Author Archives: Rachel Bowden

Peer-review tips for young researchers

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Cross-posted from Nature Middle East’s House of Wisdom blog

During the Euroscience Open Forum 2012 (ESOF 2012) which opened in Dublin yesterday, Alaa Ibrahim, an astrophysicist from the American University in Cairo, Egypt, gave his advice to young researchers starting their research career on how to handle the peer reviewing process. Here is a summary of his tips:

  1. Understand that the peer reviewing process is an essential part of proper science. It gives credibility to your work and acts as an initial endorsement of your work by the science community.
  2. Start early. You now have an option to be involved in undergraduate research during graduate school. This is useful to give you a feel for the peer review process and to understand and appreciate how it works.
  3. Be part of the research community in your particular discipline. Go to meetings and conferences and get engaged with the latest research taking place. Read papers and see how they are written to get a feel for the quality of published, peer-reviewed work.
  4. Get to know the leading researchers in your field. These are likely to be your editors and reviewers. They are usually experts so don’t be shy to ask them for their advice and even mentorship when you are still starting your research career.
  5. Present your research results at meetings and solicit feedback from senior researchers and peers before you go for publishing. Their advice could help improve your work to make it publishable before you submit (and possibly get refused)
  6. Once you have a good network of contacts among senior researchers in your field, circulate your paper among them for feedback and input before submitting your manuscript for review.

For three more top tips and other peer-review advice for early-career scientists, continue reading on the House of Wisdom blog.

From research to science teaching

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If you work in an academic research role it’s likely that teaching already takes up a significant amount of your time, but have you ever thought about going the whole hog and switching to science teaching as a career? Following last week’s announcement of the 2011 US Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, Naturejobs spoke to three of the awardees who chose teaching over traditional research. What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of this career path, and would it necessarily mean the end of your interest in original research?

Staying professional

Moving from research to teaching does not make you any less of a professional, emphasises William Wallace, a former molecular biologist who now teaches physiology and research methods in biology at Georgetown Day School in Washington DC. “You can be a leader in the field and you can be challenged intellectually,” he says. “I’ve had as much professional satisfaction teaching as I did being a research scientist.” Continue reading →

Nurture your science career with the new-look naturejobs.com

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Over the past 12 years, we’ve worked hard to craft the Naturejobs website into an eminent career resource for scientists. In that time, with your help, we’ve become the largest dedicated jobs board for the scientific community worldwide. That’s why we’re excited to share the new naturejobs.com with you.

The re-launched site offers a fresh new look and improved functionality that lets you search, save and apply for jobs even more quickly and easily. Here’s how the new site can help you with your job search and career development:

  • Apply for jobs faster by uploading your CV and cover letter to your account
  • Find exactly the right job using the advanced search option, now delivered via filters on the left-hand side of your search results
  • Get jobs that match your search keywords sent to you by email using  our improved job alert sign-up process
  • Easily find useful science career news and features in our archive by filtering articles by date, discipline, career stage and more
  • See the very latest updates on science careers and jobs news via the Naturejobs Twitter feed, which has been integrated into the site

We’ll shortly be reinstating the career toolkit section with improved and expanded content, and there’s also a new section dedicated to employers.

This is just the first phase of the new naturejobs.com – watch out for further new features and improvements to the site over the coming weeks.

We hope you find the changes helpful. If you have any questions about the new site, please get in touch via our contact us page.

Achieving gender equality in academic careers: Queen’s case study

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Does your university make provision for maternity leave in its PhD studentships? Does it insist on female representation on all committees, or run a buddy system linking female postdocs to female PhD students? These are just some of the initiatives in place at Queen’s University Belfast, which was recently named as the lead university in the United Kingdom for tackling the unequal representation of women in science.

Queen’s has been given a ‘Silver University’ award by the Athena SWAN Charter, a recognition scheme that rewards UK universities committed to advancing and promoting the careers of women working in science, engineering and technology (SET). It’s the highest level of award currently held in the United Kingdom, and Queen’s is the only university with the accolade. Tom Millar, dean of the faculty of engineering and physical sciences, says the university’s gender-equality initiatives are “part and parcel” of the regular business of the institution. “It is this integration, or mainstreaming, of an equal opportunities focus that has made our efforts sustainable,” he says.

Other examples of initiatives at Queen’s include:

  • Personal mentoring programme for female postdocs and academic staff
  • Monitoring of processes at all stages of recruitment and career development
  • Regular surveys, courses and workshops on aspects of academic careers
  • Profiling of female scientists on websites and in print
  • Teaching-free semester for staff returning from maternity leave

Yvonne Galligan, director of Queen’s Gender Initiative — which has been the main driver of recent progress since it was established in 1999 — says the university’s ambition is to create a gender-equal environment for staff and students. “Winning the institutional Silver award was not an ‘event’,” she says. “It is [one] stage in a process.”

To achieve a Gold award, the highest possible, Millar and Galligan say the university must extend its gender-equality success to its arts and humanities departments and do more to tackle the loss of female academics at key career stages — the so-called ‘leaky pipeline’. It’s a process that will take time — Peter Mason from Athena SWAN explains that to be awarded Gold, a university would need the majority of its departments to hold individual Gold departmental awards. Currently only the department of chemistry at the University of York is at this level.

While Queen’s works towards this goal, Millar is understandably proud of the university’s achievement to date: “It is recognition of the enormous contribution and commitment, for more than a decade, of many staff, academic and non-academic, male and female.”

How does Queen’s compare to your institution for gender equality? Could you see similar initiatives being implemented where you work? Let us know your thoughts.

How researchers network

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Researchers rely heavily on networking at conferences and seminars and make little use of personal introductions, online social networking or proactive self-promotion, according to a report published by UK researcher development organisation Vitae.

Vitae surveyed almost 500 researchers at eight UK universities and found that less than a fifth regularly use online social networking to develop existing work contacts or make new ones. Only 14 percent feel comfortable asking someone they know to introduce them to an important person in their field, and 85 percent rarely send copies of their work to these prominent individuals.  

Overall, researchers’ networks show several characteristics of a ‘good’ network as recognised by career theory, such as a large number of work-related contacts spread across a wide geographical area. However, the people researchers know through their work also tend to know each other, which can limit the effectiveness of the network.

“The picture was of networking within a fairly limited set of contacts, with few attempts to become more visible to many of the people with power in the respondent’s field,” said the report.

A recent post on the Guardian Careers blog also highlights the importance of having a diverse network that includes weaker ties as well as close contacts, explaining that acquaintances who hail from a different social circle or industry niche are more likely to have “unique network intelligence” about available job opportunities.

“Working out strategies to connect personally with key people would help researchers manage their profile within their research field, but may also prove useful in applications for roles outside higher education,” says Vitae director Ellen Pearce. “Good networking is about being purposeful as well as widening your contacts.”

Related articles

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Making a career transition

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Career paths vary a great deal and choosing a scientific vocation can involve challenging and unanticipated decisions. In a new series from the Soapbox Science blog on nature.com, 13 guest bloggers share their stories of career transitions. From a UK politician who started out in biochemistry to a scientist who gave up a career in IT to do a PhD, the posts highlight some of the diverse routes into and out of a career in science. Have a read and let us know your thoughts, either here or in the posts below.

LinkedIn tips for jobseekers

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At yesterday’s American Chemical Society virtual career fair, social media expert and author Joshua Waldman gave advice on how to optimise your LinkedIn profile for job-seeking. Although LinkedIn is not primarily a job search platform, Waldman says it’s safe to assume that potential employers will look you up online and so you should have control over the information presented about you.

To start with, make good use of your LinkedIn headline. This gets attached to your name and photo in every communication that you send within LinkedIn and “is probably going to be in many cases your first impression”, says Waldman. You can write up to 120 characters so instead of just listing your job title alone, consider crafting a statement that explains what you do and what sets you apart from others who do the same. You can change your headline by clicking on the edit link next to your name in the edit profile section.

Once you’ve optimised your headline, take a look at your profile summary. Waldman recommends this should answer the following questions:

  • Who are you – name, job, specialising in…
  • What do you do – what particular problems do you solve
  • Why are you the best – describe your successes

If you are currently unemployed, also explain what kind of job you are looking for in your summary and incorporate a call to action to encourage potential employers to get in touch.

Your overall profile should be 100% complete, says Waldman. “Recruiters and hiring managers have been using LinkedIn for a long time now. They know when profiles are not complete and when they see [incomplete] profiles, [alarm bells] go off in their head.” Profiles that are complete also show up higher in LinkedIn search results.

If you are connected to your current employer and you don’t want them to know you are actively job-seeking, Waldman suggests you turn off your ‘activity broadcasts’. These announce when you change your profile, make a recommendation or follow a company. These alerts can be a “red flag for employers”, says Waldman. To turn off the broadcasts, click on settings under your name in the top-right of the page – the option is under privacy controls in the profile section.

Make sure you include a photo of yourself in your profile. “We are very visual animals,” says Waldman. “If we don’t have a picture, we create a feeling of distrust.” He adds that concerns over discrimination shouldn’t stop you posting a photo – as well as there being legal protection against discrimination, showing who you are can help you find a job you’ll be more comfortable in. “Unless you show up to your job interview with a paper bag over your head, they’re going to see you at some point,” says Waldman. “If the organisation is going to look at your picture on LinkedIn and make a discriminatory decision, that’s probably not a place you want to be at.”

Our final tip from Waldman’s talk is for students who are unsure if they should set up a LinkedIn profile before they start work – Waldman says go for it. “If you really look at your experiences, you can start to fill out a very nice-looking LinkedIn profile right away. You’ll have more time to grow a larger network and you’ll have a leg up on your peers who wait until they graduate.”

We’d also encourage you to join the Naturejobs science jobs and careers discussion group on LinkedIn to see highlights from Naturejobs and to connect with fellow jobseekers.

Which type of CV is best for you?

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There’s more than one approach to structuring your CV, enabling you to tailor the marketing of your skills and experiences to different employers. Hilary Jones, training and careers officer at the UK’s University of York, gave an overview of three types of CV at the Society of Biology’s Life Science Careers Conference last week in London. “There are traditional ways of writing CVs, and more innovative ways that are becoming more acceptable,” says Jones. So which type of CV should you consider for the next step in your science career?

Chronological CVs

“This is the type most people will write if they just sit down and have a go,” says Jones. “It’s all quite obvious and straightforward.” The bulk of a chronological CV comprises ordered lists of qualifications and work history, along with other standard elements such as personal details, membership of professional associations, training and references.

Advantages: Good if your career path has been linear, such as the traditional academia pipeline, and if it’s easy for the recruiter to understand what your previous roles were. “[Chronological CVs are] good for more traditional employers,” says Jones.

Disadvantages: Highlights career gaps, and can be problematic if you are looking to make a career change. If you’re applying for jobs in a new field or sector, “it’s very hard for a recruiter to work out if you have the relevant skills and experience just by looking at job titles,” says Jones. “There isn’t much space for you to help explain how your skills are transferable.”

Skills-based CVs

At the opposite end of the spectrum to a chronological CV is a skills-based CV. The two defining characteristics are the inclusion of a career objective statement and a prominent, extended skills section at the start of the CV, beneath your personal details. The career objective statement “sets your CV in a context,” explains Jones. An example would be ‘experienced biology researcher now seeking to use their skills in a science communication project’. The skills section should be tailored to the person specification of the job you’re applying for. Details of your education and employment history are relegated to the second page, with only brief descriptions highlighting your achievements.

Advantages: Makes career gaps less obvious, and it’s easy for the recruiter to see why they should invite you to interview. You can also talk about more than one job under each skill subheading.

Disadvantages: This is a modern style, so you’ll need to judge whether the organisation you’re applying to will look favourably upon it. Jones cautions against this approach for traditional academic employers.

Hybrid CVs

To balance the benefits of the two approaches, Jones says the safest approach for early-career scientists is to use a hybrid approach. Leave a chronological list of your education and employment history on the first page, but include a medium-sized skills section on the second page.

Whatever type of CV you choose, remember to adapt the content to match the person specification of the role in question. “For every job you apply for, you have to create a completely new CV,” says Jones.

What do you think? Does your CV fall into one of these categories? Have you had particular success with one approach? Leave your comments below.

What motivates you as a scientist?

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To tie in with the latest Nature Outlook, Lenses on Biology, the Nature Communities team asked five biological scientists at different stages of their education or careers to tell their personal stories in a guest blog post. Each scientist studies, works or has an interest in one of the five research fields featured in Lenses on Biology ― cancer, stem cells, synthetic biology, ocean health and climate change ― and they share what motivates them in their chosen subject. You can read their stories below, and discuss your own motivations here or on the posts in question.

Science careers and social media: will #IamScience and ‘This is what a scientist looks like’ help change perceptions?

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To complement Social Media Week, the nature.com blogs team are publishing a series of posts about science and social media. Two of the posts focus on recent social media memes about science careers – the #IamScience hashtag on Twitter, and the ‘This is what a scientist looks like’ meme on Tumblr.

The #IamScience hashtag is being used by scientists to share the variety of ways they began their science careers. A guest post by Ben Lillie, co-founder of The Story Collider, explains how the meme emerged:

About three weeks ago, a science writer named Kevin Zelnio tweeted this:

Image of #IamScience tweet by Kevin Zelnio

And with that, he completely transformed what I thought was possible, and indeed what the point was, of social media.

The tweet came from a discussion of how people had started their science careers, and Kevin’s frustration that the path to a scientist was always depicted in one way: go to college, go directly to grad school. Hope it was a top-tier school, then, “Bam! You’re a scientist.”

But that wasn’t the path Kevin took, and it wasn’t the path most of the people he knew with careers in science took. So he tweeted, and encouraged others to tweet. It struck a chord, and within hours there were hundreds of people tweeting their stories with the hashtag  #IAmScience.

Ben goes on to explain why the stories being shared via #IamScience are important:

These are tales of wrong turns, failed classes, delayed dreams, failed schools, rejection, disabilities, mistaken careers, and as you saw in Kevin’s tweet, much, much more. As science communicators we talk a lot about humanizing science. It doesn’t get much more human than this — but I’ve rarely seen a major science publication touch most of these subjects. And that, of course, is the power of Twitter. Things that would never be published anywhere find a way of bubbling to the surface.

While #IamScience is helping share diverse stories of how scientists began their science careers, the ‘This is what a scientist looks like’ website is showing the world that it’s not all lab coats and safety glasses once you get there. In another post, the nature.com communities team explain the concept:

Developed by science writer and multimedia specialist Allie Wilkinson, the concept is simple, a Tumblr blog which collates pictures of scientists from all walks of life. Allie explains, “there is no cookie-cutter mould of what a scientist looks like. A scientist can look like you, or can look like me.”

Allie wanted to show that anyone can be a scientist:

“In the movie Ratatouille, the motto repeated throughout is, ‘anyone can cook’.  Although initially frustrated by this motto, the critic in the movie eventually realizes that not everyone can cook, but a great cook can come from anywhere,” explains Allie. “I want people to realize the same for scientists.  Not everyone can be a scientist, just like not everyone can cook, but a great scientist can be anyone.” Allie hopes that this project will help change stereotypes and inspire kids to realize that they have the potential to be a scientist.

As the nature.com communities team conclude, only time will tell if social media initiatives such as #IamScience and ‘This is what a scientist looks like’ will really change the way people think about what a career in science involves. In the meantime, it’s certainly a powerful way to reach a wider audience and engage with the next generation of potential scientists.