Life after PhD

These are some tips I learned from Dr. Susan Scott from the dapartment of Informaiton System in a seminar in LSE about life of a PhD students after graduation specially in UK academic environment.
There are a few options for a PhD after graduation including:
1. Lectureship, This is mainly teaching with some research and administrative responsibilities. Research is important because it is the main factor that helps the academic person get promoted.
2. Research assistant or research officer, this is mainly research with a little teaching. In this case usually other people are responsible for research agenda and getting grants. So the researcher will be working on other people’s research agenda. It is better to have a little of teaching.
3. Research fellow (or postdoc). This is also mainly just research. But its difference with the second is that this is self-directed. Research fellow will have his/her own agenda and work on his/her own research.

Publication is very important in academic environment. It is recommended that a graduated PhD has at least one article published or in process in a A-level journal (such as JDoc, JASIST) in the field and two articles published in B-level journals (such as Aslib proceedings). Book chapters and seminar and conference papers are not very important for getting promotion or when applying for job. Because they are not usually peer reviewed. Even books are not very effective in the CV unless they have a great and well-respected effect on the field.