Reviewers' comments

The past 5 days, I've been completely immersed into replying reviewers' comments to a paper which will be published as a special publication after a conference in October.

Previously, I did receive some comments from reviewers for other conference papers, but the effort they required to reply was typically negligible.

Wednesday evening, however, I received 3 pages of commentary on my paper, 19 sections with comments in total. I was both terrified (it looked like a lot of work) and enthusiastic (the reviewers really analyzed my paper and provided valuable input) at the same time.

I was googling around a bit for some advice on how to reply to reviewers' comments, since I had never done this before, but I couldn't find anything. Please point me to interesting posts online if you come across them, I'll be more than glad to read them and implement their advice in the future. And I'm sure I'll have to reply reviewers' comments many more time in the years to come.

Now that I've sent out the revised version and my 13-page reply to the reviewers, I've spent some time reflecting on this process, and here are some points which were to me the most striking ones.

1. Don't panic

I felt a slight sense of panic when I received the email with all the comments. It appeared to be a lot of work to me, and it was requested to be done as soon as possible. However, I took a deep breath, and decided to print out the comments, and finish the task I was carrying out before jumping to the comments.

2. One remark at a time

Rome wasn't build in a day. I've taken several slots of time over 4 days in total to reply the comments one by one. When necessary, I went to look up some additional references to give a solid basis to the reply I was working on.

I wasn't sure about my writing style though. I'm not sure in which voice to write, and how much information to include in the replies. Hopefully I can learn this in the (near) future.

3. Take it serious

The reviewers has obviously taken time and effort to work through my paper and point out paragraphs which were not clear, graphs which looked confusing and to offer some fresh ideas on my research.

It is at least polite to take it serious, and spend enough time to chew on this to provide them with a solid and founded answer to their comments, and, where needed, add the requested revisions to the paper.

4. Remember you are not alone

Even though I took quite some time to reflect on certain questions, I did feel that for some of these I needed some affirmation and good ideas from my co-authors.
After I drafted up the first version of the revised paper and the reply to the reviewers, I sent it to my co-authors with some extra comments and points for them to look at.

Today, I got all the necessary input and thoughts to finish up the revised version of the paper. I'm quite curious to see what will be next.

To conclude this post, I would like to point to Hidde Ploegh's post "End the wasteful tyranny of reviewer experiments" and Eva Teuling's discussion (in Dutch) "Peer review versus de idealistische wetenschapper." There's a lot of food for thought related to the review process in there, and the merely ethical discussion on the impact of recommending additional experiments. Highly recommended, now that we're at the topic.

How to make your autobiographical essay stand out

When applying for a scholarship, you typically will have to add an autobiographical essay. If you want to stand out as an applicant, it is important to show more than good grades. Here is some advice on how to use one sheet of paper to make a lasting impression and be invited for an interview.

1. Polish your writing style

If you are at the point of applying for a scholarship to study abroad after your first cycle of higher education, chances are small that you've been going through application or interviewing processes before.
Likewise, chances are small that you have experience in writing, other than homeworks and essays related to your study course.

Writing an autobiographical essay takes more than just summing up what you've been spending your past years on. It requires a style of writing you might need to get used to. Even though I've always enjoyed writing, composing my autobiographical essay took me a lot of frowning, rewriting and rephrasing.

Make sure you allow enough time to go through this process, don't write it out the night before the deadline.
To give you an idea: I spent two months between my first trials and the final version in my application.

2. Ask a senior academic for advice

Look for a professor or senior academic with a clear writing style to whom you can turn to for advice. I was lucky enough to receive great ideas from one of my professors, which took my essay five levels up.

3. Show the link between your extracurricular activities and your studies

You might think that fellowship institutions are not interested in your talent for sports or music. However, you can use your extracurricular activities to show how it reinforces some of your talents in your studies.

In my essay, I linked composition courses to math. Following the classical rules of composition requires indeed a lot of "calculating" and counting distances between notes to come up with allowable chords.

4. Let your personality shine through

If you're applying for a prestigious fellowship, you are most likely already a very good student. To show that you are ready to take most advantage of the opportunity which might be offered to you and to become an ambassador of a sponsoring institution, it is important to show that you are a fully grown individual with a personal range of talents and interests.

5. Point out the skills you've learned from your extracurricular activities

Depending on the extracurricular activities you've chosen to spend your time on, you will have developed certain skills. Use the description of your activities to point out which skills you've learned.

Playing team-sports or playing in an orchestra teaches you how to work in a team, for example. Combining several activities with demanding studies teaches you time management skills.

fib Symposium 2011 - paper and presentation

Last week, I attended the fib Symposium 2011 in Prague, and presented some of my experimental results in the Friday morning session on Construction Technology.

The full paper is published on the CD proceedings, and the short version of 4 pages is published in the printed version of the proceedings. The abstract is the following:

Reinforced concrete one-way slabs subjected to concentrated loads are designed for shear by checking beam shear over an effective width and punching shear. Only a limited number of test data regarding the shear capacity of one-way slabs subjected to concentrated loads is available. To better evaluate the shear capacity of reinforced concrete one-way slabs, a series of experiments has been carried out on continuous one-way slabs (5m x 2,5m x 0,3m) loaded close to the support. The influence of the shear span to depth ratio is discussed. Conclusions about the influence of this parameter on the one-way shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs and possible explanations for the difference with beams are provided. Test results are compared to the Eurocode provisions and a method to calculate shear capacity from the literature. A higher shear strength is found as compared to the Eurocode. As a result of these experiments expressions resulting in a higher theoretical shear strength for the design of one-way slabs under concentrated loads are recommended.

The keywords were: Shear, One-Way Slabs, Effective Width

Here are the slides I used for my 12 minute presentation:

Experimental study of shear in reinforced concrete one way slabs subjected to concentrated loads

View more presentations from elantsoght.

As you can see, I added the tables with the experimental results which I used in the paper as a few extra slides at the end of my presentation. I didn't want to go over all the numbers during my talk, but I wanted to be prepared for more detailed questions. And in fact, I had a question about the flexural capacity of the tested slabs, so I could simply show the table with the reinforcement ratios and explain how we designed the reinforcement.

The Julie Project

I read about the Julie project on kottke.org a long time ago, and bookmarked the website for later reading. Only recently I went back to the website and read the story.

If this dreary Sunday afternoon has you glued in front of your laptop, please take some time to read this project through.

How to get a PhD by Phillips and Pugh

This book review is based on the third edition of "How to get a PhD"

"How to get a PhD" covers a wide range of aspects and is stuffed with helpful advice for starting doctoral researchers. All chapters contain an action summary at the end, which sums up to most important ideas of that chapter. Although this book is clearly written from the perspective of British universities, it can be read by anyone outside.

Here's an overview of what I found particularly useful in this book:


1. Chapter 4: How not to get a PhD

Be aware of the seven way of not getting a PhD:
- not wanting a PhD
- overestimating what is required
- underestimating what is required
- having a supervisor who des not know what is required
- losing contact with your supervisor
- not having a 'thesis' (i.e. position, argument) to maintain
- taking a new job before completing.

Most books contain great advice on how to work towards your doctoral degrees, or point out what pitfalls you might encounter. Pointing out directly which behavior will totally boycott you from getting your degree, is not so common. This books devotes an entire chapter to this topic, and it's very helpful to be aware of these danger signs.

2. Chapter 8: How to manage your supervisor

Be aware that you must accept the responsibility for managing the relationship between you and your supervisor. It is too important to be left t chance.

Great advice, which I learned over time to be true. I initially thought my supervisors would keep close track of what I am doing, and would come to me regularly asking about my progress. I noticed it's quite different.

3. Preparing for the viva

Here's a tried and tested way of revising the complete thesis and preparing for the via, both at the same time.
First you take a maximum of three sheets of feint-ruled A$ paper (try to manage ith two if you can). You draw a straight vertical line down the centre of each sheet. You now have to sets of about 35 lines, i.e. 70 half lines. Each half line represents one page of your thesis. Now you number each half line. One to 35 are the left hand half laine and 36-70 are the right hand half lines on the first sheet of paper.
Next you take your time, say about two weeks, to write on every half line the main idea contained on the corresponding page of your thesis.

Sounds like some of the best advice I've read about preparing for your defense, and I'll try to implement it when I graduate (in more than 2 years from now).

4. Chapter 11: How to supervise and examine

In connection with chapter 8, this chapter gives the reader more insight in the relationship between student and supervisor. This chapter is written from the point of view of the supervisor, and is definitely wroth reading for students too. I was inspired by this chapter in my way of supervising master's students.

Leechblock

My discovery of the week is Leechblock.
Last week, I was getting on the procrastination and pointless browsing path again (because I'm worried about a though deadline I just heard about), and I decided I needed a strong hand to get this under control again.

I've used blocksite in the past, to control my random facebooking. After having facebook and other distracting websites blocked from my office computer, I started boycotting myself. I started turning off the add-on, surf around for some time, and then turn it on again. Silly, isn't it?

Now I'm experimenting with Leechblock. This software has two options:
- allow certain websites for a previously defined amount of time during a day, and then block them
- set a timeframe during which you want to block certain websites.
The great thing is that you cannot change any settings while a block is active. You simply have to sit through it.

I've used the second option yesterday during 1h40mins to make some good progress on a writing task, and I've made the first option a standard feature allowing me 20 minutes of browsing to my most distracting websites a day.

After just a few days of using this software, I would say it is a great productivity tool.

Our lab on TV

That's our lab in which they are interviewing! And I'm briefly showing up at 1:29, in between the talks for the parents of the students.