What Do You Wish Someone Had Told You About Research?
For over 20 years, I’ve worked as a researcher in software engineering – PhD student, postdoc, lecturer, permanent researcher, team leader… across five countries. Along the way, I’ve also created blogs, written books, built software prototypes, and even launched a couple of companies.
So I dare to say that I know a little bit about software. And also a little bit about research. Last year, I wrote a book summarizing my perspective and vision on the former. But I feel I can also contribute on the latter.
There are many things about navigating the research world that I had to learn “the hard way”. This is not always bad, but it’s not efficient. Especially in a context where PhDs are short (grants typically last 3 years) and the research environment changes fast (new publication and evaluation models, impact of new technologies like AI,…).
This new book aims to give junior researchers practical shortcuts: clear, concise advice on writing, publishing, getting funding, and simply surviving (and thriving) in research. I’ve been occasionally writing about these topics since 2011 in my “research rants”, with many more ideas and opinions that didn’t make it to a blog post and were just kept hidden in notes in my Trello account.
I think it’s time to collect and expand them into something more systematic and useful as part of a book that could help accelerate research in all fields. I believe this book can save researchers time and frustration, time you can invest in doing actual research, which is what we really want and enjoy.
👉 To make sure the book is as useful as possible, I’d love your input. Could you please take 2 minutes to answer this very very short survey (just 4 questions)?
