Editorial pubs.acs.org/ac
Choosing an Important Project: Take Two
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industrial recruiters that a candidate’s ability to select which inquiries to pursue, and how to push the projects in new directions, is what set outstanding individuals apart from others. As a mentor, I try to teach my students to ask the right questions and propose projects to seek important answers, abilities that will serve them well, regardless of their ultimate career path. These skills are useful for proposal writing in an academic research setting, creating a business plan in a startup, and developing an important new product in industry. I encourage everyone to think carefully about their research and strive to select impactful projects.
have written a number of editorials and while sometimes I receive brief email acknowledgments, rarely do I receive a critical response. However, recently a colleague told me that they could not disagree more with my March 18th editorial, Choosing an Important Project: The First Stage to Getting Research Published. As a quick recap, the editorial’s stated objective was to emphasize the importance of helping graduate students select research projects that are impactful and important, as this makes publishing their work more likely. The topic evolved from my personal experience as an Editor. As noted in the editorial, some authors argue that their rejected manuscript represented the major output of one of their graduate student’s career, and they cannot fathom how the reviewers (and editor) found their work to be “incremental” and unimportant. My colleague, who thought that the focus of the editorial was graduate education (which is partly true), disagreed that selecting important research projects was an important part of a graduate student’s education. They went on to state that research projects can be educational, whether or not they prove to be significant. I agree that a wide range of projects are educational. Nonetheless, should not we strive to have our students work on projects that encompass the trifecta of providing advanced training, increasing scientific knowledge, and making significant contributions to science and society? A major point of the editorial was that learning how to select meaningful projects that contribute to advancing knowledge is an important aspect of a Ph.D. education. The selection of appropriate projects requires providing specific examples and engaging in thoughtful discussions with the student throughout their graduate career. The notion of simply paying attention to solving a problem without consideration of its significance reminds me of one of Royce Murray’s editorials on selecting important research topics [“Cadmium Horses” and Glucose, Royce W. Murray, pp 149 A−149 A, May 1, 2004, DOI: 10.1021/ac041548h]. Certainly we can ask our graduate students to come up with another way to measure glucose or cadmium using a new sensing approach, and they can learn a lot from this exercise. Yet, as Royce pointed out, unless their new method solves an issue with existing approaches, this is not necessarily what someone should spend their precious career working on. Another interesting assertion by my colleague is that selecting worthwhile projects is not something that can be taught but is mostly due to luck. I disagree. I believe this is a skill that can be learned, and developing this ability should be an important part of the graduate training process. The reason for the significant output from George Whitesides, Richard Zare, Royce Murray, and other highly successful researchers is not because they were lucky, it is because they have refined their abilitymore than most researchersto select worthwhile projects. I want my students to learn to choose critical projects and spend their time and effort in thinking about how to keep their projects on track. In fact, I have received comments from © XXXX American Chemical Society
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Jonathan V. Sweedler AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.6b03694 Anal. Chem. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
