*potential editor

Thanks for all the advice and tips and for taking the time to reply to my post. Much appreciated. Emailing pote rial editor is a great idea and I'll look more into that.

There's a couple of databases I've also found where people provide a protocol of their review and it gets a unique ID number. The databases are searchable so you can check them too. So far I've only found them for clinical psychology and health, but since it's a bunch of interventions I'm thinking of reviewing I might upload details there. I guess there is no guarantee that another group would also upload their protocol, so someone could still beat me to it. I'll look into getting it out as a preprint ASAP too as Jamie suggested. Cheers!

Clinical Psychology training would be relevant. I know you can do an undergrad or masters in psychology with a clinical psychology element. Then people go on to do the the Clinical Psychology Doctoral programme - it's very hard to get on due to the competition. Not sure of equivalents in other countries. Maybe your supervisor at the UNHCR could advise you?

Hi M.

I can empathise with the feelings being triggered. You could try listing and then avoiding the situations that trigger the feelings. Or if that isn't possible then it might just be a matter of time - maybe as you do and achieve more in what you are currently doing you'll start to feel less touchy about the past. I do get you though - I felt like this a lot in the final year of my PhD when I saw others being invested in more than I was and yet I felt I had similar capabilities (I won't digress!). It helped me a lot when another opportunity came along that made me feel more valued.

Tudor

Hello,

I know there are ways to register a systematic review such as a Cochrane review, so that others don't end up conducting the same review at the same time. But is there a way to register other review types - perhaps a systematic review that isn't a Cochrane one - or maybe even narrative/systematic hybrid review papers?

Basically, I want to check that someone isn't already working on reviewing the same body of literature before I start!

My top tip is to base it on others that have already been published in your target journals.

Hello,
That does sound really tough. Do you have a secondary supervisor or an academic advisor / tutor you could speak with about things?

Haha! :D

Thank you, both!

I have to disagree with you abababa... I get your gist in that of course good science should be succinctly written up. I agree that (to a degree) writing tends to get better the more you refine. However, a paper that is a typical length versus a brief report in the same journal does not mean that the former contains waffle! It just means it was written with the appropriate level of detail to fit the word requirements. I need to figure out what detail I can cut without affecting the quality as in the transparency of the methods etc. I am also thinking I might just be a bit cheeky and steal a couple hundred words as I am finding it extremely difficult to do so in this case!

In this particular journal, brief reports are reserved for science that is novel and interesting but might have a smaller sample than usual, for example. They allow half the number of words compared to the full empirical papers in the journal. The science to be written up is the same but you have half the space to do it in.

I think my best bet is to just look at the other brief reports published in this journal and see how they do it. There must be an acceptable level for omission of detail in brief reports like this – and I guess that is the balance I need to strike.

Actually, here is a better question... the guidance says nothing about whether tables are included in the word count. Reckon they are?

Ps. I just pasted a brief report that was recently published in the same journal into word... they have gone over the word limit by 1782 and that's not even including their tables!!!

I wonder if I need to take the word count too seriously... I am worried about lowering the quality of the paper yet don't want to submit it as a longer paper as it isn't quite enough for that.

I'm really struggling to cut my words drastically to fit the brief report word limit guidance. Are journals super strict / going to actually check? D:

I think there are probably quite a few options available to you. Have you heard of case collaborations? Because your topic of interest is related to your experience and work, I wonder if this could be an additional possibility for you. In case collaborations, part the funding is provided by a funder in industry and the other part is provided by a research council (as opposed to being fully research council funded).

This is the link to MRC case collaboration info:

You could also check out the ESRC one, as this is where the Psychology pathway is.

To address your specific question about a conversion course. I think it might depend on whether you feel you would benefit from it. I did a 1+3 which is a Masters + PhD. The Masters was an MRes which really skilled me up on the research side and was a great foundation for doing a PhD. The funding often includes this MRes year (at least Research Council funding does) and I would highly recommend it unless you quite confident in doing research already.

Do you have a specific idea already which is why you mention going down the psychology pathway rather than the medical one?

I don't think age really comes into it (expect for being an advantage due to your experience).

Hope this helps somewhat - there is a lot more specific advice that could be given about funding etc.

Ps. I am not sure if opportunities for next year are already affected by Covid-19. Again, you'd have to look at the Research Council funding websites for that info.

pm133 never fails to say what we are all thinking... :D

But giving the benefit of the doubt, PhD and viva stress can be immense and could cause someone to be less considerate than they might normally be.

Hi Rewt

I can only tell you that my friend, who is Microsoft-funded, has had her funding extended for an extra year. This is despite having already collected her data and being ready to write up. It seems to be driven by the fact that things are so uncertain at the moment rather than the idea that it would be impossible or challenging for her to submit on time.

I hope you get somewhere with your uni.

Tudor

It sounds like you get a good dose of realism from that supervisor - and it's good to manage expectations (especially in the light of the current situation as bewildered highlights). I think it's important to try and keep your goals and aspirations alive too though. Gives you something to work toward. So maybe talk to other supervisors and potential mentors too, who might be more optimistic and encouraging.