PhDSciNet Interview 23: Advice for New Research Supervisors

Historical interview: The following preserves the research experiences and personal views expressed in the original manuscript.

People who pursue a doctorate carry dreams of doing research. After graduating, many hope to continue that path as research supervisors, with the ultimate goal of securing a faculty position and establishing an independent research group. Alongside the excitement, however, new supervisors face major challenges and many difficulties to resolve.

Today, we have invited several supervisors to offer advice to newcomers based on their own experiences.

Pressures of every kind

Challenge: demanding evaluations and difficulty publishing papers

Little Shrimp Online: The pressure in research really is considerable—for example, the research funding that has to be secured each year, mainly funding from government and other public programs. After the move away from the 'five dimensions' of evaluation, we are now assessed on how much we have contributed, in terms of results and effort, to relevant fields in our country. I think that is also a fairly good evaluation standard.

Publishing is certainly getting harder, and the bar keeps rising. When I was doing my doctorate, I remember that an EI-indexed paper might have been enough. Later, SCI papers were required; after that, only tier-1 journals counted. Eventually, even tier 1 was not enough: high-impact-factor papers and ESI papers were expected. The requirements keep climbing. They have become somewhat unreasonable, almost frightening. Although the 'five dimensions' have supposedly been broken with, that only addresses those ordinary criteria. Requirements for papers with high impact factors have always remained.

For us, publication requirements keep rising, and publishing is becoming more difficult. How do we deal with it? I think you still have to write the papers yourself. There is no particularly good alternative: you just have to grit your teeth and write. You also need to talk more with people in the field. It really is a hard struggle to get things through, and it takes a great deal of energy.

Whatever role or position you hold, you always have to set aside energy for this and keep investing it persistently over the long term. That is the environment now: people around you keep turning out several high-level papers at a time. You have no choice but to grit your teeth and follow the same path. Otherwise, you will not meet your year-end KPIs. Our university's principle is also that standing still means falling behind—like rowing upstream. If you do not move forward, you fall back; if you do not get promoted, you leave.

So this is quite a serious challenge, and there is definitely pressure. You cannot escape it. Do not imagine you can simply leave the writing to your students without writing yourself; that is out of the question. You have to invest your own effort. You can guide students as they write, but expecting them to produce high-level papers without your involvement is unlikely to work.

Nicolas Cage: Promotion is basically much the same at different universities. It is not quite so intense where we are, and we work in food science, which may differ somewhat from other science and engineering fields. Research assessment still focuses on papers and funding. Papers are relatively the simplest part, because they are something you can control yourself. Funding depends on far too many factors.

Another challenge is that our team leader holds an administrative position, so there are all sorts of miscellaneous matters I also have to help with.

Astro Boy: Evaluation generally comes down to projects, papers, supervising students, teaching, and so on. Where we are, it has now become a points system: you receive a score at the end of the year. If you fall short, your performance-related pay is reduced, so everyone feels a lot of pressure.

Is publishing papers harder than it used to be?

Little Shrimp Online: At the beginning, most of my papers were in tier-3 or tier-4 journals. You really are stuck at that threshold. You have to build things up gradually; it is an inevitable stage. What can you do during it? I think you can only persevere. There is no other particularly good solution.

One useful suggestion I can share is to communicate more with others in the same field. Talking to people in the research community helps generate more ideas, which is very helpful for writing papers. If you do not have time to talk, you still have to read the literature. Scan new papers regularly to understand what is happening in the field; that is useful and helpful. At least in the field we have worked in for a long time, this accumulation over time is something we should have.

Nicolas Cage: What I notice most clearly is that during our doctorates, we would first write a draft ourselves. Our supervisor would then revise it, tell us how to change it, and have us revise it and do additional experiments. Now there is no supervisor to revise the work for you; you have to set expectations for your own students. For example, I have guided students through projects, helped them organize their reasoning and data, and then written the paper. Once I had done that, the standard of the paper was clearly quite different from when I had a supervisor backing me. It becomes particularly obvious at submission: reviewers sometimes say the writing is very poor. At that point, you can pay for editing and have a professional revise it. Or you can ask experienced senior professors or lecturers in your group or team to check the reasoning and quality. That is also very important.

Astro Boy: Publishing is certainly harder than before, because our own supervisors already have some recognition in the field. When I supervise students and publish papers myself now, I sometimes still show the work to my former supervisor. They generally do not ask to be listed as an author, though, and I remain the corresponding author. They offer distinctive suggestions about the paper's structure and broader directions that our own experience does not yet cover. After revising in light of those suggestions, I also feel that they have helped.

Challenge: teaching

Little Shrimp Online: Over the past three years in particular, the education system across China has given teaching and educating students a very high priority. Our university's teaching load is not very heavy. We are currently required to teach 64 class periods a year: one course in the first semester and one in the second. One course per semester is not a great burden for me. It means two class periods a week during the semester—in other words, I only need to teach for two hours a week.

What gives you a sense of achievement in teaching?

Little Shrimp Online: Teaching and educating students is very meaningful. When you see a student you have trained learn something, starting from zero, like a blank sheet of paper, and you help them build a framework of knowledge until they finally understand it, you feel a real sense of achievement. When I taught undergraduate and graduate classes, the students would burst into applause at the end. I found that very enjoyable and meaningful. Your students give you a thumbs-up because they feel your class has helped them. After every class, I feel motivated and look forward to the next one. This positive feedback is very meaningful, and the interaction is excellent.

Nicolas Cage: Our teaching assessment requires 180 workload units. If you teach small classes, you need three or four courses to meet the requirement. For large classes—say, 100 or 200 students—one large course plus one small course in a semester is enough. But I feel that doing research for promotion while also teaching does have some impact on both.

If you want to develop your own teaching style and improve the classroom experience, you really have to put in a lot of work. That is particularly true for someone who has not taught before and is not very familiar with the teaching materials. I think it takes quite a lot of effort.

Starting a new course is an even bigger challenge. Many of us teach courses outside our own field. For example, I work on meat, but I may have to teach a course on alcoholic beverages. You have to learn the subject in advance, organize it, and then present it. That process is quite demanding.

A new course is a challenge for a teacher just starting their career. Teaching is also different from presenting your research. You need to explain what you have learned in very accessible terms, while having studied it in sufficient depth yourself. If students ask questions you cannot answer, for example, it can seriously affect your teaching.

Astro Boy: Things are fairly good where we are at present, because we have a research institute. Faculty can follow either a researcher promotion track or a professor promotion track. You can choose whether to focus more on teaching or research. In KPI assessments, your research points can offset teaching points. That gives faculty useful flexibility, which I think deserves praise.

Having a new teacher rush straight to the front line, stand at the lectern, and teach something they are not particularly familiar with is, in my view, irresponsible toward students. I therefore hope younger teachers like us can be given more of a buffer and more room to grow. For example, someone could spend five years working and learning before taking on classroom teaching. At the same time, teachers who are especially good at teaching could be given greater opportunities for promotion, allowing them to teach more and do less research. That would create a better distinction between roles.

Challenge: supervising students

Little Shrimp Online: I think the biggest difficulty in supervising students for the first time is the unknown. It is not that you are unaware of what supervision is. Rather, you do not know how to do it: if you are strict, you worry they cannot take it; if you are not strict, you worry they will become slack.

Another issue is that the conditions I can provide may not meet the expectations the student had for themselves or for me. They arrive with high expectations, including high expectations of their supervisor. That can certainly be awkward, and we can only work things out gradually.

Nicolas Cage: The biggest difficulty really is not knowing how to supervise.

Having only just moved on from being a student yourself, supervising students feels strange. In my everyday interactions with them, besides discussing study and work, we are like friends. We play sports or have meals together, and sometimes become fairly close. But when certain problems arise, I really do not know how to handle them. For instance, they may ask a technical question that I do not know how best to deal with myself. I do sometimes feel confused: how do you help a student become an excellent student, influence them academically and in life, and train them well?

But when I genuinely put care into how I treat students, I do receive some positive feedback from them. Gradually, the outline of how to supervise begins to emerge.

Do you need to establish authority and a sense of seriousness in front of students?

Little Shrimp Online: I did not think about it that way at first. I simply thought that supervising the student well would be enough. I was relatively modest and low-key then, and did not dare make such demands. Gradually, though, I came to feel that a supervisor should have some authority; otherwise, students do not listen. You need a balance of leniency and firmness.

As PhD holders, we certainly know more about our subject than our students, so at some level you can impress them and convince them you know what you are doing. You have mastered the details of your research, while a newcomer knows almost nothing, so they will think you know a great deal.

How to choose a research topic

Little Shrimp Online: You certainly need to continue building on your previous direction, but you cannot simply inherit it unchanged. As times move on, what was once a current direction becomes an old one. There is a trend in China to make one subject extremely fashionable, then move on four or five years later and promote a new direction. So it is not really possible for us to work on exactly the same thing forever.

When coming up with new ideas, should you follow trends or open up new fields? I think there are two things to consider: what the world needs, and what you have to offer. Which matters more? Definitely the first. Demand always comes first. If you can combine the two, that makes a fairly good direction.

Nicolas Cage: As newcomers who have just started working, we first need to establish ourselves in the field and do work that others recognize. Then, based on our research experience, we can gradually develop points of interest and open up new fields. So I think coming up with ideas is difficult.

At the beginning, you certainly need to follow the trends when choosing topics, but you must not abandon the idea of exploring new fields. While keeping up with trends, think about other fields you might enter. Once the time is right, you have the energy to do more, and you have more students, you can try something new.

Tips on applying for funding as a new supervisor

Little Shrimp Online: Applying for funding is certainly difficult early on, because people in the field may not know you particularly well yet. You have to make contact gradually, get to know people, and seize small opportunities in the field—not yet the big ones. Gradually, people come to think you are trustworthy. As time passes and they feel your work is reasonably good, some longer-term projects with greater opportunities will follow.

I really do not have any special trick for this. I have simply worked through it over time. If you want a shortcut, I think a major factor is knowing established researchers who can back you, or having very good collaborators. Those resources are very helpful for entering the field; that could be considered a shortcut. Later on, though, independence may be a natural tendency for everyone. After building up some experience, you may develop your own sources of opportunities in the field. That is my experience: you can only build things up gradually.

Nicolas Cage: I do not have much experience yet, particularly as someone who has just graduated. If you cannot secure a talent program, such as the Young Changjiang Scholars program, I think you can start by getting backing from established researchers. Begin with collaborations on university-level projects, industry projects, or open research projects, for example. University and industry projects require influential people to help you secure them; applying for them independently is still quite difficult for a new supervisor.

Astro Boy: First, apply for whatever funding you can obtain yourself and build up a track record. Another approach is to get backing from established researchers. I collaborate with my former supervisor. I work in biomedicine, and animal experiments, cell experiments, and similar work are all carried out with my former supervisor. They also give me part of the funding to manage.

Advice for new supervisors

Little Shrimp Online: The most important thing is to establish your research direction as early as possible. That is the top priority. You must have a direction you can discuss with others and present in slides. It is essentially the foundation on which we establish ourselves. When you talk to someone, they will certainly ask what you do, right? So deciding on your research direction early is the first point.

The second point is to establish relationships and contacts with your peers as early as possible. Whatever your research direction, much of the information and guidance you want comes through those contacts. Making connections early with leaders, peers, and institutions that are more accomplished or stronger than you is therefore crucial for your own development.

Nicolas Cage: First, determine the direction of your basic research. When looking for an institution to join, most people will be joining a team. Within the team's broader direction, define your research direction based on your first funding application—for example, one to the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Then expand and innovate from that foundation. Second, look at the field's future needs and gradually combine them with what you are able to do.

Astro Boy: I hope all teachers will be able to do work they enjoy while staying true to themselves. Do not all rush toward a direction simply because it is especially fashionable. That way, there will be greater differentiation, and your overall career development will also improve.

As the saying goes, the beginning is always the hardest. If you are a new supervisor, are you ready?

Supervisors: Little Shrimp Online, Nicolas Cage, Astro Boy

Editor: Honey Peach Oolong

Interviewers: Fantuan, Calorie

Recording: Honey Peach Oolong