You're planning to pursue graduate education or perhaps are in an early stage of graduate study in science or engineering, or perhaps the humanities. You might therefore be thinking that the future course of your graduate studies and career thereafter are well set in place: you can now proceed with your course work and research largely on automatic pilot. The experience of most graduate students, however, is unfortunately to the contrary. While you know not to expect smooth sailing in your studies and research, you might be unaware that many roadblocks, sources of frustration and angst, and much wasted time during and after graduate study can be avoided or at least substantially minimized, perhaps making the entire experience largely satisfying, indeed joyful – one in which you thrive.

This book is a practical guide with two primary goals. The first is to help make the experience of graduate study for students early in their graduate program in science, and for senior-level undergraduates intent on entering such a program, be an efficient, effective, and generally positive one. The second goal, consistent with the first, is to help those students and other junior researchers develop effective research habits.

While some will choose to read this book from cover to cover, many will find benefit from reading selected chapters in depth at different stages of their university or professional careers, perhaps returning to specific chapters as needed.

Whether you are early in a Ph.D. program or further along in your graduate studies, an undergraduate contemplating graduate school and a career in science, a recently anointed Ph.D. embarking on a scientific career, or are somewhere beyond in mid-career, our hope is that various of the suggestions offered in this book can be of help toward your goal of a successful and satisfying professional career.

Much of the advice on doing research contained in this book involves practical skills. Regardless of the practicality of this advice, neither this nor any other book can provide a recipe that guarantees success. As argued in Chapter 2, despite its foundation in logic, science is driven by inspiration, insight, intuition, and creativity, all combined with technical expertise. No cookbook-style set of instructions based on a combination of just these skills, however, can offer a young scientist the guarantee that these ingredients, when mixed, will yield a fruitful and satisfying professional career. Our careers depend on not only our scientific talents, but also our personal ones and our attitude in life. In closing, we offer advice on the development of a mentality that helps foster success in the professional and personal aspects of a career in science, engineering, or humanities.

Traditionally the academic library has been the repository for the archiving of books and journals for scientific research, also offering a place for reading and study. It is much more than that today. By making available large and readily searchable databases of books and publications, these libraries have come to offer researchers the capability to search the scientific literature with remarkable efficiency, retrieving relevant publications electronically when possible.

Indeed, retrieval of scientific information is increasingly being driven by electronic tools and information technology. While this development opens up new possibilities for the efficient search and retrieval of information, it does so in the face of a new problem: the amount of information available is vastly larger than what the individual human mind can process. It therefore is essential to access this superabundance of information in ways that actively supports the research. The options available nowadays could be bewildering, making it important to be aware of, and use, the right tools for gaining access to the appropriate information. Most academic libraries offer valuable assistance and suggestions through their websites. Moreover, typically the staff of these libraries have the expertise as well as the desire to offer advice and share their expertise with those seeking help.

Any student contemplating graduate study, or embarking on graduate study or a career in science, is confronted by a myriad of choices. During your undergraduate career, you have the choices of major and minor subject, but you're likely past having made decisions on those. Once you have decided to pursue graduate study, near the end of your undergraduate study comes your choice of graduate university and program, founded on the choice of field – and, perhaps, subfield – of study you wish to pursue or type of career you wish to follow. Once beyond these choices, or perhaps concurrent with them, comes an all-important one, your choice of adviser – the individual who likely will have the largest influence on your approach to and outlook on science as well as on your success throughout the time of graduate study. An abundance of choices, many of which are puzzling and difficult to make, but what a wonderful position to be in to have created for yourself the opportunity to face such difficulties.

In planning research it is usually not hard to decide broadly what we want to achieve. The goal of the research might be to pursue an interest or a desire “to know”; it might be to find the path in which to establish a career; it might be to obtain a higher degree; it could be driven by the wish to contribute to making our world a better place in which to live; and it could be a mix of such considerations.

Certainly a book for prospective scientists ought to explain what science is. Still, despite numerous books that treat the philosophy, character, and practice of science, there is no agreed-upon nor clear-cut and unambiguous definition of science. This holds not only for the many fields of study that have adopted methods patterned on those of the natural science, e.g., social science, psychology, economics, managerial science, and military science, but also for the natural sciences themselves. In a broad sense one might define science as the activities aimed at understanding the world around us, but it could be well argued that the arts, humanities, and many other endeavors in modern society likewise aim at understanding of the world, albeit understanding of a different sort than that sought in the natural sciences. So let's focus on the practice of natural science, which might be defined as the activities aimed at understanding of the natural world.

An essay, as we have seen, demands that you analyse arguments and evidence in order to decide on your best answer to the question raised by the topic. Fundamental to this answer is your argument and your evaluation. A book review requires you to perform the same tasks. Just as you begin your work on an essay by asking of your topic ‘What is this question driving at?’, so you begin work on a book review by asking ‘What is this book driving at?’ In everything we have had to say about reading we have stressed the importance of asking yourself constantly ‘What is this author doing?’ This is the first question a book reviewer will ask. The reviewer will also ask two other questions: ‘How well was it done?’ and ‘Was it worth doing?’ Answering these questions involves assessing the book's contribution to the field of study.

If you feel diffident about your ability to give an authoritative assessment of the book's contribution to public knowledge in the subject, you nevertheless have a significant alternative open to you. This is to evaluate the author's contribution to your own understanding of the subject within the context of the other works you have read. Notice this last condition. You will not be able to assess any single work if you do not try to integrate it into what you already know.