Oceanography | Vol.31, No.2
PERSPECTIVES
Advice for Young Scientists on
Fruitful Membership in the Scientific Community
By Emmanuel Boss
Off and on for the past 20 years I have been
co-teaching an intense summer course in
optical oceanography. During the course,
graduate students and postdocs often
take the opportunity to ask my colleagues
and me questions about how they should
comport themselves as part of a scien-
tific community. During the most recent
course, I spent a class period speaking to
this issue. From the comments I received,
the students clearly were appreciative, and
I have since shared my notes with col-
leagues, many of whom found them use-
ful and have added materials of their own.
Here, I convey some of the lessons we
have learned through the years about
strategies for navigating within the sci-
entific community. They are by no means
comprehensive, nor have they been inves-
tigated scientifically, but I hope readers
will find them useful.
OUR BRAND IS OUR NAME
Basically, we want to have a reputation
for doing good science, and we want
people to use the science we produce
(e.g., by citing our work). A respectable
citation list is necessary for marketing
ourselves when we are seeking a job or
a promotion, or hope to join an expert
committee— and also for feeling engaged
in a meaningful endeavor. The associated
concept in marketing is the brand. Our
brand is our name.
It is self-evident that to enhance our
brand it should be associated with quality
work. It follows that we should be careful
about what papers we lend our name to or
the work we choose to accept (e.g., con-
sulting for a dubious “scientific” com-
pany). It is hard to change one’s brand,
as we operate in small communities that
have long-term memories. It is therefore
critical that we espouse a long-term view,
one of delayed gratification, rather than
one of short-term gain (e.g., a paper in a
high-impact journal with dubious data to
help with tenure) that could compromise
the longevity of our brand.
Other strategies to enhance your brand
involve being kind to others, and sharing
your ideas. While in rare cases somebody
might run off with your idea and not give
you credit, in which case you should be
careful sharing with them in the future, it
is more likely that it will result in a mean-
ingful collaboration. For many, collabora-
tion is one of the most joyful components
of the scientific enterprise. Your reputa-
tion as a human being, not only for the
science you produce, can also have sig-
nificant consequences for your future (in
particular, when job hunting). Sharing
can also result in papers written by col-
leagues who undertake the work you
don’t have time for. Never hesitate to
contact your peers if you have construc-
tive criticism to offer. They will appreci-
ate the help. Also, don’t let people wait for
your response to their queries. They will
choose to work with those who respond.
Looking at science as a zero-sum
game—thinking that a colleague’s success
comes at our own expense—is myopic
and counterproductive. The more diverse
approaches included, the more likely our
subfield will be able to provide useful
solutions, benefiting us all. A collabora-
tive approach also helps us to better make
the case for the importance of our sub-
field in order to increase resources and
attract young talent to it.
Marketing is also about communicat-
ing your brand and its products. Doing
great work that is not shared is like
inventing a great product that nobody
knows about. The product of your science
should be easily available. The more clicks
it takes to obtain the PDF of your article,
the less likely it is to be read (and hence
cited). If your paper is only available from
the publisher’s site, and additionally with
a fee, the likelihood it will be read by a sci-
entist at a poor university with no library
access is slim. On the other hand, if it
comes up in a simple search on the topic
with a link to a PDF, it is much more likely
to be read, and if relevant, cited. Sending
your papers to experts who you think will
appreciate it is perfectly OK and will save
you the grief of seeing their publication
on a subject you have been sweating on
that does not cite your work (it is also OK
to send it to them after the fact to ensure
they are aware of your work). Working on
topics of wide interest, while resulting in
more competition, is also more reward-
ing. It will increase the number of people
your work touches.
If you are interested in being invited to
join expert committees and possibly be
approached about jobs, you should have
an up-to-date and comprehensive per-
sonal website. Whether you should post
your PDF on your non-commercial web-
site is a matter of debate. I buy my publi-
cation rights whenever I am first author.
If a publisher should ever ask me to
remove a PDF, I will reconsider review-
ing for this publisher (an essential work
we do for free).
MANAGING YOUR TIME
AND STRESS LEVEL
A science career is not for everyone. Given
the many privileges that may be associated
with it (e.g., flexibility in hours, travel, sal-
ary, status, job security for some), it is
not possible to succeed without working
hard, often way beyond a “normal” work-
week. It is therefore very important to
learn to manage time well and find strat-
egies to ensure you have time for yourself
to avoid burnout. As participants in a cre-
ative line of work, our egos are often on