Publishing as a graduate student is already hard enough: Steeling yourself for inevitable rejection, bolstering yourself to submit again, and, of course, deciding where to submit in the first place. Unfortunately, deciding which journals to submit to is not getting less complicated; it is getting more complicated. In addition to variables such as journal readership, identity, prestige, and rejection rate, you must now consider whether a journal is open…

Graduate school is all about making the most of the time and resources you have. One of those potential resources is eBooks. eBooks are usually evaluated for undergraduate use, but you have different needs than an undergrad and need different information about a resource before you decide to use it. The following article reviews eBook use with graduate study in mind. Compatibility The biggest question about eBooks is whether…

In academic publishing, there are several avenues available for publishing your work. Each avenue has particular qualities, expectations, and restraints that lend itself to a particular type of work. The four primary categories are theses, academic journals, books, and grey literature. Theses As a graduate student, the type of publication that will be consuming most of your time and energy is the thesis. There are different names for the…

If you’re anything like me, you enjoy a caffeine boost from coffee on a regular basis. And if you’re anything like the average graduate student, then coffee is almost a life source for you. Coffee might be extremely important to you, but you might just be a casual drinker of the beverage. Whatever category you fall under, I wanted to provide some opinions as well as other resources to learn…

People are constantly telling you it isn’t what you know, it’s who you know. However, you have come to realize that it is neither what you know, nor who you know; it’s both. Without connections, you will be hard pressed to find guest speaking opportunities, funding, or collaborators. Without insightful and exemplary work, you will have little to attract connections to you. As a grad student, there are plenty of…

Acquiring textbooks for grad school is a little different than when you were an undergraduate. Undergraduates take a wide array of “core” courses, so many of your required books were not pertinent to your major field of study. As a grad student, however, most likely all of your classes pertain to your field and career, which significantly increases the likelihood that you will want to reference your textbooks in other…

From writing term papers to uploading assignments on university network systems (e.g., Blackboard), computers have become an essential school supply for modern students, particularly for graduate students who spend significant amounts of time conducting research online. Because of the limited space in most grad students’ living quarters and the increasingly mobile trend in technology, most grad students prefer portable laptops to stationary desktops. With the overwhelming number of laptops currently…