Speaker 1: So many grad students I talk to are passionate about the research. They want to make a difference. And they know when I asked them, what is the most important thing they need to do for their careers? Publish, publish, publish, publish. That is like money in the bank. That is how your work sees the light of day. That is how you make the transition from just being a passive consumer of knowledge to actively producing it and making that difference that you guys care about so much. Is that everything? No, but publication is critical. It is the lifeblood of an academic researcher and your success. So you need to master publishing. You need to do it well. You need to do it routinely. You need to do it fast. And at FastTrack, we actually studied the trajectories of researchers who do get on that proverbial fast track and it differs slightly across fields. But what we find on average is at early stages of their career, they're publishing about a paper every three months. And that gets them attention, gets them invited to international conferences, even get some financial consulting opportunities. Other great things start to happen as they start emerging as a leader in the field. So you guys, number one thing you need to do is to publish, publish fast and publish in high impact. So how do you do that? That's what I want to talk to you about today. So I want you to think about what is the fastest way for you to publish a high impact paper. If you wanted to get your paper published over the next three months, how would you do it? What would be the secret formula? What would be the fastest route for you to get there? I want you to think about it. It may be something you've never even thought about. Given what you know now, the resources available to you, how can you get from where you are sitting, watching this video right now to publishing in a high impact journal with all the benefits that that come with it for your career recognition from your program, your supervisors, fellowships, um, it really literally is money in the bank. Well, let me tell you first how not to do it, uh, what things are not going to get you there. They're essential things, but in and of themselves, they're not going to be enough. So one thing that's not going to be enough is just having a roadmap plan. So having a roadmap that's going to tell you over the next three months, what you need to do, what you need to execute a daily action plan for being productive, uh, to stay on the course that is good. And that is something you definitely want to have. That is an important condition, but it's just not sufficient to get you to publication. Um, because the reality is so many students are just going to get stuck. You're going to have micro hurdles along the way. You might be doing something you've never done before. Many of you watching, maybe you've never published a paper before. There's inevitably going to be things that are going to frustrate you and set you back and delay your progress. So roadmap is very good, but it's just not going to be enough for you to fully go the distance. The second thing that is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to help you quickly publish in high impact journals is to have a winning topic. There are some topics that are just so red hot that you could really just put rubbish on a page and it'll get published. This was definitely at the time of the early period of COVID, even very weak, basic studies could get published. That's changed now with the voluminous output on COVID-19, but winning topic will make your journey to getting published so much smoother. It's an important condition, but again, this is not going to be sufficient for you to get published, uh, in, in published fast. So I hope I, as you've been watching this, you've been thinking about what is going to be the fastest way for you to get your paper published. And guys, let me come to that. The fastest thing you can do to get your paper published in your field in a winning journal is to go out and find yourself a mentor. If you have somebody who's done it before time and time again, has a track record of publishing in high impact journals, has a track record of bringing up grads, just like you to publish in high impact journals, having that support, having that person who's been there and done it before is the best way by far. It's the fastest way. It's going to save you so much time by teaching you the shortcuts that you can take, help you overcome those micro hurdles. So you never get stuck. So they can make sure you have a winning topic, make sure you have a clear plan of action and a roadmap, all the things that you need to do will come into place if you have the right mentor. So if you guys really want to get serious about publishing, you really need to get serious about having a mentor who can bring you into the field and help you catapult to the highest level. And you need to make sure I have an entire dedicated training on how to find and leverage effective mentors. You need to make sure these mentors are not just willing to help you, but they are qualified. Look, if you guys are finding mentors, maybe published in local small scale journals and not at the very peaks of science, nature, the Lancet, American sociological review, American political science review, whatever your field is, then that person just may not be qualified to help you get to where you want to go. I mean, remember what got you here and where you're sitting is not necessarily going to get you there. To get there, you need the right mentor. And that guys is going to be the fastest way for you to publish in the next three months in a high impact journal. If you liked this video, don't forget to click like and subscribe. It really helps us promote the channel and serve grads who might not otherwise benefit. Don't forget also to join our exclusive Facebook group, fast track grad, where you're going to find 30 hours of masterclasses on soft skills, such as productivity and mindset through to hard skills on how to analyze your data, how to write up your papers. Look forward to seeing you there and see you in the next video.