Among the many researchers I know, many people have adopted either a purely cynical attitude toward the scientific establishment or struggle with an intensive love-hate relationship with science (in academia and industry). Several painful dilemmas cannot be solved, and you must learn to handle them.
One of the unspoken rules in research is that a successful career in science is only possible with one or more papers with an impact factor above 10 or higher. This belief creates a lot of peer pressure among young scientists and might even be one of the causes of increasing numbers of scientific fraud cases. However, is it true?
Writing a research paper or a review can be a pleasure or a pain. If you manage your energy and time well, you can dramatically speed up your writing. What are the best tips and easy steps to write a research paper faster and more efficiently?
Scientists often produce negative results. All experiments were done correctly – but there was no difference between test and control. They get conflicting advice from supervisors and ethicists. Some say that publishing negative results is a waste of resources and ruins their scientific careers. Others say that ‘not publishing negative results is unethical’. What should young scientists do in such a situation?
To become an author on a scientific publication, you need to contribute substantially – but what does that mean? Are there clear criteria, or can this be debated? What about collaborators who only provide data or samples or medical writers who improve the English of the paper? What about ChatGPT and other text generators?
It is often tempting for young scientists to aim for co-authorships on papers published in journals with a high impact factor. However, is it a clever career move?
The world desperately needs experts. We live in a complex world, and knowledge is dramatically expanding. Nobody can comprehend anymore all the data which are produced on a daily basis.
For any scientist pursuing a career in academia, bibliographic metrics such as impact factors or citations are essential for measuring the impact and relevance of their research. But which bibliographic metrics are relevant, and which are misleading?
Everybody knows that high impact factors are essential for a career in science. However, young scientists often underestimate the value of citations. They provide a more valuable estimate of the quality of a scientific publication than other metrics, including impact factors. In this article, I provide 20 strategies to increase your citation counts.
If you have doubts about whether to stay or leave your postdoc position, quitting your postdoc can be daunting. But it can also be a great opportunity to move forward in your career.