"Ten Simple Rules" for Many Aspects of Career Building

[gleem]

Recently @Ackbach posted a thread “Discuss Ten Simple Rules for Effective Statistical Practice”. He cites an article from PLOS (Public Library of Science) “Ten Simple Rules for Effective Statistical Practice”. The article references the article “Ten Simple Rules for Writing a PLOS Ten Simple Rules Article” which referenced Philip E Bourne’s Series on” Ten Simple Rules” starting in 2005 which began with “Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published”. Articles related to Ten Rules for dozens of scientific and professional activities have continued through 2020. The articles can be found at https://collections.plos.org/collection/ten-simple-rules/. I encourage you to take a few minutes to read through the titles.

The introduction to “Ten Simple Rules for Writing a PLOS Ten Simple Rules Article” gives the motivation for the article.

Would Newton retweet your post on Twitter? How would Einstein view open source software? How would Darwin have handled a Wikipedia edit war?

The way we do science is changing almost as fast as the volume of our data. Advice is needed; however, advice on leading a successful scientific life is usually confined to outdated memoirs, unrecorded weekly lab meetings, neglected blogs, or casual conversations at a conference.

When we are faced with the challenges of how to be the best scientist we can, our instinctive reaction is to follow our usual pattern of inquiry—search the literature.

This search left us wanting, until we discovered the PLOS Ten Simple Rules collection. We have found them to be a series of concise articles that capture the professional zeitgeist of being a scientist in an approachable manner.

Many topics cover the professional (or “soft”) skills that are necessary for a modern scientific career, but are not part of a formal scientific education. [PB: Sad but true—teaching such skills should be a no-brainer.] These articles represent an invaluable chance to pass on advice and knowledge in a way that can be widely distributed, formally recognised, and—as an added benefit—cited.

If (like us) you have read some articles in the Ten Simple Rules collection and appreciated their value, you may feel the urge to write one of your own. The collection provides a succinct and engaging format for advice on these skills. However, coming up with an article on soft skills need not be hard. Perhaps you have some insight, experience, or wisdom to impart. How would you do that?

Is there practical advice for contributing to the Ten Simple Rules collection already available? What can we learn from the existing articles in the collection? If only there was an article with ten simple rules for writing a PLOS Ten Simple Rules article. If only that article could be peppered with insightful comments from the founder of the collection: Philip E. Bourne.

This is that article.

I think these ten simple rule articles are very relevant to the advice given in PF.

 

[jedishrfu]

Can you elaborate more?

There are a lot of N simple rules floating around for a whole range of topics. Sadly, the rules involved the less likely anyone would follow them.

The ten simple rules notion is interesting from a binary perspective of being two rules decimal where the first rule might be:

0) Be good to everyone you meet
1) Read the first rule again

For scientific research, the ten simple rules of statistics might apply when analyzing data and writing peer-reviewed papers.

Is that what you are getting at?

 

[CrysPhys]

0) Be good to everyone you meet

<<Emphasis added>> Really? What if you encounter someone intent on harming you or others? The problem with simple rules is that real life is not simple.

 

[gleem]

Philip E. Bourne the Founding Dean of the School of Data Science and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia wrote the paper in 2005 "Tens Simple Rules for Getting Published" which resulted in a series of similar papers relating to various aspects of professional development or scientific activities generally associated with the biological sciences but having general applicability.

Examples of articles on "Ten Simple Rules include :

Ten Simple Rules to Protect Your Intellectual Property
Ten Simple Rules to becoming a principal investigator
Ten Simple Rules for Starting a Company
Ten simple rules for giving an effective academic job talk
Ten simple rules for collaboratively writing a multi-authored paper

Plus dozens more. see
https://collections.plos.org/collection/ten-simple-rules/

 

[symbolipoint]

Build your career! Now, figure out what were the ten simple rules you actually used for building your career. Put this into the form of a list of ten simple rules. There! Now you have ten simple rules for career building.

Realistically, wisdom takes time; often ten years or more. Building whatever career may need 6 or 7 simple rules, or more than 12 simple rules. One needs to identify the rule one by one - if he can.