Research Career Development - Financing Options

On February 23th, the University of Granada offered a seminar entitled "Desarrollo de la Carrera Investigadora para alumnado de máster y doctorado: opciones de financiación, internacionales y nacionales".

This seminar, was mainly focused on the areas of Humanities, Social and Legal Sciences, and it gave to students the opportunity to know the different options to develop a research career.

All students interested in being a future researcher should know that it is a hard and time consuming business. However, and if it is your dream, you never will surrender you. And the best option is that you start to focus your actions to achieve that objective.

Some tips we have learned in this seminar are:

1.     The first step is to identify in what calls you are most interested, and then you have to know what are the requirements that you need to have.

2.     Scientific research is also relevant. Don’t matter if you have written articles, books, or book chapters. The real value of those research papers depends on the quality of the journal or on the number of the co-authors. In this seminar we have learned that it is better to be a single author. But, and on the other hand, if you have co-authors you can have a more publications.

3.     Is really important that these research papers be published in a high impact scientific journals or prestigious publishers. For example, in economics and business organization areas, papers published in journals indexed in the "Social Sciences Citation Index” or “Scopus" will have a big value.

4.     To publish your research papers in journals takes some time. Consequently, it is important that you try to publish your Master Thesis or the first chapter of your PhD's Dissertation as soon as you have finished it.

5.     It is also important to be known in your research area. However, and besides to analyze your curriculum vitae, academic departments also look at your profile in social networks or personal's comments in your blog.

The next image shows different national and international options regarding financial aid:

On the website of the Master in Economics you can find the slides of this seminar. There you can find the information about financial aid and how to apply for it.

A final conclusion of this seminar is: “You have to choose the best option for you, published as many papers as you can, and never give up. The trip is difficult and you should start as soon as possible.”