison?

For example, with A Very Short Introduction, I have read and looked over many other in titles in the series, on a wide range of topics: Marx, Literary Theory, Complexity, Physical Chemistry, Depression, Corruption, Elementary Particles. That's helped me find ones I like and ones I don't like. Thinking through why helps me see how I want to write mine. By the way, the best one that I have read so far is Social and Cultural Anthropology.

Do I have the time, energy, and resources to see this project to completion?

It will take longer than you think. It will be harder than you think. The larger and the more ambitious the project, the greater this will be. Co-authors may lighten the workload and also enhance the project. But, they may also complicate things. Are their potential commenters on drafts or editors?

Can I do this project in stages? Can I start small and then build up to a larger project?

For example, can I go from a series of blog posts to an article and then to a popular book? This gradual approach can make things a lot more feasible. Also, one can get useful feedback along the way, both about content and level of interest. 

All these questions reflect what is happening this week for me. I am on a writer's retreat with my friends in the "holy" scribblers eclectic writing group. Each evening we discuss projects that we're working on and give another feedback. I am mostly working on my Very Short Introduction, and other members of the group represent some of my target audience. The picture above is the view from my writing desk.=

Do you have any other suggested questions? 

Feel free to share your own experiences.

The discipline of scientific writing

Writing a paper is hard work. Writing a paper that is clear, engaging, and accurate is even harder. After you have written a draft or are reading a draft of a colleague or co-author I think the following discipline is important and worthwhile.

Go through every sentence and ask, is this true? Is it precise and accurate?

Let me illustrate with a concrete example. Consider the following different claims.

The experiments of Jones et al. proved that GaAs quantum wires are Luttinger liquids.

Jones et al. interpreted their experimental results on GaAs quantum wires in terms of the framework of Luttinger liquid theory.

Jones et al. fit their experimental data for the temperature dependence of the resistivity of a GaAs quantum wire to a power law, such as predicted by Luttinger liquid theory.

Jones et al. showed that their experimental data was inconsistent with Fermi liquid theory, but consistent with Luttinger theory.

Hopefully, the differences between these claims are clear.

This discipline becomes even more important when reporting one's own research. For example, just replace ``Jones et al." in the sentences above with "We".

Unfortunately, the rush to publish in luxury journals has increased the tendency of authors to not exercise the appropriate restraint and discipline required by scientific integrity.

Don't be written off!

One of the most basic skills needed to succeed, or even survive, in professional life is to be able to write well. This is true whether you work in science, industry, business, or an NGO.
Of course, there are exceptions where an individual is incredibly gifted at the technical side of a job and can't even write a coherent paragraph. But, sorry, that individual is probably not you! Furthermore, even they need a collaborator or manager who is good at writing.

Most young scientists struggle to write a paper or a grant application, particularly when English is not their first language.

Here are a few suggestions on how to improve your writing skills over time.

First, accept that writing is hard work. Even John Grisham says that!

Accept that developing your writing skills is a project of a lifetime. This means starting early.

If you are an undergrad, take some humanities courses that require writing essays. Take writing lab reports seriously.
If you have to write a thesis, start writing it now.
Take a writing course. Take another.

Practise.
Write papers yourself. If you are the first author you really should write the first draft, including the introduction yourself. Don't let your boss (or someone more experienced) do it or expect them to. Your draft may be poor and get heavily edited or even discarded completely. But you will learn from the process and with time confidence and competence will follow.
Write a blog, even if no one reads it.

Learn by osmosis.
Read scientific authors known for the clarity and beauty of their writing. eg. David Mermin and Roald Hoffmann.
Read a lot and read broadly publications (newspapers and magazines) that are known for their excellent writing: The New York Times, The Economist, The New Yorker,...
Read famous novels and non-fiction books.

Read slowly and thoughtfully. Don't just skim everything.
I also suspect you may be better off reading hard copies.
Try to notice whether a piece of writing: makes sense, is hard to understand, is enjoyable to read?

Any other suggestions?

Academic publishing in Majority World

I was asked for an update on this. The challenges are formidable, but not insurmountable.
Here are slides from a talk on the subject.
As always, it is important not to reinvent the wheel.
There are already some excellent resources and organisations. 

A relevant organisation is AuthorAID which is related to inasp, and has online courses on writing. People I know who have taken these courses, or acted as mentors, speak highly of them.

Authors should also make use of software to correct English such as Grammarly.

Publishing Scientific Papers in the Developing World is a helpful book, stemming from a 2010 conference.
Erik Thulstrup has a nice chapter "How should a Young Researcher Write and Publish a Good Research Paper?"

Different approaches to popular science writing

Since I am working on a Very Short Introduction (VSI) to condensed matter physics I am looking at a lot of writing about science for popular audiences. I have noticed several distinct approaches that different authors take. They all have strengths and weaknesses.

Historical
The story of discoveries and the associated scientists is told. A beautiful example is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
When done well this approach has many positives. Stories can be fun and easy to read, particularly when they involve quirky personalities, serendipity, and fascinating anecdotes. Furthermore, this shows how hard and messy real science is, and that science is a verb, not just a noun. On the other hand, it can be a bit challenging for readers as they have to understand not just the successes but also why certain theories, experiments, and interpretations were wrong along the way.  Many writers also seem eager to burden readers will all sorts of historical background details about scientists, their families, and their local context. Sometimes these details are interesting. Other times they seem just boring fluff. Generally, most agree that one does not learn and understand a scientific subject best by learning its history. So why take this approach in popular writing?

Literary pleasure
People read novels and watch movies for pleasure. The goal is not necessarily to learn something (or a lot). I would put Brian Cox's writing and documentaries in this category. That is not a criticism. Rather than provide a lot of information I think the goal is more to induce awe, wonder, curiosity, and enjoyment.

Condensed textbook
Take an introductory text and cover all the same topics in the same order. Just cut out technical details and jargon. Lots of analogies are used to explain concepts. The obvious strength is the reader gets a good overview of the subject. The weakness is that this can be boring, involve defining a lot of terminology, and is actually too hard for the reader. One scary consequence is that some readers actually think they now actually understand the subject.

Hype
This comes in several forms. One is that the theory or topic of interest (whether complexity, quantum information, self-organised criticality, sociobiology, ....) is THE answer. It explains everything. The second form of hype is technological: this science is going to lead a new technology that will change the world. Generally, this fits the genre of ``science as salvation''.

Conceptual
An example is Laughlin's A Different Universe. A challenge is that this requires readers to like learning new concepts and have an ability to think abstractly.

Except for hype, I think all of these approaches have their merits. Ideally, one would like to incorporate elements of all of them.

What do you think? Are there other approaches?

Introducing phase transitions to a layperson

I have written a first draft of a chapter introducing phase diagrams and phase transitions to a layperson. I welcome any comments and suggestions. Feel free to try it out on your aunt or uncle!

What is condensed matter physics?

How would you answer this question if you were asked by a non-expert who likes to learn and understand new things?
For example, a smart high school student, your uncle who reads a lot of popular science, an academic colleague in sociology, an economics graduate, ...
A draft of my answer is here.
I welcome suggestions for improvements.
Feel free to try it out on people you know who might be interested.

Ten key ideas about condensed matter physics?

I am slowly working towards writing a Condensed Matter Physics: Very Short Introduction.
But first I am trying to clarify my audience and goals. Some earlier posts have helped me clarify this.

My intended audience is probably not you! Rather it is a person who wants to get the flavour of what CMP is actually about.  Examples might include a smart final year high school who wants to study science at university, or a first-year chemistry undergraduate, or an economics graduate, or a sociology professor, ...

My goal is to show that CMP is intellectually exciting, intellectually challenging, and intellectually important.

The VSI format is 8-10 chapters and 30-35 thousand words. It is meant to be written in the style of an engaging essay not a technical paper.

My plan is to basically have one clear and specific idea that I want to communicate in each chapter. I am thinking that in order to increase interest and comprehension that for each chapter I will aim to include.

An easily understandable analogy to illustrate the main idea.
A few relevant and illuminating figures.
An interesting historical anecdote.
An example of a technological application.
An example of cross-fertilisation to another field of science.

So here is the current version of my chapter headings and the main idea(s) I want each chapter to communicate.

1.     What is condensed matter physics?

CMP is concerned with studying and understanding material systems composed of large numbers of atoms. How do the properties of the system emerge from the properties of the constituent atoms and the interactions between them? It is a multi-faceted approach to studying materials and involves a unifying set of concepts. Quite abstract ideas and concepts can be quite powerful for understanding quite practical systems.

2.     A plethora of states of matter

Even for the simplest materials, there is a multitude of different phases, i.e. qualitatively different states of matter. Transitions between distinct phases are defined by discontinuities in properties. Phase diagrams encode what phase is stable under specific external conditions such as temperature, pressure, and magnetic field.

3.     Symmetry matters

Distinct phases are associated with distinct ordering of the system. A unifying concept to distinguish and classify different phases and their associated ordering is how they differ in the type of symmetry that they have. What different classes of symmetry are mathematically possible significantly constrains what is physically possible.

4.     The order of things

The type and quantity of order and the broken symmetry in a distinct state of matter can be described by a small set of numbers represented by the “order parameter’’.

5.     Adventures in flatland

Confining a material to one or two dimensions can lead to new states of matter. Furthermore, imagining a world of variable dimension can actually lead to a better understanding of materials in our three-dimensional world.

6.     The critical point: details do not matter

Under a very special set of external conditions, a phase transition is not associated with discontinuous properties. These conditions are represented by the critical point in the phase diagram.  Very different material systems can have the same properties close to the critical point. Understanding this universality requires looking at the system at many different length scales.

7.     Quantum matter

The weirdness of quantum theory is most commonly manifest at the level of single atoms and molecules. Surprisingly, quantum effects can also be seen “with the naked eye” in states of matter such as superconductors and superfluids.

8.     Topology matters

Abstract ideas about shapes help us understand spatially non-uniform broken symmetry states. They also lead to new states of quantum matter, that do not involve broken symmetry.

9.     Emergence matters

Condensed matter physics is all about emergence: the sum is greater than the parts. From a system composed of many interacting components new (often unanticipated) properties, concepts, and organising principles emerge. Reality is stratified.

10.  Future challenges

Almost all new states of matter are discovered by experiment and often by accident rather than being predicted theoretical. An open question and challenge is to what extent one can predict new states or to design materials with specific properties. There are significant open challenges in all facets of CMP: synthesis, characterisation, measurement, computation, and theory. Finally, given the great success of CMP at understanding emergence in complex systems a challenge is to adapt the approach and concepts to other complex systems, ranging from biology to sociology.

I welcome feedback.
But keep in mind the audience.
I do not want to add material, but perhaps even cut material (e.g. chapter 8).

What do you wish non-CMP people understood about CMP?

Publishing for Majority World academics

Tomorrow I am giving a talk about academic publishing for a group of faculty and Ph.D students from African universities. The challenges they face are formidable.
Here are my slides.
As always, it is important not to reinvent the wheel.
There are already some excellent resources and organisations. 
A particularly relevant organisation is AuthorAID which is related to inasp, and has an online course starting right now.

Publishing Scientific Papers in the Developing World is a helpful book, stemming from a 2010 conference.
Erik Thulstrup has a nice chapter "How should a Young Researcher Write and Publish a Good Research Paper?"

Recommendations needed on software to correct English grammar

A necessary ingredient to surviving and possibly prospering in science is the ability to write clearly in English. Yet many students are not native English speakers and some have had poor education and training. For some, it is even difficult to write basic sentences without grammar and spelling mistakes.

This is a serious issue for both students and advisors.
Unfortunately, what happens too often is that advisors spend too much time correcting the English in drafts of papers and thesis chapters rather than focusing on the scientific content.
Even, worse lazy or over-committed advisors don't do the corrections and referees, examiners, or editors are left with the problem.

Advisors, co-authors, and examiners can get quite irritated in the process.
Students need to realise they are really hurting themselves in not addressing this issue.

Is there a solution?
I try to encourage students and postdocs to pair up and read each other's drafts. However, this is not really quid pro quo (i.e. a fair transaction) if one is a much stronger English writer than another.

A colleague recently told me about a solution he found worked very well. His institution bought the Grammarly software for a graduate student, who was excellent in science but poor in English.  Before giving any document to the advisor the student had to run it through the software. This not only finds spelling and grammatical errors but suggests alternatives and gives the reasons for the error.
Thus, it not only corrects the errors but trains the students. It does work. The student can now write better even without the software.

There is a free version of the software that has limited capability. The premium version costs US$140 per year. You can buy just 3 months for US$60.

I downloaded the free version to test it. It found a few minor mistakes in this blog post! I also tested it on a student essay and a weekly report. It found some errors, missed a few, and pointed out that there were several errors that could be corrected with the premium version (very clever marketing!).

Does anyone else have experience with this software, either themselves or getting their students or postdocs to use it?

Unless they are at a poor institution in the Majority world I think faculty need to bite tell students they need to buy the software.
If students are serious about getting a Ph.D with less stress and keeping their advisor on good terms they should buy it.
In the grander scheme of things this is a small amount of money.

I welcome recomnendations on alternatives.

On the lighter side do a Google image search on "funny English signs"

Faculty job candidates need to know and articulate the big picture

Are there any necessary or sufficient conditions for getting a faculty position?
Previously, I suggested that a key element is actually dumb luck: being in the right place at the right time. But that is not my focus here.

Twenty years ago when I was struggling to find a faculty job the mythology was that you had to have at least two PRLs and get an invited talk at an APS March Meeting. And doing a postdoc at certain places (e.g. ITP Santa Barbara) would help...

Now the mythology seems to be that you need to have Nature and Science papers....

But, this in actually not the case.
This is not a sufficient condition.
Search committees want to hire someone who can lead an independent research program and can move into new areas.

Several department chairs have said things to me along the lines of "It is amazing how we interview some candidates who have impressive publication lists involving papers in luxury journals but when we actually talk to them we quickly lose interest. We find they lack any sort of big picture. Some cannot even articulate why their own papers are scientifically important, let alone future directions. It seems they have been a student or postdoc in some big group and they have developed some narrow (but important) technical expertise (e.g. device fabrication, running computational chemistry codes, using an STM, ...) that is indispensable to the group."

I find this quite sad. It is sad for the individuals. All the hard work in the hope of getting a faculty position will have gone to waste. I also find it sad when faculty don't prioritise training group members.

How can you stop this being you?

Read papers, including outside your actual research project.
Talk to people in different research groups about what they and you are doing.
Go to seminars, even when you are busy.
But, particularly write papers yourself. 
If you are the first author you really should write the first draft, including the introduction yourself. Don't let your boss (or someone more experienced) do it or expect them to.
Your draft may be poor and get heavily edited or even discarded completely. But you will learn from the process and with time confidence and competence will follow.

Start the mechanics of producing your thesis now (not in the frantic last days!)

Producing a thesis (Ph.D, Masters, or undergraduate honours) is a monumental task that can create significant stress. Here I am just going to focus on the mechanics of producing the final document, not the greater challenge of producing the intellectual content.

In most cases there is a deadline, whether imposed by the program, funding running out, or (hopefully) a fixed date to start a job. For many students there is a big rush at the end featuring very long hours, missing "life", neglecting family and sometimes health, exhaustion, anxiety, ...

These problems are compounded if one starts "writing" and producing the thesis document at the very end, with the final deadline looming. Furthermore, this can be much slower and more frustrating if you have to do some of the mechanics (e.g. ordering and numbering references) by hand or at least learn to use software to do it automatically. Compared to 30 years ago, the mechanics is now so much easier because of software that automates many of the tedious tasks such as ordering and numbering.

Let me encourage you to start now on the mechanics.
First, you need to decide on and learn relevant software and start using it every step of the way. Talk to other students (just finished or finishing) and postdocs to find out what they used, and the relative merits.

Here are some concrete issues to consider.

Keeping track of references.
From day one you will start downloading (and hopefully reading) papers. By the end you will (hopefully) have hundreds of references. How are you going to sort them and organise them? If when you start writing you just have hundreds of PDFs in a folder on your computer, life is going to be difficult if you have to start looking at them one by one to find some particular reference you need.
I use the wonderful program Papers. Others like Endnote. The main thing is to find something that works for you, including interfacing smoothly with your word processor program.

Ordering and formatting of references.
For LaTeX, BibTeX does this nicely, provided you learn how to get it to produce the desired format.

Generating a bibliography.
Papers can easily produce a .bib file for BibTex.

Producing graphs and schematics and incorporating figures in the document.
On a previous post, commenters on a post discussed useful freeware for plotting data.

Spell and grammar check.
This is particularly important for students whose English is weak or are dyslexic. Advisors and examiners really get irritated by too many typos. I have never found a decent spell checker for LaTex. Any recommendations?

Thesis template.
This should include all the relevant sections from cover page to lists of figures to acknowledgements. It should automatically order and number everything: pages, chapters, figures, tables, equations, references, ....

Keep it simple.
Avoid personalised versions of templates and software (e.g. LaTeX macros), either from you or someone else. My limited experience is that these are often not as portable as hoped/claimed and lead to small bugs that can waste precious time trying to fix.

Backup everything regularly.
This is so easy but it is amazing and disappointing how I still hear of students losing work. Dropbox, cheap portable Terabyte drives, and Time Machine on Mac's make this inexcusable.
Don't just backup the thesis document, but all your data, codes, references, ....
Hard drives do crash and laptops do get lost or stolen...

Practise writing now.
Writing is hard work. Don't wait until the final stages of the thesis to start to learn how to write. It is too late.

Getting feedback from your advisor now.
Again during the final stages is not to learn how she likes things formatted or how to write figure captions.

What software would you recommend or avoid?

An important but basic skill: bringing a paper to publication

In trying to turn research into an actual journal publication there are several stages at which the process can stall or be significantly delayed (sometimes by months or years).

* Combining, selecting, and condensing some specific research results into a publon with a well defined message.

* Writing a rough first draft.

* Polishing the draft into an acceptable form for submission to a journal.

* Revising and resubmitting the paper, possibly to a different journal, if rejected from one.

Moving beyond these obstacles can be a significant struggle even for senior scientists. Furthermore,  junior collaborators can be frustrated and anxious as they wait for action. Their survival and careers depend on getting papers published in a timely manner. I even know of cases of students who did not get a Ph.D because a manuscript or draft thesis just sat on the desk of their advisor.
I am also struck by the fact that I know senior people who have impressive publication records but if you talk to their collaborators, both senior and junior, you will hear how this basic skill has not been learnt or mastered.

Aside: I myself am far from perfect. I have not been as quick as I could/should be with some of my collaborations. I still have two papers on the arXiv that have never been published and currently have at least three manuscripts stalled on my laptop. I do take a little consolation/excuse from the fact that these are single author papers and so I am the only one suffering.

I don't have simple solutions but do offer several suggestions. The first is by far the most important.

You must learn to do this yourself. Don't wait for others to do it for you. Take charge. Be responsible.

Don't be shy about bugging your collaborators to move things along.
I know this is can be difficult for junior people [graduate students and postdocs] from countries and cultures that are overly deferential to seniority and authority figures. Don't just email.
Knocking on doors and talking in person helps. .... even, if that means getting on a plane to the other side of the world. I am struck how some of my collaborations are moved forward just because my co-authors know that I am about to visit.

Consider your own possible underlying psychological issues such as perfectionism, procrastination, lack of confidence, laziness, or fear of offending authority.

I welcome other suggestions on how to develop this important but basic skill.

Talk at grant writing workshop

Here are the slides for my talk at todays workshop on grant writing for the School of Mathematics and Physics at UQ. A rough outline of the talk, with links to relevant earlier posts, is in an earlier post which also attracted some helpful comments.

I welcome further comments and discussion.

Grant writing tips

I have been asked to speak at a grant writing workshop for the School of Mathematics and Physics at UQ.
Here are a few preliminary thoughts.

Consider not applying.
Seriously. Consider the opportunity cost. An application requires a lot of time and energy. The chances of success are slim. Would you be better off spending the time writing a paper and waiting to apply next year? Or, would it be best to write one rather than two applications? You do have a choice.

Don't listen to me.
It is just one opinion. Some of my colleagues will give you the opposite advice. I have never been on a grant selection committee. My last 3 grant applications failed. Postmortems of failed applications are just speculation. What does and does not get funded remains a mystery to me.

Take comfort from the "randomness" of the system.
You have a chance. Don't stress the details. Recycle old unsuccessful applications. Don't take it personally when you fail.

Who is your actual audience? Write with only them in mind.
For the Australian Research Council it is probably not your international colleagues but rather the members of the College of Experts. It needs to be written in terms they can understand and be impressed by.

Why should they give YOU a grant?
I find many people sweat about the details of the research project or think if they have brilliant cutting edge project they will get funded. I doubt it. Track record, and particularly track record relevant to the proposed project is crucial.

Not all pages are equal.
Unfortunately, the application will be 60-100 pages. Don't kid yourself that reviewers will carefully read and digest every page. Some are much more important than others. You should focus on those.

The first page of the project description is the most important. Polish it.
I sometimes read this and I have no idea what the person is planning to do. I quickly lose interest.

"Contributions to the field" and "Research accomplishments" means scientific knowledge generation not career advancement or hyperactivity.

Choose your co-investigators carefully.
They may lift you up or weigh you down. I am usually skeptical of people who have "big name" co-investigators they have never actually published with before. The more investigators the larger the application, and the more material available for criticism. Junior investigators need to realise that the senior people will usually get all the credit for the grant, even if they contributed little to the application. This is the Matthew effect.

Trim the budget.
The larger the budget the greater the scrutiny. It is better to get a small grant than no grant at all. Ridiculously large requests will strain your credibility.

Moderate the hype, both about yourself and technological applications.
There are reviewers like me who will not take you seriously and be more critical of the application.

Be discerning about what publication metrics (citations, journal impact factors) to include.
Impact factors have no impact on me. I don't see the point or value of short term citations.

Writing IS hard work, even for the experienced.
See Tips in the writing struggle.
Get started early. Get feedback.
Write. Edit. Polish. Rewrite. Polish. Polish.

My criteria for research quality.

Responding to feedback from administrators in the university Research Office.
Put in the application early. They can give very helpful feedback about compliance issues, formatting, page limits. Take with "a grain of salt" advice/exhortations about selling you and the science.

I welcome comments and suggestions.
What advice and suggestions have you received that were helpful or not helpful?

Tips in the writing struggle

How does one stay sane as one struggles to produce talks, lectures, grant applications, and papers?
Is there some efficient methodology?

I am in the midst of a period of several weeks where I have to give about a dozen talks/lectures. I also have several papers being finished. Hence, this issue is on my mind. Here are a few thoughts that hopefully are helpful to others. I realise that different people have different styles.

I think there are several major obstacles to producing material in a timely manner with a minimum of stress: perfectionism, procrastination, loose ends, and distractions. These are somewhat related to one another.

First, get started a quickly and early as possible. Just get something down on paper. A rough outline is a good place to start. Don't censor your thoughts or agonise about details. Just do it!

Then start adding material, editing, and polishing.
But, spend a limited amount of time. This will mean having the self control to not include that figure, reference, or extra result, alternative derivation, that you would really like to but is going to require some time to track down. This is were perfectionists go astray....
I also find I can easily get distracted by new ideas or new information that is fascinating to me personally but marginally relevant to the task at hand.

Once you have the bare minimum of material, try and produce a version of the document [or power point slides] that is good enough for public consumption/presentation. Imagine that you have to give the talk today not tomorrow or submit the grant 2 weeks early. Then you can sleep on it, give it to colleagues for feedback, or perhaps allow for the reality that you need to move onto other responsibilities or allow for some unforeseen problem like getting sick or dealing with a family or administrative crisis.
I find meeting these artificial deadlines early makes more me much more relaxed and objective. Otherwise one is furiously working up until the last minute.

Then as time allows this final draft can be added to and polished.

I hope this is helpful. It is a struggle.