Tuesday 15 July 2008

What do researchers do?

Most of my friends (and maybe even my colleagues) don't have much idea of what I do day-to-day. That's the subject of this blog. Modern research is quantified in terms of published articles, but that forms just a small part of daily working life, and the process from conceiving an interesting question or idea to published article is a long and tortuous one. Often articles aren't published until months or years after the research was conducted, and so there is a time-lag between what appears in print and what the current focus of research is. By that time the initial excitement of pursuing novel work is a distant memory, having been supplanted by several rounds of peer review, revision and resubmission.

So this is an attempt to communicate what I am doing now, to talk about what I think's exciting this week (or this afternoon) and to show what being a researcher means on a daily basis.

6 comments:

Ethan Russell said...

'Ello! I love your TV show! I just started watching it last week! I liked it so much, in fact, I'm going to by your book later today at Powells! w00t!

Keep up the awesome work!

P.S. I tried subscribing to your blog's RSS, but it's ummmm... weird.

http://etharooni.polorix.net/weirdblog.jpg

Anonymous said...

HAHA. WOOPT.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.

Anonymous said...

I’d passion to face that too!

Anonymous said...

...please where can I buy a unicorn?

Anonymous said...

...please where can I buy a unicorn?