Recently reconverted into retail, I’ve just survived my first Black Friday — or rather Black Week, because apparently one chaotic day wasn’t enough. It was insane, messy and completely absurd. But as I went through it, I realized something surprising: I have never felt as stressed in retail as I did waiting for a paper to be reviewed. Naturally, my scientist brain started drawing parallels between the two worlds. Some funny.

There was another lab working on our “favorite” protein. Not in our building, and not even in our time zone but our questions and models were quite similar. We knew of them through the usual channels: their publications, conference talks. And I do believe they knew of our extensive work too. So when their next paper came out, it was surprising to see that none of our lab’s work was cited. Their omission was not an error.

✒️ Editor's Note: Today's guest post was written by Catharina Sänger . With a curious mind and a passport full of lab stamps, Catharina has explored science across the globe. She studied Biochemistry in Frankfurt, Germany, including research projects in Boston and Melbourne, before moving toward Molecular Biology for her PhD at ETH Zurich.

✒️ Editor's Note: Today's guest post was written by Catharina Sänger . With a curious mind and a passport full of lab stamps, Catharina has explored science across the globe. She studied Biochemistry in Frankfurt, Germany, including research projects in Boston and Melbourne, before moving toward Molecular Biology for her PhD at ETH Zurich.

↪ Mentioned recently in a Nature News article . As you may know, a starting grant is a multi-year grant that allows a researcher to set up their own lab. It often includes their own salaries and those of 1-3 PhD students/Postdocs, as well as funds for running costs.

✒️ Editor's Note: Today's guest post was written by Altynai Mambetova . Altynai holds a Master's degree in Data Science from the University of Manchester. Her background spans data journalism to data art, and in her work, she transforms textual data into impactful solutions through research publications.

Disclaimer I will speak from my own experience and from what I know the most — the case of being a (European) cisgender woman in academia . I don’t claim to represent or fully understand the struggles of transgender women or other genders in this article. Everything: The Weight on Your Shoulders of Multiple Expectations An Invisible Pressure Women in academia constantly feel an

Open Science (OS) is a movement that aims to bring about a change to the academic publishing system. Yet, despite being around for over 30 years, it has had relatively limited success. Traditional publishers still dominate the landscape, article processing charges have made publishing less equitable and the whole system is straining under the pressure of increased numbers of papers and a reduced reviewer pool.

When I first started my PhD in France, I couldn’t help but address my PI with the formal “you” in french (“ vous ”), instead of the informal “you” (“ tu ”). She was very quick to tell me to use the informal form. It took some getting used to, but I stuck to it.

We’ve all peeked at that “Received, Revised, Accepted” section of a paper and instantly regretted it. Those dates often read less like a timeline and more like an archaeological record. And that, kids, is why one should NEVER ask a PhD student about the timings of their PhD. From all variables that define the fate of a PhD, one of the harder ones to control is indeed… the peer reviewing process (wow, on a blog that writes about peer reviewing.

… gotcha! You clicked because the title sounded extraordinary, revolutionary, amazing — didn’t it? And for a while, I found myself reacting the same way you just did. Then, spending a good hour reading an article, only to realize there was no real solution inside. Just less bold conclusions, weak predictions even. Some articles are like that — they promise a lot in the title but deliver very little.