During my career as a research scientist, I’ve continued to contribute ideas add to our collective understanding about ecology and conservation science. But these advances have been dwarfed by the collective contribution made by my collaborators. Research students—Honours, Masters and PhD students, interns and keen undergrads—are a particular class of collaborator for whom I have the greatest respect.  They are a top priority, so I approach potential collaborators with particular preconceptions (both for the student and me): this document is a sketch of those standards and expectations. It’s broad strokes about stuff that matters to me, appreciating I’m very keen to champion stuff that matters to you.  And this duality begins with what to call it, this collaborative partnership.  Rather than the term supervisor, I find the American term “advisor” is more fitting. To date, I have advised 43 students and doubt that I will take on another 30 in the coming decades. So, while ideas, papers and grants come and go, I treat working with this finite group of early-career researchers as *the* most important aspect of my job. It is something about which I have thought a great deal so, for those interested in joining this group, you should know what you’re getting yourself into…

Generic skills.  Like any job, there’s a requisite set of skills needed to perform it properly, and the three most important ones in the research sphere are 1) the ability to read critically; 2) the ability to write clearly; 3) creativity. I don’t expect commencing research students to have all three, but two out of three ain’t bad (you won’t get used to the humour). Reading critically is fundamentally important: learning what’s been done before; identifying shortcomings with previous work; looking beyond what’s on the page to what is assumed or left unsaid. It takes a solid understanding of a particular area to be able to summarise what’s known. It takes a deeper and more complete understanding to identify what we don’t know—the gaps in our collective knowledge. Ands research should add to that, so reading is necessary and important work—an active process and an essential component of any project. I still read dozens of papers a week as a matter of course.  The other side of this coin is—I expect you to read at least half that.  I am happy to share what I know, but I’m really interested in what you know, and the more you read, the more you know.  Then, there’s writing.  Expressing yourselfclearly is one of the most important skills of a research scientist.  Using simple language to explain complex ideas is actually really difficult, but it gets progressively easier and you get better at it. Finally, creativity is the trickiest one of all—it may not be essential in all scientific fields and too much of it can be counter-productive, but recognising its importance, setting aside time to brainstorm, reading widely (including blogs, magazines, fiction) and talking to researchers outside your field will maximise your creative streak.  Science, research, learning new things—that’s all on top of this great stuff you do, not instead of.

Tactical skills.  In addition to these core skills you will need many others, from specific project-related ones (identifying plants, radio-tracking animals, reconstructing phylogenies) to more generic skills that will be useful in future jobs (data visualization, working in remote areas, dealing with difficult people). And these skills are really handy for so many other endeacours.  Regardless of your topic, a big chunk of yourresearch time will be consumed by repetitive tasks. Necessarily. Picking a topic is important, sure, but just as crucial is landing on study design that matches what you enjoy doing. If you do your best thinking and feel most alive when you’re outdoors with the wind in your hair, sorting out terabytes of camera trap images in a crappy office is going to fall short. And that’s up to you.  What are you good at doing, what do you want to get better about doing?  Once you’ve worked then out, it’ll be simpler to decide the ‘wheres’ and ‘hows’. As well as what sort of activities are involved, consider locations and the skills you really want to learn along the way. As a boy I was fascinated with the Amazon rainforest and the Neotropics generally—factors instrumental in my decision to undertake my PhD work in Central America.

Being a research student is a full time job.  Like other full-time jobs, you do it during defined periods. I don’t work outside work hours and I don’t expect my research students to work more than 40 hours per week, preferably less. You need to maintain your life outside research—all your relationships and all that stuff that keeps you grounded. There are plenty of solid reasons for this but the most measurable to my bosses is productivity. If you get to the office on Monday morning after pulling a couple of all-nighters to get that grant proposal submitted, you’re not going to be very focused on the job at hand. Rather, you’ll be distracted, tired, worried about all the home-stuff that was left undone. In contrast, if you spent the weekend fishing / dancing / making a spoon, then you’ll arrive at work fresh, grounded and ready to get into it. Indeed, while fishing / dancing / making said spoon, you were trying not to think about the analyses / invertebrate sorting / permit applications awaiting you on Monday, so will already be in the right state of mind when you clock on. Keeping tabs on your own work-life balance matters to me, so can look after all those other things in your life; things you’ll sometimes need for support.

Productivity.  Unlike my work that tends to be open-ended (I prefer not knowing where we’ll end up) your research has definite bounds, it has to be done within a specified time-frame. This means prioritisation is paramount. In a given moment, there’ll be multiple jobs that require your attention, and this will only get more crowded as you approach completion. Instead working through them in a particular order, I try to match the task to my present state of mind. Some jobs are mindless, some are urgent, many are both.  And writing can often be pushed down the to do list, so you need to try tricks to stop that happening. Designating writing periods doesn’t work for me, but colleagues rave about it.  Try anything?  For me, after working out “What needs doing” and “What has to done first?”, I immediately consider, “What can I do now?”.  If I’ve thought through something, connected some dots and want to consolidate my thoughts, I can achieve more in half an hour of clarity and jotting than in weeks of set aside space. If you’re distracted then chase up some references, catch up on formatting images, sort out paperwork. There’s never enough time, just find your own tricks to make better use of it.

Your project is yours.  I prefer student project topics and study systems from the periphery of my research program rather than  inside it. As well as expanding my horizons and my thinking, this is quite intentional—it clarifies ownership of ideas from the outset. Depending on how much the project area overlaps with my area of expertise, I will be more or less useful when it comes to specific input but, regardless, before the halfway mark YOU will be the expert with a far better and deeper understanding of your research area. This matters for authorship on resultant manuscripts so I have a simple approach to authorship—if I am involved in writing the paper, then I am an author; but papers arising from your work need not include me (or anyone else). An acknowledgment might be nice, it’s your call. Many former students have published single authored papers and papers with other collaborators.

No, you can’t continue.  This is the toughest bit for me. If you have completed your Honours or Masters with me, then I will not take you on as a PhD student. If you have completed your PhD with me, don’t assume you can stay on as a post-doc. It would be simpler for me but it’s rarely in your best interests. Having completed your project with me, you will have learned many of my tricks. We might get on really well and have plenty of ideas we want to pursue, but we can do that later.  Time to go and learn other tricks. Research is all about perspective; diverse ways of thinking, so working with more collaborators (ideally at multiple institutions) will expose you to a broader conceptual space than simply sticking with who / what / where you know. I appreciate this can be tough but you’ll be the richer for it.