Monthly Archives: June 2016

Lindau: Return to Nerd Heaven: Physics is like the Godfather and this is good

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Alaina G. Levine is live from the Lindau Conference

As I mentioned yesterday, even after I switched my major to mathematics from physics and astronomy, I couldn’t quite turn my back on this field. I’ve come to realise that there is a specific reason for this, and I think you’ll agree: Physics is like The Godfather – once you’re in, you can’t get out. Our knowledge of the universe, from the yotta to atto, is all tied to physics. Our entire existence is described by physics. You can’t get more powerful than that. So clearly, it’s is an entrancing field, and like the Godfather, there is literally no way to escape – you’ll die a member of La Famiglia de Fisica.

Lindau Island. Credit: CC-BY Edda Praefcke

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A day in the life of a Scientific Reports assistant production editor

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Charlotte Alldis helps shed some light on the publishing business for Scientific Reports and Naturejobs.

I’ve worked as an assistant production editor for Scientific Reports for almost a year now, and one thing I should mention is that Scientific Reports is an unusual journal. We’re completely open access (which means anyone can access and re-use the research we publish), and we publish loads of research in a rapid timeframe. Ensuring papers are published within the shortest possible time following acceptance is the key driver and focus of the work I complete on a daily basis in the production team.

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Charlotte Alldis

 

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Return to Nerd Heaven: Lindau

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Alaina G. Levine is live from the Lindau conference

In 2012, I flew across the pond from the deserts of Arizona to the shores of Lake Constance on the German/Austrian/Swiss border. I wasn’t on holiday per se, but I might as well have been. When I arrived in the tiny hamlet of Lindau, Germany, I was met with two very sweet offerings: spaghetti ice cream and hundreds of nerds swarming the island town. I couldn’t have been happier.IMG_4306

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How did you approach the transition from academia to industry?

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We asked speakers at the Naturejobs career expo, San Francisco, how they made the move.

https://youtu.be/y2PFsG5eXhs

A day in the life of a Scientific Reports manuscript assistant

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William Coleman helps shed some light on the publishing business for Scientific Reports and Naturejobs.

Scientific Reports is a rapidly growing online open access journal that publishes research from all areas of the natural and clinical sciences. As one of over twenty manuscript assistants at the journal, one of my main tasks is to quality check author submissions in our online manuscript tracking system before they’re sent to our editorial board and, potentially, to peer review.

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William Coleman

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Book Smart

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It’s hard sometimes to tell the full story about your research – its implications and impact, its repercussions and significance – in a single manuscript.

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You may have lots more to say about your discipline or field, too. Why not write a book? It isn’t easy, but it is rewarding to tell your story to a broader audience than manuscript editors and journal subscribers. And while you’re not likely to get rich from your book, you may find that it presents you with new opportunities – to raise your profile, to collaborate, to develop a novel project. Continue reading →

Bridging science and real world impact with confidence

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What does it take for someone in science to make a difference in the world? We often seek success and validation through the rigour of our research and studies, but the key may be in our attitude.

Naturejobs career expo journalism competition winner Diane N.H. Kim

Confidence is not something we normally associate with science. In this field, grounded in facts and far from emotions, it’s no wonder we have trouble seeing how our attitudes affect our success. A confident attitude is considered much more important for an actress on the red carpet, or a politician delivering a speech. Scientists are still largely portrayed and perceived as solitary individuals with passive personalities, spurred by a media portrayal of a lone scientist in their basement lab.DK_profilepicture Continue reading →

Babies or career: How to keep young researchers in science

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Could shared post-docs improve work-life balance and make academia more attractive for early career scientists?

Naturejobs journalism competition winner Ulrike Träger.

If you look for advice on work-life balance in science online, the message seems clear: it’s possible to fit a 10-hour work day around quality time with your kids and family as long as you’re organized. Flexible hours of working in the lab help. Experiments don’t mind when you do them, and can be postponed until your kids are asleep. But still, long hours are expected in order to be successful, and finding childcare during midnight experiments is not always easy if you don’t live close by. So for many (including myself, a post-doc in my late twenties pondering the right time to start a family) the prospect of having to plan each and every minute of the day to be a good parent and scientist is daunting. This leaves promising young scientists everywhere feeling like they have to choose between family and career.

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