Visitors to this Blog

United Kingdom (GB) 724 United States (US) 680 Australia (AU) 350 Malaysia (MY) 264 India (IN) 260 Philippines (PH) 188 South Africa (ZA) 156 Kenya (KE) 126 Canada (CA) 107 Pakistan (PK) 93 People come from far and wide to visit this blog. I have posted the top ten countries over the past year or so in terms of visitors. I am surprised that Australia, my own country, is so low. The UK and USA is no real surprise but then all of the countries, maybe apart from Canada, are a bit of a surprise. It shows that these countries are becoming increasingly concerned with research.

How to Complete a PhD

Several years ago I wrote a book explaining how to complete a PhD. It provides the methods, techniques and approaches to successfully completing a PhD within a fixed time frame. The book has been very successful and has obtained excellent feedback from students. It has helped people obtain scholarships, deal with supervision difficulties, write their thesis, and make a decision on whether to take a doctorate. The book is available from my web site: www.CompletePhD.com

Research, passion and bias

Passion in research is a good thing. It is a critical ingredient in making things happen and trying to make a difference in practice. The danger though with passion is that we ignore other possible ways of doing things as we start to believe that the thing we are passionate about is the "only" way of doing things. So rationality is required to be objective in exploring alternative ways, methods and philosophies. Research is continually evolving and we should not be custodians of methods and techniques since these should be allowed to evolve and develop. In a way, these are things that should be messed with since this can lead to new developments and ways of doing things.

What makes a good reviewer?

People have different views on what makes a good reviewer. Some people measure the quality of reviews by the number of words with a longer review being seen as better. For me a good review has balance, it states what is good as well as what needs to be improved or added. A completely negative review is destructive and the good points are lost on the author who will only see criticism. To me a good review stresses a number of things that need to be improved, the key things to get the article published. This does not necessarily mean it has to be several pages. In fact it can be quite succinct and hence more manageable for the author to understand and follow.

www.CompletePhD.com

New Centre for Innovative Practice

We have developed a new research centre at ECU. The theme is innovative practice and it is a Faculty wide entity that draws on researchers from accounting and finance, marketing, justice, law, management and information systems. We have have some research projects already underway. One in particular is related to "individual innovation" and examines how organisations can support their employees in being more innovative. We intend to collaborate with international organisations so if you have a proposal to put to us and would like to collaborate on a joint project please contact me about it. Craig Standing

Large research project anyone?

At the start of the year I invited people to get involved in a large research project. I wanted a large team (hundreds) to tackle a large project. I floated the idea of offering help and collaborating with groups needing advice. These could be villages in developing countries as an example, or groups anywhere. We have expertise that we do not always put to use and so I thought it might be a way of collaborating, using this knowledge and solving real issues and problems. Is anyone interested?

People Matter

I had wanted to do a PhD for a long time. Bill Black, my supervisor from my Masters, really put the idea into my head when we met a couple of years after doing my Master of Science in computing. I was coming back to Oldham on the train and we bumped into one another. He said, "why don't you take a Masters?" The fees were high but I thought maybe my College could partly sponsor me. As it turned out I came to Australia and enrolled in one here. Geoff Roy became my suprvisor and I was lucky to have such a good mentor. Since then I have collaborated with a large number of people and each one in some way has motivated me. So people matter a lot in research as they give you energy,ideas and make opportunties for you.