Recently I’ve been having a lot of blog post idea inspiration. But with my lack of spare time currently, being able to actually sit down and write about all these ideas is proving near on impossible. So, these ideas are just being jotted down in my phone notes, or in my notebook, sometimes even on scrap bits of paper when I think of them ready to come back to when time allows.
But I did spend a little bit of time recently giving my blog menu a little bit of a facelift – check it out if you haven’t already! – and then it suddenly hit me. There was a huge milestone that I hit in my scientist career earlier this year between passing my PhD viva and graduating that I completely forgot to share on my blog. It happened back in March so you can tell how useless I have been. I did manage to share it on my social media, so some of you may already know but for those of you who don’t or have no idea what I am talking about right now, let me explain…
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After 3 years of collecting and analysing data, and nearly a whole year writing, editing, reviewing, editing, reviewing, editing, reviewing and so on….
I AM FINALLY A PUBLISHED SCIENTIST!
Well I have been for a few months now but let’s just pretend this is hot of the press news!
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So, in case you’re new around here, or you have just been living under a rock, for the past four years I have been studying for my PhD. I’ve always shared that I work on embryonic stem cells and working out how their metabolism and a low oxygen environment help them to become better stem cells. But the exact details of what I have been working on I haven’t been able to share with you – that’s because of various ‘political’ issues that exist in the competitive world of scientific research that I won’t go into now. But if you have been following me for a little while too, you may have heard me talking – and probably moaning – about publishing my paper a lot too.
Well, back in March, that paper finally got published! Which means I can now share the details of what my research was about more specifically with the world. So, my paper is called:
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Wow – it’s been a while since I wrote down some of those words and feels very weird to be writing them on my blog too.… But it means now that everyone can read it, tweet about it, blog about it and so on! Please do go and check it out! But if you are staring at all those words in the title thinking what the hell is she going on about, I am planning on writing an explainer post all about what it means very soon – hopefully it won’t take me as long as it did to update you guys on the paper being published!
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This was my first ever publication, but it was also my first ever first author publication too. Getting a first author publication is kinda a big deal in the academic world, it means that you did most of the work – all in my case – and all of the writing – minus some help editing from my supervisors! It means this is your baby! You created this!
I will share more about my experience publishing in another blog post – because it might take a while! But now my publication is finally out there I am so relieved and actually quite proud of myself that I contributed some novel knowledge to the world – even if it is very niche! And there are two more to come from my PhD data, but I’m taking a break from writing papers this year due to the whole starting a new job, a lot of commuting and planning a wedding. Then next year I will be back to share the rest of my data with the world.
But having published, I now feel more like an actual scientist. I have discovered something noone else has before – as far as I know! – and that is pretty damn cool if you ask me!
But I am also going to go and be a complete nerd and go look at all the metrics and data that I supply to all the researchers in my current job, but for my paper! Mine! Yay!
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Have you ever published a paper? Share the links below and let us know what it was about? Maybe you’re a non-scientist or just starting out and want to know more about the publication process – please ask any questions you have below in the comments.