Raising research funding is an essential skill that makes you attractive for positions in industry and academia. However, at the beginning of your career, you are often not eligible, and you are confronted with a dilemma: Either risk not getting the grant or submitting it under the name of your supervisor. What should you do?
Young scientists often get conflicting advice on how they should publish. Every generation of young scientists has to address similar questions: Should I publish several smaller papers or focus on one big paper with a high impact factor? What is the effect of my publication strategy on my scientific career and the possibility of raising grant money? How important is my publication list for a non-academic career?
A huge body of scientific evidence shows that happy team members produce better results. However, most PhD students and postdocs are stressed by peer pressure, high demands from their supervisors, potentially insufficient supervision, and a high degree of uncertainty about their future careers. Is it better to make them all happy?
For many researchers, science is a passion and, for some, even a calling. However, the status of sciences as “something you do for passion” is often abused by supervisors and institutions to justify bad working conditions. Unveil some myths about ‘science as a job you should do for free’ – you may take them for granted without knowing it.
Are you nervous not to find a job? Does the insecurity nearly kill you? Are you sending out hundreds of applications without success? Stop wasting your time and change your approach. Intelligent job search and application costs time and effort but has a much higher chance of success.
Choosing the right place for a position as a PhD student, postdoc, or professor is always a critical career decision. Spontaneous advice from colleagues mostly tends towards big universities. However, there are good arguments for choosing small universities.
Postdocs are in a sandwich position between the crazy professor and other staff members. They need leadership and management skills to perform well. However, at most universities, there is no specific training to prepare postdocs for their current and future functions.
Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and TicToc are everywhere. Many scientists wonder whether they are missing out on something and ask themselves: “Should I create public LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and TicToc profiles as a scientist?” The surprising answer is “No”!
How to get more funding? Avoid these mistakes! Writing grant proposals in life sciences is tedious, and evaluating grant proposals is even more tedious. Quite often, the reviewers end up with a small number of outstanding proposals and a vast number of excellent proposals, which have to be ranked based on tiny differences in quality.
When discussing success in science, there is a vast number of success parameters that are mostly incompatible with each other. I have listed below – in random order – several success indicators in science that may help characterize a person, a group, or an institution as “successful in science.”