In order to get grants or academic positions, it is often necessary to show scientific independence. But how do you do that? The following strategies will help young scientists to develop and demonstrate scientific independence.
Attending a scientific meeting can be very inspiring. It may broaden your network and help you to make yourself and your research visible to a broad audience. Nevertheless, it is also often time-consuming and expensive. How do you choose the right meetings to attend?
Impact factors are heavily criticized as measures of scientific quality. However, they still dominate every discussion about scientific excellence. They are still used to select candidates for positions as PhD students, postdocs, and academic staff, promote professors, and select grant proposals for funding. Consequently, researchers tend to adapt their publication strategy to avoid a negative impact on their careers. Until alternative methods to measure excellence are established, young researchers must learn the “rules of the game.” However, young scientists often need advice on how to reach higher impact factors with their publications.
Postdocs often struggle with their publication list. They become the famous “second author”. However, if you strive for a successful academic career, you may have to negotiate better with your supervisor to get first and last authorships to build your career.
Stress is a rather typical aspect of most research projects because every research project has five characteristic emotional phases: You start with naïve enthusiasm, become competent and disillusioned, you want to give up (the stress phase, slump or dip), you recover, and finally, you round up and exit. How do you survive PhD stress and postdoc stress?