Should I get a LOR from a professor with whom I had long-distance collaboration

[Shine the Light]

Hi there,

I had a collaboration with a well-known professor during my MS research work but it was a long-distance one and I did not attend or work in his lab personally. It was more like collaborating in an interdisciplinary manner conducting some initial parts of the work there in their lab and continuing the rest of the work in our lab. We made two papers together and I was the first-author in both papers. So, I was meaning to ask about the validity and possible impact of getting a strong letter of recommendation, if any, from him considering the nature of our collaboration. Would it help me in my application or it may be considered as less impactful due to our long-distance collaboration?

Do you guys think that I should get a letter of recommendation from that professor or I'd better request only from my direct advisers? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Edited November 27, 2015 by Shine the Light

[Neuro PolarBear]

Yes, get a letter from him. He should still be able to speak about how fruitful your collaboration was.

[Shine the Light]

30 minutes ago, Micecroscopy said:

Yes, get a letter from him. He should still be able to speak about how fruitful your collaboration was.

Thanks for your response. 

So you're saying that even mentioning the output of our collaboration would be helpful without personally knowing about my research skills? If so, I'd be able to strengthen my application.

[Neuro PolarBear]

A letter from anyone you've done research with, even if it was through a collaboration like yours should be helpful. Long-distance collaborations are common in many fields, and he'll be able to speak to the work you've done and your research skills should be fairly self-evident in the papers you've written with him so I don't see the concern. You could use your other letters to speak to more personal characteristics that he might not know about?

[TakeruK]

In general, yes, I think this is a good person to get a letter from. But it depends on the nature of your collaboration. If you and this professor did not work "together" very much, then it would not be a very good letter. For example, some of my coauthors are coauthors because they helped write the initial grant request to get the data we used, but we did not work together/collaborate (or even discuss) the analysis at all. These would not be good letter writers.

However, there are other coauthors who I worked with a lot (long distance) and they would be good letter writers. For example, we would have several back-and-forths on the methods being used, with me learning from them at first and eventually developing a method to use and explaining it to coauthors. In this way, they would have "seen" (via email/Skype/telecons) the way I work and communicate, which would put them in a good position to evaluate me.

So, in your case, it depends on how much this other professor was involved with your work while you were in his lab or how involved they were on your paper after you left. If you continued to collaborate and work together, then this would be a great letter---I don't think the fact that he was not in the same location as you matters at all (in fact, many people have less contact with their advisors even if they are in the same place!)

[Shine the Light]

Thanks guys for your precious response. 

About the nature of our collaboration, my work was in the area of Chemistry and we indeed found and established new application areas for their developed systems. It was like merging two areas by expanding the utilization of their materials into new chemical reactions. As a result, we did some back-and-forth and discussions during the work. So, as you put, I think it would be good for me to get a letter of recommendation from him focusing on the output of our work.

Thank you again for your commentary.