By Sheeva Azma
If your advisor and collaborators are on board, you can self-publish your research as an exiting graduate student in science. Even if they are not, you can still publish based on what you've learned. Learn how I did that for two of my graduate projects in this post.
Can one avoid wasting taxpayer dollars as an exiting scientist? I can speak from experience here...and yes, I said "exiting scientist," not "existing scientist," though technically, I am both. To read about my experiences as a scientist-turned-science-writer, see my article for The Xylom.
In truth, the main point of this article is not about wasting taxpayer dollars, but about making the most of life as an exiting science - thereby making the most of the taxpayer dollars invested in you.
When I first left grad school, I actually had a lot of really interesting science to talk about. What was I supposed to do with 10 (!) years of MRI analysis research experience? Watching science news made me feel like I didn't exist; none of the journalists seemed to explain the impacts of the latest and hottest MRI studies properly. I didn't understand how such a thing could be possible at such a high level of journalism. One of my first post-grad school memories is angrily penning the opening to a science policy article that suggested that people should use brain imaging to better understand poverty; or that if we knew what poverty did to our brains, we would do everything in our power to alleviate it. Read my article here. Little did I know that I would actually help improve science literacy just a few years later as a science communicator, trainer, and - yes - even as a science journalist.
I read a Nature article that spoke to me when it stated that it wastes taxpayer dollars to force women out of science. Maybe it's because I am a small business owner, but I don't like wasting money. In the early days of Fancy Comma's founding, I used to watch a lot of "Shark Tank" and learned that, when you get any money as a small business owner, you have to reinvest it strategically back into the business. Maybe that's part of what motivated me to avert the loss of taxpayer dollars by publishing my graduate work years after I had left my program.
The biggest reason I wanted to publish my graduate work was that I felt that I had been sitting on research that was just languishing when it could help people. So, maybe I am the perfect example of what the Nature paper is talking about. Anyway, I decided to share some tips for other people in my place who are leaving science with substantial research experience and want to make sure that their research can actually help people.
There are a lot of reasons to publish your work after leaving a graduate program (or being forced to abandon a research project at any level). I found that publishing my work gave me a sense of closure, helped me reconnect with my science roots, and improved my confidence in my science skills, especially after facing so much pushback from the scientific enterprise.
The downside of self-publishing your academic research is that you have to do it on your time, on your terms, in a way that fits into your life. However, given the nature of academic science, maybe this is the way to go, since don't you want to make sure anything you do happens on your own terms?
It's an unideal solution, but isn't all of science? Self-publishing your academic output is a way to ensure that your science still makes an impact, and you can reclaim your scientific identity. If you do go this route, make sure that your research is not bound by intellectual property or non-disclosure agreements. If you are bound by those, consider taking a slightly different angle which leverages your body of knowledge you've gained, but not your exact research project.
In any case, if you are curious as to how I self-published my research years after leaving grad school, completely outside of academia, keep reading.
Preprints as a way to democratize science
Before I go any further, I want to say that preprint servers are a huge thing now, and they were not in grad school. Worst comes to worst, you can submit your research to a preprint server and carry on with your life. That's what I did for my paper that was rejected in grad school. As of writing, it has one reviewer, who gave me the same feedback my other reviewers did - it doesn't have enough sample size. However, it has some good analysis in the intro. When you publish a preprint, you can cite it in future papers, since it has what is called a digital object identifier or DOI. Remember, though, that it's up to the reviewers of your publication as to whether it passes the scientific legitimacy test. Scientific rigor weeds out a lot, so proceed with caution.
Anyway, here are my tips to publishing your research independently to save taxpayer dollars - not to mention your sense of self - as a scientist. I feel like I've come as close to being a freelance scientist as possible by using these steps, so if you're interested in that, keep reading. In my case, I actually waited eight years before I ever started writing, so hopefully, using my tips, you will not have to do that. I also know people, like Jamie Zvirzdin, who do science research on the side while teaching science writing. Maybe there are a bunch of us out there, secretly pursuing science in our spare time?
How to Publish Your PhD Work after Leaving Grad School
1. Don't stop thinking about your research.
After I left grad school, I mistakenly assumed I'd just have to stop thinking about my science research, since I was no longer actively engaged in it. That ended up being a mistake, since I now had about five years of research experience just focused on an extremely niche topic which nobody else knew about. As a former PTSD researcher, I kept seeing my work pop up in society - amidst wars, a border crisis, and even just in keeping up with the news.
2. Think about the way everything is connected.
The truth is that when you leave your PhD program, you leave with several years of experiences, and you've likely discounted them in favor of dedicating your life to the pursuit of scientific truth. Also, you've likely spent several years just being focused on working on a single topic. Perhaps you expected to be one of those people with an academic job, but that didn't work out. The task, as an exiting PhD student, is to figure out what to do with all of your knowledge and experience amidst the other many demands of post-PhD life, and to make it all work. Actually take the time figure out how your work is relevant to society. Think about the soft skills and hard skills you've gained. Think about how your work fits in with the world at large.
It's a really interesting challenge to take your research out of that really contained context and apply it to your everyday life, and I think that scientists could actually benefit from being forced to grapple with that over the course of their training. I found that being a neuroscientist helped me as a science writer, since I could think about the way readers might process my writing on a cognitive level. I hoped that I could make my writing "resonate" with readers more.
3. Talk to everyday people about your research.
This might be a controversial take, but I found that avoiding PTSD and addiction research just made me think about it more. Tell people you used to be a scientist: people at the grocery store, people you see out shopping. Turn it into a source of small talk. See what they say. What questions do they ask? This can feel super awkward, especially since most people in the world are not scientists, but I have learned that most people really do like science on some level and are receptive to it.
4. If possible, find a way to stay in touch with your research topic.
For years, I enjoyed reading the personalized Google Scholar updates and seeing what research was emerging in cognitive neuroscience. I also got to take my research one step further by volunteering my time to a local Veterans' hospital, which led to meeting people who live with PTSD, as I previously wrote about for the Fancy Comma blog. If you're a life sciences researcher, like me, it can be easy to connect with people that deal with the everyday aspects of what you study through volunteering. There may also be scientific talks you can attend as a member of the public, as I have been lucky to do. Think creatively here; remember, the main goal is to stay involved with your area of research, however possible. Sure, you might not have time to work in a physics lab, but you can tour a lab, perhaps attend a seminar, or even teach physics to young people.
4. Stay in touch with people in your field.
One thing I did after grad school was to stay in touch with the people in my field. I didn't immediately delete my LinkedIn connections in science. In fact, I was surprised when people from my old institutions continued to reach out to me here and there. I was able to use Twitter to connect with my fellow PTSD researchers, and I mustered up the courage to actually chat with them. They were surprisingly receptive! Don't think that, because you left a PhD program, you have no skills. You have to work to inventory your skills and do the work of reaching out to people, making connections, and presenting the best version of your scientific self (which still exists after leaving grad school, by the way - it doesn't just go away!).
5. Learn new skills (or improve upon old ones).
After I left grad school, I leaned into being a science writer to pay the bills. It ended up becoming my job. I ghostwrote manuscripts, pored over research to explain it in technical documents, and more. From being a science writer, I learned that I actually have a lot of hang-ups about writing in science. For example, I have never written an NIH grant proposal from scratch, so in my mind, that disqualified me as a scientist (though I directly contributed to several successful submissions in grad school)! However, after writing nonstop as my job for several years, I knew I could write up my own work - I had, after all, thrown myself into the most esoteric scientific topics, both in and outside of my field, for my clients. The writing step was the easiest part. The challenge was the mindset and even the idea that I could produce scientific research despite not being part of the academic science framework.
6. Lean into your professional network of scientists.
When I decided to write up my graduate research as a scientist-turned-science-writer, I contacted my advisor and collaborators asking them what they thought about the idea. It turned out that they supported me fully, turning what felt impossible into something that I could make possible thanks to their support and words of encouragement. Try not to burn bridges, but rather, have a growth mindset.
7. Set aside time to work on your project, but be open-minded about the process.
Actually writing up your research as someone who hasn't done research for several years is the weirdest thing ever. I find remote work really bizarre when it comes to this "freelance scientist" type of role; am I just supposed to step into a coffeeshop and start typing about some really niche neuroscience topic I haven't been able to work on for several years, and never even thought I'd be able to work on again, while everyone around me chats about random things they did that day? I needed time and space to revisit my science life, which looks nothing like my current life as a freelance writer. I had to fit my old science life and experiences into my new life as a science writer, which took introspection and problem-solving. In other words, I had to ask myself: what are my needs while revisiting my past life, and how could I meet them with what I have available to me these days?
8. Take advantage of resources available to you.
To immerse myself back into the world of academics, I decided to go to my local university library to work for an hour or so every week. I could only do so in the summers, when there were no students around. So, it took two years, but I got it done. It also helped that I had journal access, so I could pull PDFs of articles I needed for my research.
Oh, and cost and availability of free time is a factor, too. It is a huge privilege to be able to work on a passion project - in my case, completing a research project that you never finished. Luckily, I had a lot of free time in 2022 and 2023, and instead of reaching out to find new clients as everyone advised, I just used that time to make my life's dream of writing up my graduate work a reality. As long as you set aside some time every week to get your writing done, you can avoid wasting taxpayer dollars and communicate the value of the work you have done (without getting any credit or recognition for it as a scientist).
9. Consider a collaboration.
It's definitely a lot easier to tackle a huge project like this with a collaborator - even if all they do is read your work and add a bit of context. You can do what I did, and connect with people in my research area of PTSD. I did a random chat type of Zoom call with someone, and we hit it off so well that I asked them to be my collaborator, and they happily agreed! If you're an ideas person, like me, you might love the idea of reconnecting with people in your old field. It was amazing to me how much scientists loved to hear that I had to say, and really felt validating as someone no longer in academic science.
10. Read the life stories of scientists.
One thing that helped me in my process of revisiting my science life was learning about the lives of scientists, especially women scientists. There are many women scientists out there whose dad, or even their advisor, didn't support them. I can name several scientists whose advisors undercut them or stole their work, and now, there's the famous story of Katalin Karikó, who is mentioned in the Nature article, who got demoted from her job as a professor and went on to do her Nobel Prize winning research at a company to develop mRNA vaccine technology. If you have a favorite scientist, take the time to read about their life. It will motivate you on your least motivated days, when the world seems to be going on as chaotically as usual and you don't know if you have it in you to tap back into your science life. For starters, you can read about Marie Curie, one of my favorite scientists, who I wrote about. It's way easier to be a woman in science now than it was even 50 years ago. Back in the day, science programs explicitly excluded women, which is not the case anymore, really.
You've Got This!
Those are my best tips for continuing the science life as a freelancer. I recommend writing up any old research projects you have rattling around in your head, especially if you're sitting on a project that is taking up your mental space day and night and you don't know what else to do but to get back to it. Fancy Comma's a science writing company, so we can also help! If you have any questions or comments about this process, feel free to chime in below in the comments.
By the way: taxpayers, you are welcome.
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