Monthly Archives: April 2017

How to succeed with research at the Department of Clinical Science?

Ræder_portrettFirst you have to define your specific scientific goals and a reasonable time frame. The goals and time frame are perhaps most clearly formulated for the graduate students: One need to publish at least three papers within one´s field of interest and write a Thesis within the doctoral time frame. It is perhaps less clear what the goals are, if you are postdoctoral fellow or a younger researcher who would like a successful career in science, but a friend in Boston used to say that within the postdoctoral time period one should try to achieve the following three goals: to carry out interesting and publishable experiments, to publish a good paper, and obtain an independent grant. He also believed that these three goals were part of a cycle where they reinforced each other’s chance mutually: You do not get grants without papers, and you do not get papers without experiments and you do are not able to carry out experiments without any form of funding.

Portrett disputas på Det medisinsk-odontologiske fakultet,

Amra Grudic-Feta

Somewhere in the cycle, however, you need to jump in, and here we hope that a new initiative from the Department can come to your assistance: The Department has defined its goals for better research in the Strategy Plan, and in June we will employ a research consultant, Amra Grudic-Feta, who will help us reach several of these goals. In particular, she will contribute towards four of the defined goals:

– in the structured approach for writing grant applications (F2),

– in follow-up of grant calls as well as publication of these in K2News (F2),

– as a resource that can help career counseling and career research education (RIK1), and

– as a contact point (catalyst) who may help scientists navigate to find the desired advanced equipment and expertise within the Department (RIK2).

We wish Amra welcome to the Department and hope she can help you to reach your goals.

Helge

Election notice and invitation to propose candidates

There will be elected members (and alternates) to the Faculty Board at the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry in group A, B and C.

Deadline for proposals of members (group A, B and C): Friday 28 April 2017 within 03:00 p.m.

Proposals must be received before the deadline by the Electoral secretary, Gjert Bakkevold, Armauer Hansen House 4th floor, room 416.

More information can be found here.

The election will take place from Monday 15 May (09:00 a.m.) to Monday 22 May 2017 (12:00 a.m.).

Employees must ensure that they are registered in the electoral roll.

Poster at the UoB’s conference on cooperation with China

UoB has had a longstanding research collaboration with China, and was a pioneer among Norwegian universities with such an initiative. UoB is now strengthening its cooperation with institutions and organizations in China, and hereby invites business partners, government employees, students and other stakeholders to an open conference on the university’s cooperation with China, and to participate with posters in a poster session.

Time: Thursday 4 May at. 09–16.
Location: University Aula.

Deadline for registration: Thursday 20 April at. 12 pm.
More information and registration form can be found here.

Deadline for registration of poster: 10 April.
Deadline to submit poster: 20 April.
Registration and poster should be sent to Åshild Nylund.

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Introduction to Sequencing Workshop

As part of the Norwegian Consortium for Sequencing and Personalized Medicine (NorSeq) the Genomics Core Facility in Bergen is happy to announce an introduction workshop where the NorSeq consortium presents an overview about the established high throughput sequencing services the consortium offers.

The workshop (12:30–16:00) will be given at three sites:

  • Trondheim: 24 April
  • Bergen: 26 April
  • Oslo: 28 April

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Predator journals and conferences scams

k2nytt_uke-14_rovtidsskrifter_bealls-listHave you ever received invitations to write reviews, or edit a special issue for journals that you have never heard of before? Or have you ever been invited to chair a session at a new conference within your field, because you are such an expert? Even sometimes in area that are not at all your expertise?

Well, most of us have and some of us can receive a dozen of those in a week. For the young scientist in early career, it can be easy to be fooled by those invitations the first time they received them. It is of course flattering for any scientist to be invited for a talk or a session. Like it happened to us this week.

Be aware of those so called “predatory conferences”: You are invited to chair and speak, but you still have to pay a high fee. Apparently, most of those conferences still take place, but none of the key speakers advertise are there, since they never agreed in the first place. You end up in a conference with a couple of people that have been fooled like you for a high price.

Similarly, “predatory journals” can scam you into writing an article for them, which they will eventually publish without any peer-review and no edition (you do it yourself), and you have to pay for all publication costs. It’s a lose-lose situation, since in addition you will never get any citations for that!

So be aware, don’t fall for those scams, and in case of doubt, ask around.

If you want to read more about this, here are two recent articles:

http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/11/dubious-conferences-put-pose-symposium
http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-journals-recruit-fake-editor-1.21662

One is about predatory conferences and why you should not answer to them. The other is about predatory journals, which had no problems employing Dr. “Fraud” as their new editor!

Stephanie Le Hellard