<p>I've done research before but it seemed like I was just doing little sort of mechanical routines for some larger project, and I never got the chance to really contribute my own ideas. Well, I didn't really have any ideas, but I guess that's my question - how do you gain the specialty knowledge of the stuff your research, and from there, how do you go about implementing some of that knowledge?</p>
<p>Also, sort of unrelated, but how do you do publications as an undergrad when your working under a grad student?</p>
<p>You should be included on publications if you participate materially in the project. That means if you do more than act as hands. In order to do this, you need to start reading the publications that are relevant to the project and try to understand completely why and what you are doing. Then, armed with that information, you are in a position to contribute to the ideas behind the experiment and the analysis of the data. </p>
<p>There is no shortcut. If you don’t do the background work then you can be nothing more than a pair of hands. You can get started by asking the graduate student to provide you with some articles to read.</p>
<p>I published six papers in undergrad. You publish by finding a sexy project under a generous advisor who is close to publication.</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s hard to tell which projects will lead to publishable results, so your best bet is to do as many projects as possible and hope some of them work out. I did five and about half of them led to publishable results.</p>
<p>Another strategy for getting authorship is to bring unique skills to the table. For example I was the only programmer working on my biology project, and they couldn’t say I didn’t contribute anything if I was generating graphs. I was also the most mathy person working on my psychology project, so I could say I contributed the math part and the others did the psychology part. It’s good to be a little out-of-field, but you might not learn as much.</p>
<p>If its science related, wear a long white lab coat with black kevlar gloves, Benjamin Franklin specs, black boots, and grow out long hair. Get your own beakers and lightning affects. </p>
<p>If its liberal arts related, dress like philosophers in black and white photos. 3 piece suits, monocle, tail coat, bow ties in eccentric colors, etc. Or like Sherlock Holmes OR Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. </p>
<p>If its engineering related, wear a hard hat, dress slacks, a short sleeve dress shirt, and a tie with an IWW slogan. Get a utility belt and suspenders, large protractor. </p>
<p>If its related to “community or racial studies” dress like the people in Occupy Wall Street pictures.</p>