What is MySciCareer?
There have been many conversations in recent years about how science career paths don’t all follow the trajectory of: degree –> PhD –> postdoc(s) —> lab head. Instead, scientists may find themselves moving into science communication, publishing, technical or other roles where they still consider themselves to be using their scientific training, while not necessarily doing research. Unfortunately, information about the wealth of different options now available isn’t always on hand at careers crossroads – such as when deciding whether to start a PhD or what to do after completing one.
MySciCareer is a regularly updated resource of first-person stories about science careers that intends to flag up some of the diverse opportunities now available.
How can I find content relevant to me on MySciCareer?
There are three main ways you might want to search the content on MySciCareer.
First is to take a lucky dip with the carousel on the homepage, where we flag up quotes from the blog posts. If you’re intrigued by a quote, just click through to read the whole post.
Secondly, you might want to search the site by type of job – whether it’s careers in research, publishing, policy, education or more. On the archives page, you’ll be able to browse the different job types.
Finally, you might want to know what the last academic science position held by an author of a post was. “Search by training” on the archives page lets you browse the site this way.
I’d like to write about my science career path for MySciCareer – can I submit a post?
Yes, please! You can use the Contact form here on the site to tell us a bit more about what you’d like to write about.
I’ve seen some other content that I think you should be including on MySciCareer – what’s the best way of flagging it to you?
Great! We’re always keen to hear about new content to include on the site. Please drop us an email about it using the Contact form here on the site.
Some of the posts on MySciCareer were published elsewhere first – did you ask for permission to reuse them?
Yes. In all cases we reached out to the original publishers of the posts for permission to reproduce them in full or to excerpt them here on MySciCareer. Where relevant, we add links back to the original content. If you feel that we’re using something without the correct permissions, please get in touch so that we can fix any problems.
What’s the deal with reusing content from MySciCareer?
We’d love to make content on MySciCareer as freely available for reuse as possible. Where we have permission to add a Creative Commons licence to the posts (either because that was how the content was originally published, or because that was the terms we agreed with the author when they submitted the post to us directly) then this is indicated on the post. Otherwise, we simply excerpt content (with permission from the original publisher) and link back to the source of the full length article. In these instances, please observe the original copyright terms under which the article was published.
I’d really like to contact the author of a post to ask them some more questions about their job – can you introduce me?
Unfortunately, we’re not able to connect readers with authors of posts, but where the author has agreed to make his or her contact details available (such as a Twitter username), we’ll add these to the posts on the site. Feel free to use them to reach out!
How can I find out when updates are added to the site or join in conversations about science careers?
We’re on Twitter and Facebook, where we’ll post details about new content on the site as it is added, as well as resharing other relevant science careers discussions and letting you know if we give talks about science careers.
If you post content elsewhere that you’d like to be part of the science careers conversations, please add the #myscicareer hashtag – this will work on all major social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Storify, Instagram and Flickr.
Are there other projects similar to MySciCareer?
Yes. Science careers were the focus of the #IamScience Twitter discussion started by Kevin Zelnio. You can see some of those tweets in this Storify.
Another project that counters the stereotype of what makes a “typical scientist” is This is What a Scientist Looks Like, started by Allie Wilkinson.
There’s a Tumblr curated by Nathan Vanderford called What are all the PhDs.
The @realscientists account on Twitter is run by a different scientist each week, who share what they’re working on and who they are. Each curator’s bio is archived on their website.