Bioinformatics Zen

A post at Nodal point discusses a PLoS Computional Biology article on the problems of being a post doc. The post also contains another interesting PLoS reference - 10 simple rules for getting published. The main points of the article are reading papers regularly, and being objective about research, especially your own.

UPDATE : There’s also a discussion of this at Biocurious

I enjoy doing science most of the time, but I want to publish. I know that doing science just for the publications is not a good frame of mind to be in. However in the current system, it’s how we are judged as scientists. Therefore, I would be worried about getting an academic position after my PhD without at least one publication, as a bare minimum.

With regard to the article, I try to read papers on a regular basis. However I think two a day is quite a large amount since it usually takes me a few hours to read the paper and add a mini review and key words to my bibliographic database. Plus the avalanche of publications falling into my computer from RSS feeds and email alerts makes keeping abreast of what’s going on in my field feel a daunting task. That’s ignoring what is going on in biology in general.

As for being objective, my thoughts about my work range from “this is rather rubbish” to “maybe I can publish this”. Neither of which is very helpful, probably the best mentality to have is “What is the question I am trying to answer, and how does my work answer this?”