How to write a good referee report
Given the centrality of peer review in academic publishing, it might astonish some to learn that peer review training is not a formal component of any PhD program. Academics largely learn how to do peer review by osmosis: through seeing reports written by their advisors and colleagues, through being on the receiving end of them, […]
Read moreShould you get a PhD?
When I asked my undergraduate advisor for a recommendation letter to PhD programs, he replied, with genuine surprise, “Why do you want to get a PhD?” I was too stunned by his question to ask him to elaborate. In my mind, why wouldn’t you get a PhD? You get to learn more about what you’re […]
Read morePolitical Science Journal Rankings
How do we judge how good a journal is? Ideally by the quality of articles it publishes. But the best systematic way of quantifying quality we’ve come up with so far are citation-based rankings. And these are far from perfect, as a simple Google Search will reveal (here’s one such article). I’ve been using Academic […]
Read moreMachine learning in economics
Machine learning seems to be everywhere in economics these days. I wondered – has these been a gradual trend or is this a sudden explosion? So I again turned to Academic Sequitur data. This time, I decided to stick to NBER working papers as my data source, largely because they lead journal publications by a […]
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