Publishing a research paper for the first time

hadsed
Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:12:40 +0000

In regards to zman talking about scientific literature, this is something that your mentoring professor will know. However, it’s always a good idea to read papers on your own. I try to get through papers in different fields whenever I get a chance. Reading the highly technical wikipedia articles (serious) is also very helpful. It’ll feel like hell for a few weeks, months, maybe even close to a year for some things, but eventually it gets you into the right mindset and soon you’ll be able to understand at least some of it.

Also, it helps to stay on top of the ‘popular’ side of things. Physorg is a great site that has tons of feeds to different areas of science, and I have a personal feed linked to it through Google Reader. They almost always cite the scientific papers, so it’s a good opportunity to try and understand things especially since you have someone translating it to laymen terms, which helps.