Thesis Presubmission Criteria
Well, this part of the discussion is what we all are not facing right now... but definitely face at some point of time... what happens in most of the cases is that, we are forced to NOT submit our thesis when we want... otherwise, when we have done most of the work proposed in our Ph.D. registration, the Guide wants some more to be completed - instead the correct phrase is - he just wants you to complete that 5 year mark in his lab without a valid reason....
Now, here is a serious problem. Why can't one get his/her Ph.D. depending upon how much he/she has toiled for - in other words, if the work gets published in reputed journals and the work proposed at the time of Ph.D. registration is also done, he/she is awarded with the deserved honour, no matter how many years he/she has worked, given that it is not less than 2 years from registration. Additionally, the registration itself takes place only after a year of joining the lab. Taken together, no matter how much you are working, you get your Ph.D. by early fourth year, at the most. So, I guess even the Guides should be happy with this. And if we guys are strong enough and man of 'our words', why can't we also achieve a 'minimum total impact factor' reached before the thesis gets submitted, just as the old school works - grades/minimum 40% to pass out. This would put all the disputes off. Now different sciences have different impact-factor journals and at times the journals that you can achieve is specialized field dependent. So, it should be your Guide and you who can work out at the very beginning that odd 'total impact factor' mark and put your efforts accordingly. This idea of achievement based award would keep the seniors too on their toes. Yes, one can argue that within a lab five problems can exist and all of them would not go in equal journals and hence the 'total impact factor' would be difficult to achieve for all the students. Well, that again depends upon your guides experience & discretion. And you also look into his (Guides) track record of papers published in recent years and hence figure out what can be achieved in minimum three and maximum five years. So, this would help you to keep that goal in sight and now you have no one to blame, but yourself.
Hope this discussion helps.
Now, here is a serious problem. Why can't one get his/her Ph.D. depending upon how much he/she has toiled for - in other words, if the work gets published in reputed journals and the work proposed at the time of Ph.D. registration is also done, he/she is awarded with the deserved honour, no matter how many years he/she has worked, given that it is not less than 2 years from registration. Additionally, the registration itself takes place only after a year of joining the lab. Taken together, no matter how much you are working, you get your Ph.D. by early fourth year, at the most. So, I guess even the Guides should be happy with this. And if we guys are strong enough and man of 'our words', why can't we also achieve a 'minimum total impact factor' reached before the thesis gets submitted, just as the old school works - grades/minimum 40% to pass out. This would put all the disputes off. Now different sciences have different impact-factor journals and at times the journals that you can achieve is specialized field dependent. So, it should be your Guide and you who can work out at the very beginning that odd 'total impact factor' mark and put your efforts accordingly. This idea of achievement based award would keep the seniors too on their toes. Yes, one can argue that within a lab five problems can exist and all of them would not go in equal journals and hence the 'total impact factor' would be difficult to achieve for all the students. Well, that again depends upon your guides experience & discretion. And you also look into his (Guides) track record of papers published in recent years and hence figure out what can be achieved in minimum three and maximum five years. So, this would help you to keep that goal in sight and now you have no one to blame, but yourself.
Hope this discussion helps.
2 comments:
i feel this is very much personalized comment not the general one. at one time author is saying there is a tendency od guide that he is not leaving students before 5 years even if he is completing his Ph.D work. but this is not true for all sometimes guide allowed some of his favourate students to finish early or if some student is having good oppertunities waitng. the sulution which is suggested by the author is the total impact factor which is again decided by the guide and this impact landmark is different for different students so here again guide is having a full control to favour his favourate student. the other thing writting paper and sending paper to which journal is decided by the guide since this need certain skills to write and all students can't write good papers so achieving this impact factor landmark is again indirectly under the will of the guide.
So i'm totally disagreeing with this concept of impact factor for awarding the Ph.D. but i suppose this is a problem which can be solved by the disscussion with guide in the starting of the work. the landmark can be the time period, amount of work, impact factor, or the no. of techniques learn during the period but 'both' (guide and student) should be agree on that.
RH
@RH
Once again its good to see you showing your concern in the present 'discussion' too.. this is definitely an old puzzle for everybody... "What should be the criteria to get a Ph.D. degree?".
Well, to obtain (deserve!!) a Ph.D. ('doctorate of philosophy'), one may differ in terms of time(years!!) and effort, to collate his/her philosophy as a thesis... but since now a days things have changed a lot,,, and guidelines/rules/clauses/etc actually decides the degree to be awarded or not,,, we need some sort of yardstick to measure effiency and level of a scholars understanding in a subject before he/she can be awarded a degree,,,, as suggested in the blog itself, it depends on the student and Guide on the very first place to get a feeling of the work he/she wants to start and accordingly get prepared for the goals to be achieved.
Anyways, with due respect to your comments - I would like to add couple of things. First, the 'total minimum impact factor to achieve' is just a landmark to justify within the group/fellow members and not MANDATORY. Second, writing good paper / deciding the journal to which the data has to be sent can be decided at the very beginning, and the necessary (possible!!) no of experiments etc. can be decided,,, now, depending on the outcome of the experiment (which is NOT always 100% what u have thought of) one can send his/her data to a low impact journal... but the guide and fellow students know about the facts and should respect the judgement - and eventually the 'minimum total impact factor to be achieved' can be altered with time...
Finally, apart from being a favrouite student of the Guide, the above suggestion of 'minimum impact factor to achive' is for the neutral/non-political hard working student community... for whom the work is everything,,, and they should be justified of their hardship...
One final word to add, as suggested, definitely the no. of techniques, amount of work, other scientic capabilities, etc can also be counted alongwith the impact-factor funda,,, [:)]
thank again for your unbaised comments
author
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