In the PhD student process, getting feedback is of crucial importance. As you work on your PhD, you will inevitably get stuck in your own thoughts and get blind for your own mistakes and unclarities. An “outsider” with a fresh pair of eyes will see things you are not seeing (anymore).
There are several candidates to ask for feedback. Here is a non-exhaustive list of people to consider:
Keep in mind that different people may have different perspectives on your work and can help you with different aspects. Also, consider that you can also use Conferences, courses (Selecting courses), or workshops as vehicles for getting feedback on (parts of) your work.
Many PhD students have a drive towards perfectionism. Resultingly, they may keep their work to themselves until they have produced a fully written text (e.g. kappa or article), only then showing it to their supervisors and others. Yes, sharing your work makes you vulnerable to criticism - but without critical and honest feedback, your work might not travel far.
Rather than waiting until the end of your Writing process, consider asking for feedback much earlier into your process. Why not share and discuss your early thoughts on, for instance, your research design, an article idea, or a specific chapter of your article/kappa? Even if it is just bullet points, you may still get valuable feedback. This allows you to get feedback early into your process, when you can make adjustments more easily. An additional bonus here is the time aspect: While giving feedback on a full article or even full kappa may take the other person multiple hours or even days of work (if they take it seriously), giving feedback on specific aspects/parts of your work may rather be a matter of 30-60 minutes.
Generally, consider what kind of feedback you can and want to get from the other person(s). Specifying your feedback request and the context of your ask makes the process more efficient and effective for everyone involved. Taking the example of a journal article you are working on, you may send an email like this to a colleague:
“Hi X, thank you for agreeing to give feedback on our journal article (see Word file attached). As mentioned, we had presented an earlier version of this article at conference Y and are currently developing it for journal Z, aiming to submit the article in about 1 month. Please note that the discussion and conclusion chapters are still mainly in bullet points.
At this stage, we would particularly appreciate your input on: a) the overall storyline/red thread of the article b) whether our use of concept A (see chapter 2) is clear c) whether we should include Figure 2 (see page 12) in the article
Any other comments are of course welcome.
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