Congrats!!
Some quick suggestions, not really specific to neuroscience though, and I don't know if you have any budget to actually do stuff:

• a room with a ping-pong table
• a room for lunch & coffee / tea & maybe seminars (important: should have a white board)
• regular, compulsory shared Journal Clubs across labs, where PIs also sometimes present, and the priority for questions is given to non-PIs
• a shared online communication channel where people can discuss technical problems (and other things) - e.g. slack, discord
• make sure the onboarding steps are available, clear and complete

Other things that seem like good ideas but I haven't tried them yet:

• a mentor system (newcomers get a mentor from a different topic but a slightly higher hierarchical level)
• lab tutorials (someone learned a new lab technique, analysis method, reference manager: they propose a tutorial session and run it if enough people are interested, maybe they are paid or given some official title for this so they can put it in their CV)
• more open talk invites: instead of the same people always deciding who to invite for talks, everyone can suggest people to invite and vote for their favourite suggestions

#Academia

Yes, these were assistant professor faculty positions. Papers per se don't matter. What matters is scientific research, and the potential a faculty sees in a new recruit to carry on a successful research project and to lecture effectively on the subjects they need cover for.

A lot of positions in academia, as far as I know, are opened with a specific research profile in mind, tightly fitting often a specific person. In those situations everyone else applying are largely wasting their time. So unless the position advertises as "broadly defined", it's likely one of these.

This sounds awful until you try the alternative: hire someone that may not be a great fit, or worse, that will fail the tenure track test – in both cases an expensive opportunity cost and many sunk costs that the Department won't get back.

The best way to hire, frankly, is to have a robust Visiting Scientist Program, which can go by many names, formal or informal (sabbatical being a usual cover for them). It's the open secret of many institutions. The Department gets to observe a candidate for weeks or months, interacting in all sorts of situations – lecturing, seminars, recruitments, interacting with staff across all levels, receptions, and more –, and the candidate gets to take a deep look at the place and its people. Very low investment and potentially high pay off for both parties, and the ability to walk away with the status quo unchanged, pride and all unscathed.

#academia

#eLife publication question:
Since eLife is more like a preprint server now, has anyone tried publishing in eLife, and once you got your reviews and revised the manuscript, sending the final version to a 'normal' journal (really just to get that line on your CV)?

If you tried, did it work?

Edit: just found out I asked the same question about a year ago:
neuromatch.social/@elduvelle/1…

Edit 2: seems that at the time of my first post, eLife was leaving open the possibility to do the final publication in another journal, it was one of the steps of their system. Now it's not listed in the main steps anymore, but they say:

"Can I submit my paper somewhere else following peer review by eLife?
As far as eLife is concerned, authors can do anything with their paper that they want to. It is their paper, not ours. This includes, but is not limited to, having their work assessed by another journal on the basis of eLife reviews, although we expect most authors will not find this necessary or desirable. Please note that an eLife Version of Record is considered a regular journal article, which marks the end of the publishing process."

(I also edited my question because it doesn't seem you can "re-publish" your version of record)

#Publication #Academia #Preprint #Journals

[white men's opinions not wanted]

About 5 years ago one of my lecturers set up a meeting for me with an academic who had just started working at my university.

He was a criminological researcher doing a big project on sex workers, and she (my lecturer) thought we'd get along academically and I might possibly be interested in him as my eventual phd supervisor or something..

We had a chat over the course of about an hour, mostly about his research, but he asked at one point what I was thinking with regards to a phd topic.

At the time I was interested in looking at the incidence of sexual abuse within the police force, so I set out my argument to him:

We know that there is a much higher incidence of domestic violence perpetrated by police against their partners and kids.

We know that people reporting DV aren't taken seriously by the police they're reporting to, often to the extent where they are given misinformation like 'we can't act unless he actually *does* something'.

We know that people reporting sexual assault are often not taken seriously as well,and are often given misinformation like 'rape is actually really hard to prove, are you sure you want to report this?'.

...i wonder if there is a higher incidence of people with a history of perpetuating sexual assault in the police force?
...i wonder if they commit those assaults while in the police force, or if the job attracts people with that history?

Using the questionnaire from the Lisek & Miller study and the McWhorter study, I could survey students in a number of different fields and see if there is a higher number of people doing policing who self-report having used these rape-behaviors.

I could also do a follow up on the same students (although I'm not sure how because having the study not be anonymous would confound results) to see if their responses change after being in the police force for a number of years.

..he just looked at me and said that he doubted there was a higher incidence of DV perpetuated by police, and that he was certain that the reports that happened are angry partners targeting those cops with vexatious reports because they know it'll have big consequences for their careers.. and shut down the entire conversation immediately.

He's a critical criminologist, and wasn't interested in even having the slightest bit of curiosity about police being violent.
_____

"When she reported to police that he would repeatedly call her and hang up – an action she felt breached the apprehended domestic violence order she had taken out against him – she says an officer told her she was being a “vexatious ex-spouse” who was trying to cause trouble."

#AbolishPolice #Abolition #AbolishPrisons #CommunityNotCops #FuckThePolice #NoJusticeNoPeace #DomesticViolence #GenderedViolence #ViolenceAgainstWomen #VAW #Academia #Uni #university #Criminology #CriminalJustice

theguardian.com/australia-news…