As someone supervising postgrad students, I wonder what is the best way to train these students to write high-quality research papers?
The best way seems to be through coauthorship but ...
On the one hand I can be hands-off and rather give them feedback as best as I can but let them do most of the work themselves, sort of like a "sink or swim" strategy.
On the other hand I can be hands-on and rewrite the paper (or large parts of it) and hope that they learn from the example I give.
On the one hand I want them to learn to write papers without me some day and I want them to learn as quickly as possible to take load off me.
On the other hand I want us to publish in the best place possible with as little stress as possible.
On the one hand I want them to see the peer review comments from what they themselves have written.
On the other hand I do not want them to be discouraged by the peer review system early on and do not want to submit papers I know we could have written better.
On the one hand I want them to get confidence by being published and presenting work at good venues.
On the other hand I wonder if they need to get there themselves to get that confidence boost.
At the moment I'm very hands on. There's a few factors for this: I don't like submitting papers that are not up to a certain standard, I'm a native English speaker in a non-English speaking country with non-native speaking students, publications are a high priority for me, etc.
But recently a friend/colleague warned me that I should not be so hands-on with the writing of the papers of my students. He pointed to recently graduated researchers in my area that published good work as students but who struggled after leaving their PhD supervisor saying their supervisor did them no favours in the long term ... that by being so hands on, while the students have success getting published and so forth with me, I'm not really doing the most important thing a good supervisor should do: making myself obsolete.
My question is how to train students to write good research papers and in what ways can I balance being hands-on and hands-off?
I'm also interested in methods not directly involving coauthorship.
Answer
edit: To clear a misunderstanding that might have arisen (see the answer of Kimball): the papers described here were not solo-papers. Neither me nor my advisor would ever have the idea to write a paper together and then put only one name on it...
My instructor did a really good job with that (and is still doing it), so I'll explain here approach as I experienced it:
For our first paper, we were sitting in her office, she wrote it and asked my opinion from time to time. I was still really new to everything and agreed most of the time, but I also already learned about some questions that should be considered and, of course, I learned the style she was using first-hand.
For the second paper, we started in the same way. At some point, she told me that I should write a part (the proof of a theorem, a short paragraph,...) myself. Of course we discussed the content first, but I was responsible for writing it down. I already had the first part of the paper that we wrote together to use as a starting point, to adjust my style to it, but I was still ultimately responsible for it myself. Once I finished it, she looked over it, gave me comments and asked me to write a new version. And a new one. And a new one,... until it looked just as good as the rest of the paper she wrote. Of course it would have been easier for her to just write it down herself, but doing it this way I learned how to write myself and I had the success of having something I wrote myself in a paper. (Yes, I had to adjust it a few times, but ultimately I did write the final version that we published)
For the third paper, she told me to write it completely myself. Once again we went through a long process of her commenting on things and me correcting it, but in the end I had a paper that I wrote myself, and I felt really proud of it.
After that, she got me some review jobs, so that I could learn what to look for in a paper, how to recognize strong parts and flaws and (I assume) so that I don't just copy her style but also see other authors and learn from them.
All in all, she did a really good job and with only three publications yet I feel like I am now able to write a paper on my own.
Now let's end with some general disclaimers: The approach given above assumes a motivated student that wants to produce good quality papers and is willing to adjust it until it looks really nice. A lazy student who just wants to increase his paper count with the least effort possible is of course still a problem. Also, your students should be able to produce papers in English. If not, point them towards English courses offered (most likely) at the university, help them install spell-checkers on their computers, etc.
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