Strategizing Your Research Project: Developing Your Portfolio Elements

When life gets hard, and you still have to get your research project done, sometimes it’s hard to focus and figure out the “most important thing.”

Blog Update: How to Get More Focus and More Time

Dear All – this is an update, added Sept. 22, 2022.

Building your Portfolio is a BIG THING.

Just doing a project is big.

Writing it up as a “professional” paper is about 10X (a whole magnitude) more.

Building a Portfolio is another 10X (another order of magnitude) more.

I’m not saying effort, I’m saying this is a matter of focus, clarity, and intention.

You create this thing energetically before you assemble the first data set, write the first paragraph, or upload the first item.

The thing that has helped me the most to create the internal mental and energetic space – within which I could create new things (and sustain things that I have created) – has been using the “80/20 principle,” as put forth by Perry Marshall.

Doesn’t matter if this book is about marketing.

Friends, we are – all of us – ALWAYS marketing. This is life.

Get the book. It’s 1 cent plus shipping & handling.

You’ll also get onto Perry Marshall’s email list. That, in itself, is something to be desired. (You can unsubscribe later, if you want – but I’ll say that Perry’s are among the few emails that I DO open on a regular and consistent basis.)

Here’s the link: https://m171.infusionsoft.com/go/8020sm/ThemesisInc1/

Note: Themesis, Inc. is an affiliate partner with Perry Marshall, and will receive a small commission if you purchase this book using this link. Thank you!

“Figuring out the most important thing” means that we want to strategize how we develop our research Portfolio, and figure out how to best deploy our efforts.

It’s becoming more obvious every day that they didn’t teach “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz at the 401st KGB school in Leningrad when Vladimir Putin was a student in 1975. Right from the start of the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Putin violated Clausewitz’s most famous axiom, that a true strategist should “identify the decisive point and concentrate everything on it, removing forces from secondary fronts and ignoring lesser objectives.”

Lucian K. Truscott IV. 2022. Putin’s big fail: He’s a spook, not a military commander — and not even a good spook (msn.co www.salon.com (April 13, 2022 9:30AM (EDT))

Clearly, in the early stages of his invasion of Ukraine, Putin was not following Clausewitz’s guidance. He didn’t pay attention to Sun Tzu, either. (See the Themesis post from four weeks ago: https://themesis.com/2022/03/17/the-great-career-boosting-reading-list-books-4a-4b/ )

We need to do better than that.

In this blogpost, I’ll share the strategies and secrets that I’m using, with the hopes that you’ll find this useful in organizing and carrying through your own project.

Applying Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” to Your Strategy

Let’s make this practical.

Those of us who are prepping for a career transition, or moving into a higher career stage, are like Sun Tzu’s general who is advised to “occupy high ground.”

On accessible terrain,

He who occupies high Yang ground

And ensures his line of supplies

Will fight to advantage.

For this specific quote, see: https://www.onverticality.com/blog/sun-tzu-quote-1. For the full Chapter 9 from The Art of War, see: https://suntzusaid.com/book/9

Practically applied to each of us: “Accessible terrain” – this notion applies to most of us, especially if we are doing new work – something that no one has done before, or as well as we can do it, or targeting the specific niche that we are targeting. “Accessible” means that we can do the work, get it published, and make a name for ourselves.

“High ground” will differ for each of us, but would likely mean some combination of:

• Being the first to publish, and

• Being able to create a “defensible fortress” – meaning, having the MOST papers on the topic; owning that space. This might also include publishing a book.

Perry Marshall and Sun Tzu: Two “Development” Gurus

Perry Marshall (my favorite business development guru) gives us ideas on how to grow and protect our business – which some of us may need to interpret as “intellectual capital” in terms of leadership and preeminence in a given space.

The easiest way to start with Perry Marshall thinking is with his “80/20 Sales and Marketing” book: https://m171.infusionsoft.com/go/8020sm/ThemesisInc1/

Note: Themesis, Inc. is an affiliate partner with Perry Marshall, and will receive a small commission if you purchase this book using this link. Thank you!

Back to Sun Tzu

In Sun Tzu terms, developing your research project and writing it up is your version of the “army on the march” (https://suntzusaid.com/book/9).

Sun Tzu advises us to get through whatever obstacles we encounter – high mountains and salt marshes, as examples – as fast as we possibly can: “Pass quickly over mountains, and keep in the neighborhood of valleys,” and “In crossing salt-marshes, your sole concern should be to get over them quickly, without any delay.”

Our version of “mountains” can be the major obstacles – in my case, it was developing the major chunks of code, working out the equations, doing the theory, getting and refining the data, etc.

Our version of “salt marshes” is likely to be the sticky, gooey stuff that bogs us down – that is just plain depressing – and sucks the energy out of forward progress. While we each have our own versions of “salt marshes,” mine include: code debugs, debugging elements of my LaTeX paper draft, going back to fix old arXiv papers that have errors of one sort or another … all tedious and persnickety and time-consuming, without a lot of the fun of a good creative surge.

So, if I’m to apply Sun Tzu to myself, once I get the current paper done and need to backtrack into some “salt marsh areas,” the guidance would be to focus down and get that work done as expeditiously as possible, once started. In other words, an intensely focused effort, not stretching it out over days or weeks. (Or months.)

But let’s assume that we’re all ready to press forward and “occupy high ground.” That means that we need to get our research done and our research paper done, and get the paper posted someplace online where three factors come into play:

• You need to be findable – online presence and availability,
• You need to be searchable – wherever you host your Portfolio, you need to make sure it is Google-searchable, and that you are intelligently using SEO (search engine optimization) keywords when you upload and describe your work, and
• You need to have a publication date attached to your work. (This is where being hosted in a public repository, such as arXiv, or Northwestern’s repository for Capstone projects and master’s theses makes sense.)

In practical terms, implementing this Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz-inspired strategy means a COMBINATION of one or more of the following:

• Use some form of public online repository – such as arXiv (which requires being endorsed by at least one person qualified to “endorse” into arXiv), or Northwestern’s (or your appropriate university’s) respository,
• Publish and/or present in some known forum where the primary advantage will be open-access searchability and accessibility, and
• Get your own website (your own domain name), create a Portfolio page, upload your document to your website, and link to it from your Portfolio.

Let’s take this further into more specific guidance.

Step 1: Start Your Research Paper Early.

Start your research paper as the FIRST THING. Even before you collect data, find or assemble your code, or do ANYTHING else.

There are several reasons for this:

• It takes a long time to write a quality paper. It takes MORE TIME THAN YOU THINK it will. Therefore, the early start gives you that very-blessed lead time.
• You can do some tasks in parallel. For example, you can get your Literature Review started. It takes a LOT of time to find your references and to format them appropriately. I’m starting this blogpost within an hour after sending out the e-blast about the LAST post, and then I went back to that post … and found several references that needed minor tweaking. The little details ALWAYS take the most time. Get started now, and you’ll have these things in order when you get to wrapping things up later.
• Some things just take multiple iterations. It doesn’t matter how good you are, there are some aspects of your paper – such as the Introduction and the Abstract – that will ALWAYS need multiple passes. So, getting something down early – even if it is a throw-away draft – will at least get you going. The WORST POSSIBLE situation in which to find yourself is trying to write the Abstract or Introduction on the night on which the paper is due, or when it has to be turned in for a journal deadline.

For my current project, I started the paper before I started the actual research.

I could do this, because I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do. I was building on prior research, so I had a prior paper that I could take apart and use as a “scaffolding” for the new one. That gave me a head start on things such as the Literature Review. Even so, taking apart the old paper has taken a LOT of time – sometimes it’s easier to start from scratch.

Three Key Elements of Your Publication Strategy

Within this overall guidance – to get your paper started early – there are three specific, useful strategic pointers:

• Figure out where you’ll place your paper – and what position it will hold in your overall Portfolio,
• Due diligence on those who will “weigh in” on your work, and
• Allow generous time for peer review.

Step 1(a): Figure Out Where You Will Be Placing Your Paper

My previous paper was published in a Special Issue in the journal Entropy. For the current work, I wanted to move to a different journal and (potentially) reach a larger (or at least different) audience. So, I decided to shoot for IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI, as it’s known.)

My first step was to go to the journal’s website and to download their template.

I spent a few days installing the template, getting the LaTeX bibliography style to work, and doing a lot of very mundane “housekeeping” tasks. For example, TPAMI uses a double-column layout. To stay within this style, I decided to reformat a number of figures to be highly-vertical, so that they’d fit within a narrow column, instead of my preferred across-the-page layout.

Then, I started working on the major new sections – the Intro and Lit Review, primarily. I could build on my prior work, but they needed major reworking.

All of this took over a week – a big chunk of time during the last Christmas vacation.

Step 1(b): “Due Diligence” on Your Proposed Editors and Associates

Even though, in my case, TPAMI seemed like a good potential fit, I hadn’t published with them before. Thus, in parallel with starting to shape up the new paper, I began a “deep-dive” into the journal itself. Who were the Associate Editors that might have an interest in what I was doing – or even the capability to read my work? Who had previously published articles in that journal that might be related to what I was doing, and would thus be “citable”?

The strategy here is the same that we’d use if we were taking a new job. We’d want to “fit in” with the local culture. To do this, we’d observe the dress, habits, discussion topics, and other things about our new colleagues, and adapt (to some degree) to fit in with their style.

The common wisdom is: “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably IS a duck.” When joining a new community of ducks, we want to look as duck-ish as possible.

Alianna J. Maren

All of this took … at least several days. It was a combination of trolling through the list of Associate Editors, and doing Google searches for keyword combinations that might lead to authors who’d published in this journal. I also went through a couple of years (at least) of past issues, looking for related articles. (There were not that many – but – necessary step!)

Step 1(c): Plan for a Generous Peer Review Cycle

One of the most valuable lessons-learned in my last journal publication was that pushing close to the deadline made it impossible to get informal peer reviews in advance of the journal submission.

As I worked through the existing literature (almost NO relevant papers published in that journal) and the list of Associate Editors (and couldn’t find a single one who looked potentially knowledgeable about my topic), I realized that submitting blind to the journal was NOT be a good idea.

Unfortunately, I (and the Special Edition editors) were already committed.

So … I submitted (barely squeaking in under the COVID-extended deadline), and my manuscript got turned over to three Reviewers – one of whom was generous and kind, one who had some minor quibbles (that were fixable), and one who REALLY HATED that work.

It would have been MUCH BETTER had I found some scientists to give this an early informal review, and to have semi-lined-up as potential “reviewers” whose names I could submit to the journal.

But … that didn’t happen. Lesson learned.

In order to have carried out this strategy of getting early and informal reviews, the smart thing would have been to publish a draft to arXiv, and to use arXiv’s generous allowance for multiple draft submissions as a way to incrementally incorporate feedback and tweaking.

Journal submissions are a good thing … but they’re the LAST STEP in the whole process, and that intermediate round of circulating your paper among trusted peers and colleagues is essential to getting good quality.

Here’s an example.

One of Geoffrey Hinton’s most cited papers, where he laid out the contrastive divergence algorithm, was published in 2002, in the prestigious journal Neural Computation. You can see the heading and abstract in Figure 1.

However, Hinton published his first version of this paper as an in-house technical report in 2000. You can see this early version in Figure 2.

Another way in which scientists do the same thing is to publish an early version of their work in the arXiv online repository. (Note: you have to be “endorsed” by someone who is a qualified “domain endorser” before you can upload your work to arXiv, so this isn’t always an option for emerging researchers.)

Many scientists will publish drafts to arXiv first. There are three good reasons for this:

• First, you date/time-stamp your work. If being the “first-to-publish” is important in your line of work, this verifies your early date of publication.
• Second, it is easy to invite colleagues to do peer reviews. Instead of emailing out various drafts to colleagues, you can ask them to find the most recent version at your paper’s arXiv location.
• Third, you can upload revised drafts – as often as needed. (REALLY a useful thing if you’re collecting peer reviews prior to publication.)

So, whether you’re putting your first draft up as a corporate Technical Report, as a post to arXiv, or on your own private-domain website, getting your paper out there for early review is a VERY useful thing!

YouTube Playlist Resource: Writing Your Research Paper

Check out this full playlist of YouTubes on “Writing Your Research Paper.”

2. Establish Your GitHub Repository

Almost all of my students – and most researchers – use GitHub.

I advocate setting up a separate repository for each project.

In addition to storing the code itself, I also use my project-specific GitHub repositories to store MS Powerpoint(TM) decks that contain data and results, together with various summaries of results, etc.

Most journals allow for a short section at the end that is titled something like “Supporting Data,” and another for “Code Availability.” Our GitHub repository is a good place in which to stash all of this.

3. Organize Your Data and Research Results – As You Go!

Let’s assume that you now have your research paper draft well in hand, and are shifting to the actual work. That is, you are:

• Obtaining, curating, and refining your data,
• Obtaining, revising, and testing your code, and
• Obtaining your first research results.

Each of these takes time, often in very different ways. Yet, for each of these steps, I personally use – and advocate to others – a strategy of storing overviews, details, and summaries in a MS Powerpoint(TM) deck as the work continues.

I’ll embellish this point in future blogposts.

To your health, well-being, and outstanding success!

Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.

Founder and Chief Scientist, Themesis Incorporated

P.S. – Feel free to comment, below, with ideas and suggestions that you’ve found helpful! – AJM

References

Hinton, Geoffrey E. 2002. “Training Products of Experts by Minimizing Contrastive Divergence.” Neural Computation 14(8) (August, 2002):1771-800. doi: 10.1162/089976602760128018 (Accessed April 3, 2022.) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12180402/

Hinton, Geoffrey E. 2000. “Training Products of Experts by Minimizing Contrastive Divergence.” GCNU TR 2000-004; Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London. (Accessed April 3, 2022.) https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/tr00-004.pdf

Good Vibes

Who says that you need a cat to enjoy this music?
I tend to run it in the background – all the time – when I’m at home, when I’m away. Very calming stuff: 15 Hours of Separation Anxiety Music for Cats.

(2) 15 HOURS of Separation Anxiety Music for Cats! Deep Sleep Therapy – YouTube