Did you finish your PhD less than 5 years ago or are you about to submit it? And are you going to the ISTSS conference in LA? I’d like to invite you to a meeting just before the conference.

I have named it “Paper in a Day” and that’s exactly what it is (although..please read on :-)). The idea is to sit together with about 8 people and write a short report within one day. A super speedy process with a number of goals:

• to get to know each other (hopefully we’ll have a nice mix of nationalities!)
• to exchange ideas about traumatic stress and recovery
• to come up with a collaborative short report
• to have fun

In short: an intensive, nice, and productive day, with the potential to grow into a yearly event.

Program & preparation

The day will run from 8.30am until about 8.30pm, including plenary discussions, writing & analysis time in couples, and breaks :-). It will take place on Tuesday October 30th; the day before the pre-meeting institutes and the start of the conference.

Because one day is very short, it does require some commitment around the day itself:

• to prepare: count 8 hours in the 2 weeks before the conference
• to be present during the whole day
• to be okay with some final editing / reference searching / final version reading after the day (4 hours)

In addition, as currently there is no funding attached to the initiative (I will seek for some though; if you have tips…), bear in mind that it will require an additional night in your hotel and catering is at our own cost as well; I will look for nice places where we can go for lunch and dinner.

Input for the paper: Data

Finally, we will need something to write about! Do you have data that have been collecting dust? Perfect! It can be data in any form: anonimized patient data, epidemiological data, review data, etc. The only requirement is that it can answer a rather simple research question.

Because data-preparation and analysis usually take quite some time and our preparatory literature reading will depend on it, preliminary analyses should be done before the day. And because that requires extra effort, it will also determine authorship (let’s tackle that one immediately :-)): the person whose data we work with, will be first author.

If the group doesn’t have data, that’s not a problem, we can think about a simple systematic review option or I’ll make available some of my data.

Questions for you..

If you would like to participate (great!), please let me know the following via (firstname.lastname at monash.edu) by the 15th of July:

1. Would you have ‘easy’ data/a draft perfect for the purpose of PiaD? (if so please send a brief description)
2. Please send along a short CV so I can see what people’s research areas are and think about topics that are of interest to most of you (if we have many people join, we can make two or even more groups).
3. Some people have suggested that they would like the option to join but work on one of their own papers, if that applies to you as well let me know. Although I really like the fun of working together, I’m happy to see if I can accommodate other wishes.

If you have ideas and suggestions, feel free to write them down below. And… please notify friends and colleagues who may be interested!