About this blog

About this blog
What's the meaning of blogging?

As I'm a person who asks these kinds of questions all the time, it took me several months to actually start one even after I decided to. Though I will maintain this space dedicated to my PhD journey, this doesn't mean it will only involve posts on my own research. Sometimes I'll share my (somewhat unorganized) thoughts on my topics of interest, but sometimes it will also be like journaling my daily life. To give you a sense of what types of content will be posted, here are the themes that I'm trying to write about: 

(Note that while most of them will be written in English, I won't restrict myself to it and will also write in Korean, but I wouldn't mind if you machine-translate them to read in a preferred language – though I'm sure most of you wouldn't.)

Updates on my PhD research project

I'm currently doing research for my PhD, which centers around research integrity in regard to scholarly communication. My main focus is on so-called "paper mill(s)", which is defined (in the simplest terms) as entities that produce fraudulent research papers for profit. Here I'll share some updates on the project, which won't always be about its progress, but mostly about the struggles, or even more about the failures and lessons learned.

Actually, my research interest (or sometimes without thinking that I'd do formal research on it) is quite broader than the aforementioned topic. My concentration on research integrity and scholarly communication comes from my interests in knowledge production and engagement in general (not limited to academic settings), and also from a desire to practice what I preach, to do what I value. In that sense, it would be natural to write about my own feelings and thoughts on current trends in the field of research on research or metascience.

Diaries on living abroad and as a PhD candidate 

Now I'm a PhD candidate at CWTS in Leiden. It took me about 8 years to make it happen, after I first learned about it and hoped to come here someday when I was doing my Master's degree in Science and Technology Policy (from the graduate school of the same name). After pursuing a career in the IT industry with really diverse roles and positions in different companies for a while, I came back to academia and started studying abroad in the Netherlands, where I didn't have any connections before. I have experienced massive changes which sometimes felt like big challenges from the start, and I am still undergoing transitions. However, I also feel that people and daily life are pretty much alike everywhere. So I will just live my ordinary days, jotting down stuff even without giving too much meaning to it.

That's it. No conclusion, just like my life—leaving it as is.