Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Advice to a Freshly Graduated Graduate Student

Yesterday, I asked Junjie where his code would eventually be available. Initially Junjie wanted me to post it on my google site since he did not have an internet presence. During our back and forth conversation, it became clear that letting others be the owner of one's intellectual work and accomplishments is not a good signal fresh graduates want to send to the rest of the world. 

If you are a graduate student who has put the work, your research production cannot be in the hand of others by:

  • having only a personal website located at your current university (next department head or IT support could switch off your visibility from the web in one single blink)
  • not sharing your preprint or published article because you think that signing off a copyright statement to a journal means that you have to hide your work production from your peers forever (check what you can do here: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ )
  • not sharing your code implementation: once the implementation is out, others will use it, you will become a giant, see Nobody Cares About You and Your Algorithm. At the very least, you will be able to go back to your graduate work easily six months from now.
  • not pitching your work on Nuit Blanche (provided it is relevant - please tell me how it is relevant -). I specifically try to avoid deeplinking to implementations so that people can land on the researcher's or his/her publication page.
Junjie just produced an independent web presence and has released his code for yesterday's implemention here:


I'll update yesterday's entry to link back to that page.

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