How our University Libraries contribute to Doctoral training


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College Doctoral de Bretagne : key figures

  • 15 universities and high schools entitled to deliver PhD
  • 13 doctoral schools in all fields
  • 2 900 PhD students (42% of which are women)
  • 43% come from abroad
  • 570 dissertations thesis are defended each year

  • only 10 training sessions out of 47 are given in English
  • 4 of them were also opened to Students from our Alliance

Doctoral college of Brittany : organisation of doctoral studies

  • Students must make their own Individual Training Plan (ITP)
  • This plan must nevertheless include at one session at least in the following subjects:
  • Ethics and Scientific Integrity (National decree on Doctoral Training)
  • Entrepreneurship (for PhD Students from UnivRennes by decision of Research Vice President)
  • Open Science is not part of compulsory training

  • 675 students trained in 2024
  • 44 sessions
  • 80% registered students are actually present to the session
  • all librarians except one (Florence Thiault, lecturer)
  • training provided by UL represents 12% of all sessions available in the catalog

Trainers are from

Students affiliations

Amethis

sessions

18/47 sessions are held online

Challenges

  • PhD Students : main target to push Science Reform toward Open Science
  • diversity of publication practices
  • double-bind : publish or perish / ensure whole reproducibility for your work

GenAI use by PhD Students

  • productivity over exploration?
  • new challenges in Scientific Integrity
  • ChatGPT cannot replace a strong human counter-argumenter

To improve your thinking, you must be able to come up with counterarguments, not just answer them. Using ChatGPT to do half the work will stunt your progress. Instead, come up with counterarguments yourself. And if you must ask for help, do not ask ChatGPT: it can only produce weak reasoning, so it will make you plateau into mediocrity. Ask someone who can create strong arguments to make you think harder.

📓 Perret (2024)

References

Perret, A. (2024). A Student’s Guide to Not Writing with ChatGPT. In arthurperret.fr. https://www.arthurperret.fr/blog/2024-11-14-student-guide-not-writing-with-chatgpt.html