A Dutch view on lab rats

26 November 2009

By Arjen Speksnijder

 As a former UK member of a research staff maybe I can add a perspective towards British scientists in development. It is of course inconvenient that permanent positions in research are scarce. In my view this is survival of the fittest, but a certain plasticity is also needed. To survive, it is important to focus and publish. Maybe not in the highest ranking journals but every paper counts. Do not wait too long to publish, it is tempting but fatal to keep adding results to a tentative manuscript all the time.This is also the time to build your network and ask questions to as many 'big shots' as you can without pushing your own work. Assuming you were successful at this and maybe wrote some project proposals, supervising PhD students etc. you will need to step up towards larger projects. At this stage you should have learnt to motivate other people to produce results for you or even write. You move from the first to a second position on a paper or maybe even towards the end of the author list. It is important to explore your other qualities, like project management. A good project manager can write, sell, extend his project and subjects or commits himself to the administrative side of doing research. Proper project management is mandatory for a principal investigator. And once you are managing multiple projects you probably are already a PI.I have seen EU funded projects for which results were already available at the start of the project. The data are made available in chunks towards the described deadlines. The money and time for the project is used for other strategic research and network maintenance.This is a possible strategy, to always have a kind of head-start like this, but requires an additional view on research, a business to acquire contracts.

In considering where to apply, do not limit yourself to universities but also look at not for profit research organisations or maybe even companies. They may limit your scientific creativity towards applied research but you will exploit your other qualities. This can prove to be a trade off to be the fittest person in the right place.