I Have a Research Support System

On Tuesday morning, Xu Qiu came directly to Wei Xingsi's office.

At this time, Wei Xingsi was making tea. When he saw Xu Qiu, he greeted him with a smile all over his face, Is there something wrong? Did the device made yesterday have good results?

No, the batch of devices is still in the vacuum, and we won't be able to open the cabin for testing until the afternoon... Xu Qiu hesitated for a while, and chose to speak directly: I want to talk to Teacher Wei about early graduation.

Graduate ahead of schedule... Wei Xingsi's smile froze, his expression changed for a moment, he seemed a little surprised, but then he breathed a sigh of relief as if relieved: Well...Xu Qiu, what do you think, let's hear it .”

If possible, I would like to graduate... two years earlier. After careful consideration, Xu Qiu felt that if he graduated three years earlier, on the one hand, the academic pressure would be greater, and on the other hand, it would be too shocking. , the school’s formalities may be difficult to handle, but two years in advance is just right, which is equivalent to directly conferring a doctorate upon graduation from a master’s degree. There is still a precedent for this.

Two years in advance... Wei Xingsi put down the teapot, touched his chin, and said after a while, There is no problem on my side in principle. Of course, for early graduation, you still need to apply to the departments and graduate schools. If you encounter any problems during the application process, I can help you.”

Thank you, Teacher Wei. Xu Qiu thanked politely, and he was relieved in his heart. If he really had a conflict with Wei Xingsi and got into a stalemate, it would not end well. Fortunately, Wei Xingsi did not know flattery. .

Wei Xingsi waved his hand and smiled: This is mainly achieved by yourself. After all, you have been in the research group since your junior year, and it has been nearly two years now. In the past two years, your contribution to the research group , Whether it’s me or the other members of the research group, everyone can see it... If I stop you and prevent you from graduating early, it won’t make sense. By the way, what are your plans after graduation?”

Xu Qiu thought for a while, and replied: In general, I will definitely continue to engage in scientific research, but I haven't made up my mind yet about whether to go abroad to find a postdoctoral position or take other paths.

Hmm... Wei Xingsi finished making tea, poured out the first brewing water, filled two cups of tea, passed a cup to Xu Qiu, and said, I recommend you to stay in school, with academic achievements like yours now. , as long as the article in Science or Nature is published, there is a high probability that you will have no problem staying in school after you graduate with a Ph.D. Staying in school first, and then going abroad as a visiting scholar will not affect your overseas study abroad. experience.

Wei Xingsi is right. If there is a CNS first work, plus a major sub-journal of Nature, two Joules that have already been published, and several top journals such as AM, such academic achievements, even if It is not too difficult to stay in a top domestic university like Shanghai University to get a teaching position.

Moreover, there is no need to take wild paths such as counselors, and you can stay in school purely on your own academic strength.

Even, there is a chance to get a specially-appointed full professor and a doctoral supervisor.

After all, when Wei Xingsi was introduced from the beautiful country as a young thousand, the best articles in his hands were AM, and Xu Qiu's current academic achievements and AM-level work are the lower limit of his published articles.

Although Teacher Wei mainly took advantage of the early return to China, the situation will definitely become more complicated when Xu Qiu graduates, but now domestic high-end scientific research talents are also scarce, as long as there are dazzling academic achievements, they will become the top universities in major universities. object of contention.

Moreover, Xu Qiu still has more than two years to go. If the performance of the organic photovoltaic field can reach a new high, a CNS article is a conservative estimate.

At this time, Wei Xingsi continued: When you stay in school and go abroad, you can put the recruited students with me, and I will help you...

Xu Qiu had just taken a sip of tea and almost spit it out. He was just thinking why Wei Xingsi would be so considerate of him, so it turned out that he was here waiting for him.

However, generally speaking, the idea provided by Mr. Wei is indeed a more suitable path for him.

Of course, Xu Qiu didn't express his opinion immediately, but nodded and said: I'll think about it again...I'm going to do the experiment.

Okay, you go. Wei Xingsi stared at Xu Qiu's back for a long time, but he didn't know what he was thinking.

In the next few days, Xu Qiu personally prepared a batch of devices every day, while Mo Wenlin and others were in charge of testing.

The efficiency of the device fluctuates and rises, from 17.17% to 17.58%...

Finally, on Thursday, the efficiency of the L6-Cl:Y20 system sprinted to more than 18%, reaching 18.11%, repeating the results in the simulation laboratory.

Although all of this was within Xu Qiu's expectation, there was still a wave of excitement in his heart.

Because a job at the CNS level is still of great significance to Xu Qiu at this stage.

When Jack Ma became famous, he could claim that the thing I regret the most was founding Hangcheng Baba, and Yida Wang could take 100 million as a small goal.

Perhaps, one day Xu Qiu will also see posting a CNS as a small goal, and the most regrettable thing is too much water on CNS.

However, now he does not have this strength, and is still accumulating strength.

When he got the most critical efficiency data, Xu Qiu was in class at the Handan campus.

He immediately sent a message in the WeChat group of the organic photovoltaic team and began to assign work:

Mo Wenlin is in charge of going to NIM in Beijing to do third-party testing.

Han Jiaying and Xu Xinjie are responsible for the next device preparation work. At least ten batches of devices must be repeated. After Mo Wenlin returns from the capital, she will also join the device preparation team.

Wu Shengnan, Fan Wentang and Yin Houlang are responsible for completing various experimental characterization work, including UV-vis, PL, GPC, NMR...

For Fan Wentang and Yin Houlang, it is also a learning process, and they can be familiar with the entire characterization process in the field of organic photovoltaics.

In addition, Wu Shengnan and the others are also responsible for sending a batch of samples to Feng Shengdong in Sweden to test TAS, TRPL, etc.

Xu Qiu is mainly responsible for writing articles, the target journal Nature.

Just like when he wrote the Science article, Xu Qiu first logged on to the official website of Nature.

.

Submitting to Nature is different from submitting to journals such as AM. It is very necessary to spend more time before submitting to understand the specific requirements of the other party's acceptance.

After all, Nature receives nearly 10,000 manuscripts every year, but only accepts more than 800 manuscripts.

Researchers all over the world are staring at Nature. Even if their work is good enough in the current field, it is not guaranteed to be published. It is necessary to kill other submissions in the same period to stand out.

To put it bluntly, it is a volume. There is no such thing as a major sub-journal of Nature in the world. If there are more people, there will be...

Moreover, once the submission to Nature is rejected, you must either transfer to the major sub-journals of Nature or NC, or you can only transfer to Science. The error tolerance rate is very low, and there are only two chances.

Unlike voting for AM and being rejected, you can vote for EES. If you vote for EES, you can vote for JACS. If you vote for JACS, you can vote for NC. If you vote for JACS, you can vote for NC. You can even go to high-level votes and try your luck on Joule. If it doesn't work, you can switch from AM to AEM It is also acceptable, the difference between the two is not big.

The web page of Nature's official website loads quickly.

Xu Qiu took a quick look and found that compared to the red and black and simple design style of the official website of Science, the official website of Nature did not give people a strong visual impact in color, just ordinary black text on a white background.

However, the official website of Nature has relatively more content.

Xu Qiu first found the author's contribution column and checked the requirements for article submission.

Nature is very interesting in the classification of articles. There are only two categories, Articles (experimental articles) and non-experimental articles.

This shows that they pay more attention to experimental articles.

Of course, this is also the case in the entire academic circle.

Because non-experimental articles, whether they are reviews, short reviews, or other articles, can only be icing on the cake, and experimental articles are the core foundation of natural science.

Nature wrote very detailed requirements for experimental articles:

Articles are original reports whose conclusions represent a major advance in the understanding of an important issue, with immediate and far-reaching implications. In print, they usually do not exceed 5 pages...

There should be a summary paragraph at the beginning, mainly for readers outside the discipline, preferably no more than 200 words, this is a text independent of the main text, need to avoid unnecessary numbers, abbreviations, acronyms...

The abstract paragraph should be structured as follows: a 2-3 sentence basic introduction to the field; a brief description of the background and rationale for the work; a statement of the main conclusions; and finally, a 2-3 sentence presentation of the main findings In a general context, this makes it clear how the results described in the paper advance the field...

The main text should contain 3-4 tables and figures, and the length of the main text including the abstract is usually 2000-2500 words...

Important but technical details that could be transferred to Methods or Supplementary Information...

Articles typically have 30-50 references, be mindful of how much space these references take up on the page...

Sections are separated by subheadings for ease of navigation...

The subtitle can contain up to 40 characters (including spaces)...

In general, the requirements of Nature and Science are similar.

However, regarding the summary part, this is also the first time Xu Qiu heard this statement: The summary is written for laymen.

Perhaps, only a high-impact comprehensive journal like Nature would say this.

Like other professional journals, such as AM and the like, those who will read your article are basically peers, so it is not necessary to write the abstract for laymen.

After reading the submission requirements, there was still a little time before get out of class ended. Xu Qiu didn't plan to write an article, so he simply returned to the homepage of Nature and continued to check the content of the homepage.

First of all, there is also a cover article at the top, with a large cover and four small covers.

A large cover article is a long strip that takes up the entire page.

Small cover articles, the four together occupy four-fifths of the page, and one-fifth of the page is the cover of the print edition of the current issue of Nature.

Below the cover article is the News \u0026 Comment section.

This is similar to the short commentary series in Science, mainly focusing on current events and hot spots.

There is a high probability that it is the place where the bosses pour water, and each job also has a cover picture.

There is one large cover and six small covers.

Speaking of which, these cover pictures are not as high-end as Xu Qiu imagined.

Moreover, the meaning is also very vague. From the cover alone, it is impossible to infer what the other party wants to express.

For example, the big cover is a photo of dozens of people gathered for a meeting...

Small cover 1 is a cartoon. In the picture, there are two girls in white coats, one with dark skin and the other with white skin. They are in a place like a pharmacy where medicines are stored. Then the black skin looks up at the sky, as if looking at On the shelf, the white skin looked down at the ground, his eyes were on the medicine bottle, and he was recording something with a pen in his hand...

Small cover 2, is a middle-aged man dressed as a doctor/researcher, wearing a helmet and a mask, holding a card similar to a credit card with unknown meaning...

Small cover 3, is a doctor girl giving an injection to a patient. Behind it is a revolving door similar to that of a train station to prevent the flow of people from moving backwards. It can only go out but not in. It also looks very weird...

Small cover 4, is a black male researcher, operating a small transparent box that does not know what it is...

Small cover 5 is a photo of a black woman with a big head and a face, very similar to that kind of one-inch photo, with a gray background. Xu Qiu speculates that this person may be a well-known scientist, but he doesn't know him...

Small cover 6, there are two black children, there is a water source in front of them, and there are a few bungalows painted with green paint in the distance, the meaning is unknown...

If there is one thing in common, it is that there are people on all the covers, but the meaning expressed is too vague.

Xu Qiu feels that Nature is not as good as Science in terms of web design.

In the case of Science, at least when looking at the homepage, it feels more organized.

Xu Qiu even had the idea of ​​submitting this article to Science again because of this.

However, this idea is just a flash. If it is because of this reason that I did not vote for Nature, it would be too hasty.

Next is the Latest Reviews \u0026 Analysis column, which mainly covers recent hot articles.

Originally, Xu Qiu saw Reviews and thought it was mainly a review article.

As a result, I clicked in and found that most of the articles here are real experimental work, and each work also has a cover picture.

The cover picture here is much more normal, and all the drawings are some mechanism diagrams, which immediately gives a sense of high-level, and it has the taste of scientific research.

On the first cover, the description is Mechanisms of organelle degeneration in lens development.

The second, Non-reciprocal interactions during bird flocking.

The third sheet, The Destruction Process of Cyclin D.

The fourth sheet, Polarization eddy currents in ferroelectric thin films.

Fifth sheet, Formation of Motor Circuit.

Although the sense of high-end and compelling style is coming up, the price is obscurity.

Even Xu Qiu, if he didn't read the text, and only relied on a picture, he couldn't understand what they were talking about, only a general idea.

For example, the first cover is about eyes, and the second cover is about biology...

This is also normal. The barriers between different research fields in the scientific research circle are very high.

Even academicians are usually only deeply cultivated in a few fields, and it is rare to see scientific researchers who can easily cross borders.

Hundreds of years ago, there would be such all-round scientific research workers, who crossed back and forth in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

However, at present, it is almost impossible for such a character to appear, and it may be written like this in the novel.

Xu Qiu continued to look down, it was Latest Research articles (the latest research articles), only the latest 5 articles were listed, but each article was accompanied by a cover picture.

The cover picture here, whether it is an NMR map, a two-dimensional color map, or a map drawn by ORIGIN, made Xu Qiu find a sense of familiarity.

The previous cover picture is really hard to describe.

Next, is Collections.

Xu Qiu didn't know how to translate this word, it probably raised a theme, or pointed out a type of matter.

The current theme is Sports Science.

Xu Qiu looked at the details and found that this column seemed to be available through sponsorship and advertising.

For example, there is an issue of the Collections column, the title is actually Flower grower Ludao University, climbing new heights!

The following is a description: Ludao University was founded by overseas Chinese philanthropist Tan Kah Kee in 1921. After a hundred years of development, it has formed an innovative and open culture. , marine science, and ecology, and is internationally recognized for excellence in multidisciplinary research. It is the ambition of its founders to transform its research findings to serve societal needs .”

Xu Qiu was stunned, and he didn't know how much Ludao University invested in an advertisement in Nature, but it must not be less.

It has to be said that Nature Publishing House is indeed better at doing business, whether it is publishing sub-journals or other business operations, it is far stronger than Science.

Xu Qiu reckoned that if Science was not because of its old enough qualifications, it might have been killed by other commercial journal companies of the new generation.

Further down, there is an article Altmetric index ranking, with a total of four positions.

Altmetric is a new concept, Xu Qiu hadn't heard of it before, so he looked it up.

Then, he found that the Altmetric indicator is a new indicator for evaluating the influence of papers in recent years. Compared with traditional paper indicators, Altmetric is a product based on the current network socialization background, mainly to understand the degree of recognition of papers and share discussions.

Altmetric scores are based on the number of citations of documents by different social media, generally including news, patents, blogs, Weibo, twitter, forums, etc.

It is mainly considered from three aspects, namely, the number of citations, the source of citations and the author of citations.

News and blog citations get the most points, but the more people mention, cite, and interact with the article through multiple sources, the more likely the article will get a higher score.

The weight of each social media is not the same, according to the general calculation method given by Altmetric official website:

8 points for news, 5 points for blog, 3 points for Wikipedia, 3 points for policy documents and patent documents, 1 point for Twitter, 1 point for Google+, 0.25 points for Facebook and Youtube, 0.25 points for Q\u0026A community...

Compared with traditional impact factors, Altmetric has many advantages, such as: fast update, instant feedback; research influence on non-professional readers; researchers can find cooperation opportunities; social media communication visibility...

But the disadvantages are also obvious, including: it is currently beneficial to English literature, but not to non-English published articles and research; more attention to popular subjects or controversial topics is only based on the degree of attention, and does not affect the true quality of the literature. reflective; often not directly comparable across majors; more easily manipulated; ratings fluctuate...

Xu Qiu feels that this kind of index is of little significance to himself or researchers in the field, at least it is difficult to replace the traditional evaluation index of impact factor.

However, it is always good to be able to develop new indicators.

Because civilization is always stumbling forward in constant attempts and changes.

Finally, there is the Nature Careers column, which is divided into two subdivided columns, Events (activities) and Jobs (jobs).

The Events column mainly includes the upcoming major conferences.

Xu Qiu's first reaction after seeing the Work column was the recruitment information of the editorial department of Nature.

As a result, he clicked on the title of Assistant Professor (Assistant Professor) at the top and found that the details are:

The Department of Cancer Biology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology (BCMP) at Harvard Medical School, invites applicants for tenured positions at the assistant professor level.

We seek imaginative and creative early career scientists who can apply their chemical biology and/or medicinal chemistry expertise to important questions in basic and translational science.

We offer an exciting and collaborative working environment with diverse teaching and research areas spanning chemical biology, cancer biology, structural biology, pharmacology, cell biology, biochemistry and medicine.

...

We are an egalitarian employer and all qualified applicants will be offered employment without regard to race, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, pregnancy and pregnancy related conditions, or any other legally protected characteristic.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations to enable them to participate in a job application or interview, perform essential job duties, and receive other employment benefits and privileges.

Please apply through the Harvard website:

Applications will be reviewed on March 15, 20xx.

It's an ad again!

I have to say that the editorial team of Nature is indeed very commercialized.

Although Xu Qiu used to read traditional paper magazines, such as Reader, Yi Lin, and Story Club, he often saw advertisements.

But seeing the advertisement in Nature, Xu Qiu always felt a little weird.

I suddenly felt that the grade of the journal Nature has dropped a lot...

Thanks nvlz for the reward.