The Graduate Junction

The Graduate Junction

I always support the idea of new initiatives which try to connect people with common research interests. There are a number of them around at the moment, but it seems to me that there has yet to be one which really draws people in. This is a new one, and the address has only been recently circulated to academic institutions. It has a nice straight forward interface, clear and simple purpose and a thankfully simple registration process. You can then search for other members with similar interests using a number of keywords. If you're a graduate student it is worth having a look at it - it looks like a promising and helpful venture.

Like all these ideas it only works when people join, so because the site is such a new venture most of the searches come back empty. But don't be put off if you think that the idea might work for you - just sign up, add your details and check back in a few weeks time. You never know - you might be one of the founder joiners of a landmark research site! And no, I don't know any of its creators :-)

Here's their introduction from the "About Us" page.

Hello and thank you for visiting our site. We set up The Graduate Junction because we were frustrated by a feeling of isolation in our respective projects. We wanted to know who else was doing similar work and might be interested in ours.

The Problem

Postgraduates have three sources of information about work done in their chosen field.

- Published literature

- Conferences and seminars

- Their supervisor

The problem is that literature reviews can only ever reveal completed work, conferences don't happen every week and supervisors mostly rely on the same sources as you do.

So we thought, wouldn't it be great if there was a common point for graduate researchers in all disciplines to come together and meet other people working in their fields. By making it easy to find each other we hope to promote collaboration, generate new ideas and prevent duplication of effort.

Follow the link at the top of this page to learn about our plans to develop the site into a really useful tool.

Not a member yet? Click here to register now

We need your help to tell people about this site. It can only work if people sign up.