"Keep your eyes open wide"
Advice from researchers
to researchers
It’s not easy being a researcher. The field is competitive, with challenges at every stage of your career, from finding funding to getting published to maintaining a decent work-life balance. Research also has the potential to be immensely rewarding — cracking a difficult problem, seeing your work published, seeking out new challenges, and making a difference to the world.
We’ve spoken to researchers from around the world at every stage of their career and in a range of disciplines about their challenges and successes. And they almost always have advice and inspiration to share.
"Devote yourself ... like farmers devote themselves to their farmland."
Prof Huai Chen won the 2020 ASPIRE Prize for his research on wetlands biodiversity. Wetlands have been a lifelong source of fascination for him. His work focuses on enhancing understanding of the wetlands and their importance to people, as well as protecting them and developing their capacity to absorb carbon.
His love of the wetlands and his choice of career stems from a love of the outdoors. “I love nature, and because of my studies, I love plants, especially wetland plants,” he says. “They inspired me to concentrate my studies on wetlands biodiversity.”
For early career researchers, Prof Chen has three pieces of advice:
“Keep your eyes open wide and not just on one specialty. Look at other topics that may be related or distant to your initial choice.
Target difficult problems. Easy problems mean they are not important. The greater the difficulty, the more important they are.
Devote yourself to what you choose, like farmers devote themselves to their farmland. You will be rewarded by a sense of accomplishment.”
Read more about Prof Chen and his work.
"There's a new breed of researchers who are passionate about impact."
Juliet Inyang, a Lecturer at the University of Calabar in Nigeria, believes in following one’s heart to make a difference. However, that’s not always easy when the research that gets rewarded in academia differs from the research that you know needs to be done.
As she says, “citation isn’t making in impact. Impact is getting my work out there and seeing that it has made a difference.” Nonetheless, the ways in which the reward system in academia can be at odds with researchers’ careers goals. In those situations, it can be difficult to stay focused and that’s when following your passion makes the difference:
"I think the situation around reward is changing. There’s a new breed of researchers who are passionate about impact. Their voices are getting louder and they’re moving towards this different way of measuring impact that’s not just quantitative.
So I would encourage other researchers to just find something they’re passionate about, keep working on it, and look for those journals that have their interests in scope."
Find out more about Juliet's network Academic Hive
"Even senior researchers suffer from imposter syndrome."
Dr Charlotte Wray, International Research Manager in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, recently discovered she was not alone when experiencing self doubt:
“Before lockdown, we had seminars where people were talking about imposter syndrome and trying to combat it. Even senior researchers at Oxford were saying how they still suffer from it, and they find that they're actually more likely to feel it when they have success, like when they get a big grant. I think I felt like that too when I won the Scopus award. It's very strange but I think, unfortunately, very common in academia.”
Her own work focuses on the relationships between childhood development – including nutrition, cognition, social and emotional development, and socioeconomic status — in relation to adult outcomes. It’s work she’s passionate about and that informs her advice to others:
When you're deciding which PhD you want to do, make sure it's a topic that you love. Research can be really challenging at times, and there's lots of rejection in terms of papers getting rejected and having to resubmit them. And the same with grant proposals.
So I think it's important that you do something that you're passionate about to begin with because that passion will make sure that you get through the hard times. And when you do have a successful publication or successful grant accepted, it really feels worth it. Make sure it's right for you, and that you can actually put your stamp on your own research.
Read more from Charlotte Wray.
"Don't rely on assumptions other people make."
For Dr Seng Cheong Loke, one of the most important lessons is the need to keep an open mind. That’s something he has embraced himself, switching from a career as an esteemed endocrinologist in his home country of Mayasia to pursue a PhD in Health Sciences at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His goal is to merge his health and gerontology expertise with his lifelong interest in technology. He’s currently a doctoral student designing an augmented reality app that would enable older people to have a real-life experience when communicating with relatives they cannot visit in person. He explained:
For older people, especially when they've lived in their family home for many years, having a sense of relatives visiting — virtually if not physically — may be something that is of benefit to them.
Seng Cheong draws on his own experience when giving advice to his students and other early-career researchers:
I think one of the most important things is that, if you go into any kind of research, try to have an open mind. You know, we all have our preconceptions. When you go in, think about not only what you need to do – think about if there are better ways to get it done, and don't rely on assumptions that other people make. … I think that's very important in any kind of research. And that's especially true in PhD work, where you have to break new ground.
The second thing I would say is that just because a field has been gone over many times by experts, so-called, don't think that there's not a gap for you to actually contribute. There's always something that you can do. There's always something new that you will discover if you are persistent enough.
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