A supervisor can make or break someone’s PhD experience. Therefore, finding the right supervisor is perhaps one of the most important factors for ensuring that you have a good, healthy, enjoyable and successful PhD experience.

As a PhD student, you are under a lot of pressure. You’ve got a lot to do, but you don’t always have the support you need. It’s no surprise that anxiety and depression are common among PhD students. While there’s no magic bullet, there are things you can do to help look after your mental health.

The image of a PhD student can be someone working in a narrow field, gaining knowledge and learning techniques with limited application. But this isn’t true. As specific as your research questions may be, you are inevitably developing skills which are valued in the workplace, in or out of academia. And your time at university offers opportunities to gain additional experience and skills.

Career opportunities in academia are highly sought after, positions are limited and competition is tough. Unless you are very determined to remain within academia, it is worth considering other career options in non-academic sectors and industries. This article suggests key points to bear in mind as you think about pursuing alternative career paths.

There’s a wealth of software out there, and yet many of us only ever use the same few programmes. Even within that limited range of software, are you getting the most out of it? Most popular software has a range of features which most users never look at and, while some of it won’t be of any use to you right now, there are almost certainly some features that could save you time, or open up new possibilities.

Scopus is an abstract and citation database of research and covers health, life, physical and social sciences. The Scopus database contains more than 75 million records, 24,600 titles and 5,000 publishers. Scopus includes a number of different tools that allow researchers to search for documents, track citations over time and analyse search results.

As scholarship has moved online and Open Access has gathered momentum, there is growing consensus that alternative metrics are needed. A variety of research metrics are currently used, and the number of different metrics is growing every day.

PubMed is one of the most frequently used search engines among researchers in biomedical fields and is considered one of the most powerful. As with any search engine, spend some time exploring all of the features of PubMed before beginning your search. Spending time exploring the search engine will result in more productive and efficient searches.

Blog posts are short, easy reads usually intended for non-specialist audiences. Because of their short format, it can be a challenge to distil the main essence of a large topic into only a few hundred words, so here are some tips on how to break down this task and what to look out for.

Commercialisation of innovative ideas and technologies is an often-necessary step to having real impact, but can be a daunting prospect, especially as an academic researcher. Here, we discuss how to present research to industry, whether it’s to establish collaborative partnerships or seek investment.

Writing about complex science can be challenging, especially when you’re used to speaking to other professionals in your field every day, where a common understanding of the language you use is taken for granted. Here, we discuss some helpful tips around what to do, and what not to do.

It might feel like a waste to use a poster for only one conference and you might find yourself starting to think of ways to reuse it for other academic events. But how wise or effective is it to recycle your research posters? This article offers some important factors to consider as you decide where to present your poster.

At the beginning of any research project, you will probably be asked to submit a research proposal, wherein you will need to clearly outline what you intend to research and why this research is significant, valuable and relevant. What this means is that you need to clearly demonstrate why this research is needed, what gaps in existing research it seeks to fill, how it intends to fill these gaps or how it will address outstanding problems. This article discusses how to identify gaps in research and determine an original research topic.

Multiple submissions of the same paper to several conferences may seem like a good idea to boost your academic profile. However, this is generally regarded as bad practice and not altogether ethical. This article outlines key points to consider if you are thinking of submitting the same paper to multiple places. 

You will probably already know that you should always be very careful about citing and referencing other work in your research. But what about using, citing and referencing your own work? In this article, we break down everything you need to know about citing and referencing your previous research.

This module provides an overview of the process and significance of peer review.

Traditionally, research was commonly shared via high-profile journals, conferences and academic networks. Today, however, the proliferation of new technologies and digital channels now makes it possible for researchers to reach much bigger audiences all around the world. This article shares tips for how to effectively use social media to share your research. 

If you would like to gain even greater exposure for your research and aspire to share your work as widely as possible with the public, you will want to consider working directly with mainstream media channels. Read on to learn some effective ways to start working with the media.

This module explains the selection of peer reviewers and the popular forms of peer review.

This module describes the stages of peer review and outcomes after the initial peer review.