7. "When Should I Do My PhD?"

Deciding to do a PhD is a big commitment. Last week I challenged you with the 7 questions you should ask yourself to see if a PhD is right for you. If, like me, you choose to do a PhD, there is a strategy to decide 'when' to do your PhD to maximise your chance of getting post-doc funding to continue your academic career. This week I focus on the strategy behind 'when'.

My Experience:

Depending on how long you have been in research, you may be thinking, “Wow, so many people have PhDs now!” You are correct. In both the US and Australia, between 2000 and 2018/2019 the number of people with PhDs has doubled. So instead of a PhD being rare in research, it is now expected you will have a PhD, especially if you want an academic career. A PhD is the minimum degree required to be considered an academic, and you need a PhD to be considered for any funding for your research.

Funding is the not-so-secret secret to having a long academic career. If you have funding, you have a job. Without funding, your career is at the mercy of the more senior researchers in your research group, (and their ability to get enough funding for themselves and you) and/or your university or research institute paying your salary. If you choose an academic career, you are choosing this uncertainty.

So in the past 20 years, the number of people seeking post-doc funding has doubled, but the funders money pot has likely stayed the same, or may have even shrunk a bit. In Australia, of all the post-docs applying for funding, only 8% are successful. This is the hardest part of having a career in academia, the funding uncertainty. But if you have a strategy to increase your chances at post-doc funding, you are one step closer to having an academic career.

When Should I Do My PhD?

There are two paths to consider 'when' to do your PhD.

1. The traditional route: be a paid researcher for a number of years before starting your PhD.

2. The modern route: progress through your degrees without any paid research experience. That is, going straight from your undergraduate degree, maybe doing a Masters or going straight onto a PhD.

There are pros and cons to both approaches, the deciding factor is your field and the number of publications or outputs required to secure post-doc funding.

• If you need a high number of publications to have a shot at post-doc funding, you should consider the traditional route of doing paid research work before starting your PhD to build up your number of publications.

• If you need a lower number of publications, which you could achieve it during your PhD, consider starting now.

Please note, the number of publications required to get post-doc funding will likely increase during your time as a PhD student. So to maximise your funding chances, aim for more publications than is currently required.

Funding Facts

So, if you decide a PhD is the right choice for you, part of your strategy is knowing what funders look for when funding post-docs. To get funded, each funding body chooses the best post-docs based on the importance of their research project and their productivity, with the most emphasis on track record (number of publications) and past funding success. This is because the funders want to fund productive researchers, and the best predictor of future productivity is past productivity.

The Research Project

Researchers spend months writing, editing and refining their research project in post-doc funding applications. The research project lays out a problem that you will solve. This problem, or research topic, needs to be realistic and achievable, but you also need to convince your reader of the importance of you solving the problem. Your application should make your reader care about the problem, and believe in you and your ability to solve this problem. If they believe in you and your project, they will fight for you to get funded over the other post-docs. This is also an important lesson, you need to know how to sell the importance of the research problem and pitch yourself as the only person who can solve it.

Researcher’s Productivity

In your application, you have more control over your productivity, i.e. your number of publications and conference presentations. In addition to the problem you will solve, your reader will review the past 5 years of your research career to determine your research experience, assess the skill set required to solve the problem, your supervisors expertise and your track records, both individually and together. As a quick rule, the more experience you have, the more publications, the more senior your post-doc supervisor, and the more publications you have together, the more likely you will receive post-doc funding. (See 'The Academic Playbook' for strategies to boost your productivity).

It is also important for you to know that your post-doc application will be compared to other researchers in the same theme or discipline. For example, all my post-doc applications were in the public health stream, so my application was only compared against other public health researchers. This is to ensure that a public health researcher is not compared to a physical science researcher, as the former is a more productive stream than the latter. So it is important you know what stream or field you will apply for funding as a post-doc, as this will determine how productive you need to be before and during your PhD.

In 2017, I applied for post-doc funding. I wrote 13 grant applications this year and had a 0% success rate. My first post-doc funding application was with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), one of the largest medical research funding bodies in Australia. I spent about 2 months writing, editing and refining my application.

My research problem was: to better understand the treatment patterns of people with inherited heart disease using population-health datasets by linking an individual's hospitalisation, emergency department and cause of death data.

My productivity level was:

• 22 publications

• 5 conference presentations

• around $100,000 of funding (primarily through a PhD scholarship)

• peer reviewed 10 articles,

• professional membership to three bodies

• 5 research awards/prizes

• 1 translational piece of research

• 11 years of research experience

These figures were well above the minimum post-doc funding requirements published by the funding body on their website, but these guidelines had not been updated in several years. (See ‘The Lessons’ for advice on how to determine what the current, actual minimum funding requirements are).

So to answer the ‘when’ question for public health researchers, you should consider the traditional route of being a paid researcher for a couple of years prior starting your PhD. As you need to have a very high number of publications (>20 papers), which is not achievable during your PhD. In Australia, you have only 2 years after being awarded your PhD to secure post-doc funding, and the more publications you have prior to starting your PhD the higher your chances of getting post-doc funding.

The Lessons:

• Speak to your potential PhD supervisor

One of the quickest ways to see when you should do your PhD is to talk to your potential PhD supervisor. Ask them if they know the productivity level required for you to secure post-doc funding in that field. Ask their advice about your chances of securing post-doc funding if you started a PhD now based on your current CV, and if your chances would increase if you waited a year or two and did some paid research work to build up a track record, some research experience and additional research skills.

• Ask a professor to be your post-doc supervisor

In securing funding, both yours and your post-doc supervisor’s track record will be assessed, individually and combined. The more senior your supervisor, the better their track record, and the higher your chances of securing funding. So a professor would give you the best chance of getting post-doc funding. However, as a professor, they will likely be the head of a large lab and employ multiple researchers so the potential for learning opportunities may be reduced when compared to a smaller lab.

• Try to stay in the same content area

In Australia, it is common (and smiled upon by funding bodies) for a person to leave the research group they did their PhD with and find another research group to do their post-doc with. This will make you a stronger researcher, as you will learn from multiple academics. If you can find another research group in the same content area or using the same methods, this would increase your chances of securing funding compared with having to learn a new content area.

• Determining the minimum publication requirements for post-doc funding in your field

The number of publications required for post-doc funding varies across fields and jurisdictions. To figure out the minimum requirements for your field, go to the funders website and see if they publish the names of the early career researchers who got funded. Print out their names, and then look up their publication history on PubMed and/or Google scholar. Next to each name write down the number of publications they have. This is not a perfect measurement for productivity, but it is a good proxy. How close are you to that number of publications? Don’t forget the number of publications required to get funded will likely increase in the coming years. You can repeat this task each year during your PhD so you can see the increase in productivity from year to year.

• Plan your post-doc whilst still doing your PhD

If you are coming towards the end of your PhD, ask your supervisor about your future. If you move on to another research group see if you can work on a paper with them whilst still completing your PhD. Worst case scenario, you will have another publication and some experience working with the other group to see if it is a productive collaboration. Best case scenario, you have now shown you are productive with your new research group and increased your chances of getting post-doc funding.

• Give yourself lots of time to write your research project proposal

You need to develop the skill of talking about your research career as a story, where every job or project you have worked on has given you the skills required to solve the problem you set out in your research proposal. Practice this story, tell it from different angles until you perfect it.

You also need to make your research proposal as compelling as possible. You want your reviewer to think ‘How can we NOT fund this?’ If possible, give your application to multiple researchers from different fields, and seek their feedback. You will not know the expertise of your reviewer so you need to make sure people outside of our field understand the importance of your research.

• Write a kick ass paper during your PhD!

If you want to ignore all of this advice, simply get one of your PhD papers published in one of the best journals in the world like the New England Journal of Medicine or Lancet. If you get a first-author paper published in either of these journals as a PhD student, funders will just throw money at you. And I wish you a long and successful academic career!!

• Leave academia

The 'when to do your PhD' question is only relevant if you stay in academia. If you are planning to leave academia when complete your PhD, then do the PhD whenever it suits your life.

When did you choose to do a PhD? Did you choose the right time or the wrong time for your career? Please leave a comment below or email me at AuthenticResearchExperiences@gmail.com

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Photo by Shawn Lee on Unsplash

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"Should I Do a PhD?"

"The Academic Playbook"

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