Study One - Publishing and intellectual application need not go hand in hand.
Consider the case of a biologist. If she decides, one week-end, to study the number of native grasses in her front yard she can, without restriction, proceed along the correct research route. She can throw the regulation square metre over her left shoulder and carefully sort and classify the grasses in the square. She now has enough material to write a research paper. "Native Grasses in a Suburban Lawn - Conflict and Competition". The paper will have all the form of a research paper: abstract, introduction, methodology, figures, tables charts, conclusion etc. Perhaps it may find a publisher only in the local nature magazine, never-the-less it is a research paper. The researcher has applied her skills in methodology and knowledge of grasses to produce an academic work.
In contrast, consider the case of a mechanical engineer at the same university who over the week-end does some mechanical design. Perhaps he designs a stock-yard of novel concept. He will apply the methodologies of engineering design, call upon his knowledge of materials and construction techniques and take into account the local availability of materials and labour. His intellectual input may well have exceeded that of the biologist on her week-end. For example in the course of the design he would have had to make many decisions each one affecting the quality of his design and requiring a critical application of knowledge and skills. Yet there is no possibility of the output of his labours resulting in an academic paper.
Moral: Some disciplines lend themselves to the production of academic papers, others don't. Biology and Chemistry do, Engineering doesn't, if you want to do Engineering and publish you best read Study Two.
Study Two. - Publishing in Engineering need not involve Engineering.
A friend of mine at another university has an engineering colleague who studies turbulent flow. The colleague works with the Navier-Stokes equations to evaluate explicit turbulent flow situations. He has a software package that can handle the Navier-Stokes equations. One time he will have a fluid flow flowing through a square pipe with sharp corners, another time it will be an oval pipe with a square peg stuck in it. For each situation he produces a paper.
On the other hand my friend studies flood flow in arid environments and makes use of remote data acquisition systems. On first sight it appears to be a healthy choice for a research discipline as the results of his studies are useful to many institutions and groups. However he explained to me "After begging the money from someone for the equipment and travel expenses I spend months designing, cajoling the workshop into building, programming and setting up the instrumentation; then hopefully the floods will arrive and I can acquire and analyze the data. If I can produce a paper 12 months after the start of the project I'm doing well, in the meanwhile (his colleague) can write 3 or 4."
Moral: If you must do Engineering Research avoid doing any Engineering. In any case read Study Three.
Study Three. - Pure is pure, applied stinks.
A friend of mine at another university is doing his doctorate in vibration analysis. He is developing mathematical techniques and implementing them in software. These techniques will permit a higher degree of accuracy in the inherent noisy conditions of practical vibration analysis. I bumped into his supervisor by chance the other week and asked how my friend was going. "I don't know", replied his supervisor (whose background is more pure) "after all, what he is doing could be done by a competent software consulting firm". Well maybe that's the case, if given the job (and finance!) by the military (say) the software consultants could hire a couple of PhDs and invest in some heavy computer power and off they go. It seems that my friend's work is somehow devalued because it is conceivable that an industrial organization could have reason to hire someone to do the same task. Part of the paradox is that had my friend used similar techniques and a more powerful computer (perhaps just for show) and found just a single extra star in the Milky Way (something no industrial organization would pay money for) then his research would have been pure and far more acceptable.
If we accept the supervisor's argument then how do we evaluate the intensive research (in semiconductors for example) done by private research laboratories?
Moral: To gain prestige avoid Applied Research, however if you can do Pure Research that can be applied then you're in.
Study Four. - It's easier to get up to speed on a good surface.
I was in the library at my old university the other month and met someone I knew from the maths department. He was reading a book titled "The Fundamentals of Area Estimation". He explained that the maths department was going to present a paper on this topic at a conference in a few months. It seems they had plucked the topic out of the air (perhaps the conference was in an attractive location) and he was preparing material for the paper.
Let me see you do that in software engineering, communication engineering or even plain electronics - start from a firm general understanding of the discipline and produce a conference paper in a few months!
Moral: Mathematicians are smarter than you first think.
Study Five. - Do little work, provide very little intellectual content, be guaranteed of results and be popular with your university hierarchy.
How? Move across to sociology. It works like this. Choose a topic that everyone can relate to and that will make good press. Useful keywords (location dependent) are aging, youth, rural, inner city, sex, gender, birth, death, immigration, poverty, education, language, adolescent, offender, crime and etc. Integrate your selected keywords with a phrase or two using keywords drawn from attitude, relates, influence, predisposes, and etc. Thus we could arrive at a topic, "How poverty influences youth's attitude to sex" for example. It is important that the topic is considered relevant to the local environment by the grants committee. (Relax, this is the only critical judgement you'll make in the whole process.)
Now, on your grant application be careful to include printing and mailing costs, but most important of all, include an allowance for a research assistant. We'll run through the process and you'll see how it works.
1) Devise a questionnaire. The easiest way of doing this is to simply copy an existing questionnaire. Remember to alter the relevant words - a competent research assistant can do this for you. This is not plagiarism. It is "adapting the established approach of Bloggs", or "refining and building on the work of Glob."
2) Get your research assistant to organise the word processing, printing, the envelop packing and the mailing of the questionnaire.
3) When the returns arrive get your research assistant to enter the results into a spread sheet or statistics package and to look for things that correlate, or as the case may be, don't. The important thing is that there will be results. There's no waiting for a chance event or inspiration, there will be results.
4) From the correlations or non correlations formulate either common sense statements or counter common sense statements.
(Either will do.) Trust me, something will turn up - you have such a great range of qualifiers to choose from:
strong - marked - distinct - significant - some - little - no
5) Contact the local press, radio and your university magazine with your "conclusions". They will be delighted to carry a line such as
"University researcher has formally proved what we suspected; ill people envy healthy people."
or
"University researcher announces a surprising result as a result of a comprehensive survey - ill people do not envy healthy people."
Or you could suggest the line:
"University researcher has formally proved what we suspected; ill people do not envy healthy people."
or
"University researcher announces a surprising result as a result of a comprehensive survey - ill people do envy healthy people."
It's really of little consequence.
Moral: Why bark when you can hire dogs?