your academic FYP 16th January, 2025

Academia essentials hand-picked fortnightly for the informed scholar

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Hey Scholar, here's what we have for you this week:

• Funded PhD opportunities, post-doc positions and job openings 🇳🇱 🇺🇸 🇦🇺 🌏;

• The most passive aggressive response to reviewer 2 ever published (no, seriously);

• Develop your research topic in 3 steps;

• Ace your PhD interview with a free webinar;

  and much more.

OPPORTUNITIES

💼Funded PhDs, Postdocs and academic job openings

• PhDs and Postdocs @ University of Amsterdam: click here

• PhD Scholarships for a 2025 start @ Princeton University: click here

• Post-docs and Research Fellowships @ Australian National University: click here

• Postdocs and Research Fellowships @ University of Sydney: click here

• Science Journalist Jobs @ Retraction Watch (remote, work-from-anywhere): click here

If the idea of making your PhD application is daunting, here's a detailed guide to help you through the entire process👇

NEWS

👀Dr Popular 

Literally no one knows this, but journal impact factors (JIFs) were originally designed to help librarians estimate how many people read a particular journal regularly in the pre-digital era (a piece by The Tatler is in the works). Now JIFs are erroneously correlated with research quality, but new ways to measure real world impact are emerging: could popularity metrics like paper views and downloads become the new JIFs?  

RESOURCES

🗓️Get PhD interview-ready with this online seminar

This seminar is primarily aimed at potential PhD candidates from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, but it is open to everyone! Book your place to get insights into the PhD application process - especially the interview stage, along with tips and things to expect, shared by a panel of full-time academics and current doctoral students.  

🎧A playlist to lock in  

6 hours and 30 minutes of loopy, repetitive beats, this playlist curated by The Tatler from his masters' dissertation days is perfect for slipping into a long deep focus state. 

Got a playlist that never lets you down? Reply to this email and send it to us so we can include it in the next edition.

ARTICLES

🛠️Pimp my thesis

How do you make your thesis (and by extension, yourself) stand out from the crowd? Customize that bad boy, duh. All that stands between you and your next job post-PhD could be a well designed front cover, increasing the font size a bit and adding a short biography on the back.

🥼Mad scientist 

A virologist successfully treated her breast cancer with viruses she grew and injected herself (she’s been cancer free for 4 years and even won funding to develop the treatment further). This idea would have been madness if it failed, but it worked, so it’s genius. 

KEEPING IT REAL

🤬Screw you, reviewer 2

To have allowed this to be published in the final version, the editor was clearly on the authors' side. Or perhaps they didn't even read it…

[Update 21st Feb 2025: The Editor in Chief found out about it and retracted the article.]

*We know that ‘apples' don't capture the full spectrum of human expression, so let us know what you didn't like about it by replying to this email.

We'd love to hear from you either way, so hit reply to send your comments, questions or ramblings to us!