I'm approaching the submission stage myself and I've been told more or less the same thing as missspacey. If your thesis is good you'll pass as long as you don't give the impression that someone else wrote it. Obviously in the majority of cases there will be some things that the examiners will want correcting. If your thesis is borderline then I was told that it's about convincing the examiners that the work is good enough.

As for preperation I couple of people told me to go through the thesis page by page and write down in a line the main aspect of that page, do this for every page and it shows you know your thesis inside out. Obviously I haven't had my viva yet so I haven't tried it myself

My university has the policy that until you have passed your PhD you can't be formally employed as a postdoc, you appear to be to everyone in the department but you are only being paid as a research assistant. I know this because my officemate was in this position for a few months. He was staying on continuing the work he did in his PhD but for the 4 months between submitting and formally passing (after his viva, corrections and the admin were done) the was a research assistant and then got a ~£5k a year pay rise when he passed and his position was changed to a postdoc. Apparently this is common practice in some universities (usually for continuing students), but apparently some universities can't do this if the position is advertised as a "Research Fellow", it can only be done if the post is advertised as "Research Fellow/Research Assistant" for technical reasons I'm lead to believe

I agree that it's how you put yourself across in the interview and ideas etc have value. But in a fairly competitive job market some candidates won't even get to the interview stage to put these across but the publications list will be seen with the application form and could therefore be one of the (not the only) things used to screen candidates for interview

After a discussion with a couple of people in my department coffee room yesterday, I thought I'd see what peoples views on here were regarding the value of publications in regards to a science career in academia.

Obviously the universities value publications and so do academics when recruiting postdocs etc. but I was wondering to what extent. If you are going for a job as a postdoc when it comes down to evaluating candiates on publication record, is it simply a case of the candidate with the most papers is regarded as the best? If you have fewer papers in total but are first author on more is that better?

It seems there are a number of things that affect the number of publications you could gain in a PhD aswell as the order names appear on papers I just wonder how much if at all these are taken into account.

For example some groups have very liberal policies as to whose names go on papers. I am aware of a large group who will regularly publish papers with ~10 authors 2 or which have done 80-90% of the work, 2 or 3 have been present in discussions or contributed a little and 5 are listed on the basis that they were part of the group at the time but contributed nothing. These people tend to finish their PhDs with ~12 publications maybe 6 they contributed nothing to (and are listed close to the end), 3 they contributed a little to (middle) and 3 they were the main contributors. You could compare this to someone who was in a group of 3 people and contributed significantly to all but comes out with half the number of publications.

I'm about to submit my PhD thesis in the next few weeks, and am wanting to stay in academia and do a postdoc, so have been looking around at various positions. The problem is there is the Research Fellow/Research assistant issue, (a Research Fellow being a postdoc and a research assistant being someone without a PhD). I seem to be facing the issue that I am not eligable for a Research Fellow position until I pass my viva. It seems some places will allow a candidate to take on the position as a (lower paid) research assistant until they have a PhD at which point they then take a pay rise and become a Research Fellow. But other places don't seem as willing.

I was wondering if anyone had encountered this problem and could give advice. I don't want to (and can't afford to) sit around doing nothing between submitting and having my viva / doing corrections / completing

As you said there only seems to be women contributing the name debate, I'm a bloke and I'll ad my view point.

I wouldn't be too bothered if I were to marry someone and she wanted to keep her name, I wouldn't be bothered either way, if I were the one who had to change their name I wouldn't be bothered either. Although I can totally understand people who keep their maiden name in their academic career. I think the problem comes with kids names. I think both parents would want their child to have the same surname and if they don't have the same surname then it gets complicated

I'm also interested in the other system you mentioned "personal inheritances they receive" remain belonging to one person, what happens then if say you receive an inheritance and spend it on paying off the morgage or something?

Shani: as I understand it (I've had no first hand experience) the British system means everything you have when you get married then becomes shared and any money earned is also shared, but if you get divorced things get complicated and it's up to the judge to decide who gets what based on contributions to marriage (ie if one partner works while one gives up work to look after kids that is considered as important as going out to work)

The Dr debate isn't something I've really thought about that much to be honest, but if you have earned the title by doing years of hard work I don't see why you should feel embarrassed about using it.

As far as I understand medical "doctors" are only honourary awarded the title doctor, as they haven't completed a doctorate. Tghis for me is where the problem lies

Cool, thanks for that H.

I got all the pre-course pack stuff through today to read so I should know a bit more about it soon.

Incidentally I've only got one log-in name on here and I wouldn't have time to reply to my own messages. (Plus doing so is sad)

Does anyone else have the problem where they start stuff but never seem to finish it?

I'm 2.5 years through my PhD and I've got 4 experimental chapters and I'm currently still working on all of them. I'd hoped by this stage to have at least one maybe two finished and just have to write them up. It's so frustrating as I seem to have done a lot of work, but still don't have anything solid to show for it (papers or thesis chapters), is anyone else in a similar position?

I found out when the dates for this year went up as i really wanted to got to the lake district one ... and had to get one sorted for before my funding runs out

I'm off to one of the UK Grad schools in the Lake district in May, I just wondered if: i) anyone else here is going to that one. and ii) if anyone's been before what sort of stuff they do? (as I don't know that many people that have been)

I'm having a similar problem with my research, what I'm doing is fairly new in my field. I've got data analysis and simulations and have already gone further that I originally planned, but I keep thinking if I were to get this information or change this slightly, it would be so much better.

But I think you have to have a look at what you've done and as long as you've got enough I don't think everything has to be perfect. At some point you have to decide enough is enough.

Just wondering if any of you had meet you bf/gf in the time you've been doing your PhD?

Up until a few months ago I had been seeing an undergrad who was in her final year, but we split up, and now I'm finding it really difficult to meet people. I feel as though I'm stuck in a rut, alot of people I meet outside of university aren't interested because I'm still a student at 25, and alot of undergrad students don't want to know either, because of the academic situation or because of exams and leaving upon their graduation. I feel really frustrated that no-one understands. Dating someone in the department isn't possible as I'm in such a male dominated department