Ruthless reading

Even for hard-working scientists, projects usually move forwards quite slowly. However, there are an awful lot of scientists today. This means that keeping up to date with the output from this army of academics is a major challenge. As a Ph.D. candidate you are aiming to become nothing less than a world expert in your own research. You need to know your stuff. Any large pile of photocopied research papers is inherently unstable and liable to rearrange itself into a random order at the slightest provocation. Once you amass such a stack of unread papers, you will probably never get to the bottom of it. To get through a Ph.D.'s worth of reading, you need to develop surgical ruthlessness. Become relentlessly efficient with your reading and the sheer vastness of the ever-expanding literature can begin to seem manageable.

The first step in ruthless reading is to be disciplined about organising your regular hunting forays into the literature. Leave it too long between your paper harvesting sessions and you will reap too many to read in one week – then they begin to pile up. Citation and journal databases like the Web of Science (wos.mimas.ac.uk), and referencing software like Endnote (endnote.com) make literature searches and reference-handling a piece of cake. But, however good your software, you still need to know exactly what you are searching for. Compile a definitive list of your keywords and try including important authors' names as well as key scientific terms.

To the uninitiated, it may not be obvious why someone in their first post-doc position would want to establish a collaboration with a scientist in another, perhaps distant, lab. Look at it from the point of view of your prospective future employer. They want to see a candidate who will be able to contribute to their scientific community; someone who can network successfully with their colleagues abroad, for instance. Get collaborating and you will be demonstrating the very skills required for getting on well in twenty-first century science. The tiny number of single-author research papers published these days is testimony to the need to collaborate.

That's all very well, but what's in it for you? Science can be very competitive, so you may be understandably reluctant to share your results or even draw attention to your presence in the field, at least until your work is in some shape to publish. Collaboration is all about efficiency – reducing the time taken to produce valuable results. Translated, that could mean that you might get to do the really interesting experiments that you never dreamed you'd have time to do before the end of your project. Even those you currently view as competitors can sometimes become collaborators. The best example of this is where you have something they don't. Then you can start to bargain for access to what they have that you need, be it results, expertise, equipment, or whatever.

How I found my first post-doc job

At the end of the second year of my Ph.D., I began thinking about my first proper research job. I started by ‘cold-mailing’ a few project leaders to see what funding they might have in the pipeline. I just sent them a one-paragraph e-mail, selling, but not overselling, myself. This approach resulted in a range of responses: ‘Contact me again in a few months' time’; ‘Can you send me your resumé?’; ‘You might like to apply for this job I'm advertising in September’; and, best of all, ‘Perhaps you'd like to come and visit my lab’. OK, so they were far from offers of formal interviews, but what did I expect at this stage? Only time would tell whether these first contacts might lead to something more concrete later on. At least I'd got in early and hopefully made a positive impression. But, as it turned out, my first post-doc job didn't result from any of these tentative approaches, nor from any of the job advertisements in the scientific press. I was fortunate enough to secure my first job without ever having an interview. I created it myself. If this strikes you as unlikely, let me explain how I did it, and try to convince you that you too can have a crack at controlling your own fate.

Few professions offer the universal mystique that surrounds being a scientist. If you can make the grade in this game, you're right up there with the secret agents. The mystical transformation from non-scientist to scientist is through the rite of passage that is the Ph.D. And, yet, this two-pronged voyage of discovery and self-discovery is just the beginning of the transformation. Life in the busy years that follow becomes more complex and demanding than you could ever have imagined. Yet, despite the frantic activity, the boredom and the frustration, you can go to parties safe in the knowledge that, if anyone asks you what you do for a living, you can answer without apologising or shrugging your shoulders: you are a scientist. Enjoy it. You are paid to play.

Successful oral presentations are not just about meticulous slide preparation, important as that is, they're also about doing a good ‘head-job’ on yourself. You don't want to wake up in a cold sweat the night before your talk.

Remember when you took your driving test or sat your final examinations? Sure, you needed to be alert and motivated; but, if your mental pendulum happened to swing too far in that direction, you may have ended up too ‘charged-up’ to be effective. You may have missed things and made mistakes in your eagerness to impress. Similarly, if you practised your deep-breathing exercises a little excessively, you may have faced the challenge with an attitude of ‘it doesn't really matter, anyway’. I suspect most of us end up in the unhappy no-man's-land between these two extremes. We enter the arena neither motivated nor relaxed: we just get in a bit of a flap. The real trick is to find both states of mind within you and use them simultaneously. I know, I know, this is an unusual concept for us ‘fight or flight’ creatures – to stand our ground and keep our cool, but with some careful preparation it can easily be achieved, at least for a short time. Long enough to present an award-winning talk at any rate.

Here's a six-point checklist to make your presentation an enjoyable experience for both you and your audience!

I love being a scientist. It's the most infuriatingly rewarding profession on the face of the earth and daily drives me mad. Science is full of people like me, concentrating really hard on usually abstract subject matters. They are busy and often preoccupied. This makes maintaining relationships less than easy. Throw in the lack of a stable career path, lower than average financial rewards, often repetitive, boring work and more personal rivalry than you'd find in a large multi-national company and it can seem a daunting prospect for any newcomer. But the payback is great if you can hang in there. I don't care what anyone says, science is about the massive rush you get when you see something previously unseen by anyone; end of story. This book is intended to help the novice scientist wise up fast when they find themselves facing the seemingly impenetrable and incomprehensible world of science for the first time. It's also about cutting it as a professional scientist once you've jumped all the fences and ‘been approved’, however long that process is supposed to take in your particular institution and country. In between these two extremes lies a plethora of down-to-earth and sometimes humorous advice. I make no apologies for taking a sideways look at science – it often needs it.

Being successful in science is an acquired trait. No one is born an eventually successful scientist. Some people may be better endowed than others with core traits that help lead to success: Being very smart is useful, and we know there's a genetic contribution to intelligence. Some people seem to be temperamentally more creative than others. But just being smart and creative does not ensure stardom in science. Just as one has to learn the substance of one's field and the details of scientific methods and technologies, there is much to learn about science as an enterprise and a community of diverse individuals.

There is a sequence of educational phases one must go through before becoming an independent researcher, and much to know about how to thrive at each stage. The scientific community has its own set of unique values and behavioral norms. These need to be learned and incorporated into one's way of working and dealing with one's colleagues. Speaking of one's colleagues, scientists can be an extremely competitive bunch of people, and there is much to be learned about working within that club.

Finally, being a scientist is not a unitary thing. Science provides a very wide variety of wonderful career options, although few people really are aware of the breadth of them. Scientific careers can also be quite complex and take many different forms. Few people only do research.

We scientists can be slow in getting around to writing. We are totally absorbed in the search; it's what keeps us going. Most of us thrive on pushing back the perimeter fence of our own little field of research, even if our total estate only grows by a few square centimetres each working week. But this imaginary field is just that, imaginary; that is, unless we publish what we've discovered promptly. If we don't, we might find that we ‘own’ rather less of our field than we thought. Aside from hindering the progress of other scientists who could have built on our work, we might stuff up our career prospects by getting scooped. What's more, we might diminish the research standing of our host institution.

Playing a waiting game is all very proper when we need to check our results or are trying to save them up for a high-impact publication – but what if deep down it also has something to do with not liking the idea of knuckling down to writing? What if, secretly, we find it easier to keep on working in the lab than ever putting finger to keyboard? If we don't get down to writing, we are forgetting the true purpose of our job. We all listen with bated breath to explosive new data presented at a conference with a stack of supporting slides and a lot of panache; but, unless the paper eventually comes out, who will ever believe it?

Conferences: a typical scenario

It's 7 a.m. and I'm in a strange bedroom. I know I have to get up to face a very large free breakfast and a long first full day at my chosen conference. My colleagues from the lab are in rooms down the hall. When I left them in the bar last night they were getting in the next round of drinks, so I don't expect to see them much before lunch. Still, I have a busy day of networking ahead of me, and I have a plan to help me extract the maximum value from my conference. After I left the bar last night, I took a highlighter pen to my newly acquired book of abstracts. At least I now know which talks I want to see this morning. I will go through this afternoon's sessions during the morning break, and then this evening I can try to make my selections for the remainder of the week.

It's now 9 a.m. and I'm sitting wide-eyed in a vast conference room waiting for the first speaker. It's interesting how some people seem to sit through whole sessions while others flit from talk to talk in different lecture theatres and seminar rooms. I've always found too many different interesting things in the programme to take the former approach.

We all know that the best form of post-doc funding is a fellowship – in theory, your passport to a permanent career as a scientist. That is, if you take full advantage of the opportunity and don't experience an extended run of bad luck. But, even if you believe that you have a scientifically achievable idea that is of international importance, knowing whether now is the right time to apply for a fellowship often leaves post-docs in a quandary. Of course, you have to keep in mind that most fellowships have eligibility criteria, including an upper age limit or maximum number of years of post-doc experience. But, if you apply too soon, you'll probably not even be short-listed. In this context, I guess ‘too soon’ really means applying before you have accumulated enough high-impact publications. Let's face it, papers aren't everything, but without them all the scientific potential in the world won't get you very far.

So, if your publications list is looking a little sparse right now, why go to all that bother? Making the application could easily wipe out a couple of weeks when you could be cracking on in the lab. You may be fortunate enough to still have an alternative: bide your time; hold your nerve. Going for another post-doc grant will give you at least another year to gather more papers before that fellowship deadline looms again.

Planning your independent research

Exactly what research would you be doing right now if you were given a free rein and your own independent group? Have you ever really thought about it? You may think the prospect just too far-fetched to waste time considering. I did too. But this was before I decided, amidst all the frantic hustle and bustle of everyday research life, to apply for a proper job, a permanent one. With hindsight my first shot at the big time came a bit early for me, having only just finished the post-graduate long-service award (or Ph.D. for the uninitiated). Needless to say I didn't get the job. What I did achieve was a thorough understanding of my research desires.

You see, when applying for a permanent job, a lectureship for example, a ten-year plan is what you need. Your prospective employer needs to see whether you can think big, but also whether your big plans fit in with their grand plans for the School, Institute or Department. However, a whole decade is a whopping great amount of research. We young scientists working deep in the mines of human knowledge are often so focused on the urgency of the next paper or grant application that our minds cannot deal with such hypothetical long-term scenarios. In just this overwhelmed frame of mine, I decided it was high time I took a long walk in the open air: time to reflect.

Often, when you listen to a scientist being introduced before a keynote lecture, you will hear that the person started out studying something quite different from his or her current field. Also, scanning back through other people's complete publication lists (not the censored ones on scientists' own Web sites) shows just how frequently scientists change direction early on in their careers. So, for those of you who are currently slogging away in positions less than well suited to your temperament and personal abilities, take heart, you can jump ship. You needn't worry about whether or not it will be detrimental to your track record. Just be upfront and nonchalant, and make sure you talk about it in a positive light – changing scientific discipline makes you a multidisciplinary person; you are able to reinvent yourself to follow your interests. At the end of the day, you don't have to stick with what you've done just because that's what you know most about. And, in any case, your resumé is more than a list of techniques mastered – remember all those people who bang on about transferable skills? Your major selling point is your aptitude to tackle and solve new problems. Top scientists don't flap if they need to use a new instrument and have never handled the beast before, they just find someone to teach them the basics and get on with it. This slightly arrogant attitude to learning new skills is part of the pathway to success.

If you have to write a progress report at a relatively early stage in your research, for example during the first year of a UK Ph.D., you may believe that you haven't got much to say. How wrong you are! You have plenty to write about, even if your results are a little thin on the ground. The first year of your Ph.D. isn't about amassing results; it's about making all your mistakes in one big batch before you start your research proper. Unless, that is, you made all your mistakes during your M.Sc. and extensive pre-Ph.D. industrial experience!

But, ignoring your many weeks fouling-up in the lab, what have you got to show for your first year? Are you still not sure? Well, neither was I until I started writing my first-year report. This humble report was possibly the turning point in my Ph.D. What's more it made me realise just how much I enjoy writing. You may be asked to produce a brief or extensive report, written in either thesis-speak or in the style and format of a scientific paper. Whatever the challenge, this is probably the first time you'll need to get your act together and think about what you've done so far and why you've done it.

It's a good idea to start writing your materials and methods section first. This is unlikely to amount to much yet, but this stuff is relatively easy to get down on paper.

Let's be upfront about one of science's biggest taboos: science can be unbelievably boring, especially other people's science. Doing most other people's Ph.D. or post-doc projects would simply drive many of us up the wall, so identifying your own is no trivial matter. Naturally, you become committed to your own projects partly because you know you just have to do the work. Hopefully, you are also genuinely interested in major aspects of your work; we all unconsciously ignore the boring bits to keep ourselves focused on the good stuff.

So an ideal start to a successful career at the ‘coal-face’ of human knowledge is to make sure that you pick a project that inspires you. Have you ever wondered why some people thrive on equations, whilst others are much happier staring down a microscope or trudging through the rainforest. What matters is that you identify your own little niche – somewhere you can work happily, animated by drive and passion for what you do. Finding the right project is a lot like falling in love: you might think you know what sort of person you'd go for, but that counts for nothing when your ultimate enchanter or enchantress walks in the room. Of my future partner my parents told me, ‘You'll know when you know’, and I have to say they were right.

To some people, the journey from school to post-doc must seem like a ridiculously long one. Looking back, I realise that the only thing I ever really disliked during all those years was that ‘perpetual student’ tag. But eventually I gained the respect of my nearest and dearest. ‘You mean, you've actually got people working for you!’, my brother once exclaimed, clearly impressed. I had just mentioned one of the undergraduate project students I was supervising in the lab. It suddenly dawned on me that, yes, I now have my own people: a couple of students and a part-time technician. But, if the idea of an extra pair of hands or two is appealing, it nonetheless needs careful consideration. You need to recruit someone worthwhile – so how can you improve your chances of attracting the golden candidates from amongst the undergraduate and Masters student population? And, when you've got them, how do you make best use of their time?

During your Ph.D. you probably showed undergraduate students or fellow post-grads how to use equipment or learn a new technique, but directing what research someone else does is a different kind of challenge. As a post-doc and fully paid-up researcher, you should be in the business of collecting growing lists of possible experiments. But, with the prospect of an extra pair of hands, how do you decide what on your list is worth ‘putting up’ for an undergraduate or master's degree project?