How chasing a high-impact publication nearly broke me

From ScienceMag:

When a paper I had spent years working on tirelessly was published in Science, others expected me to be happy. One senior scientist immediately urged me to work on securing my own funding for a follow-up project and added, “If you want to become a PI [principal investigator], you now have to give 150%.” The advice was well-meaning; in his view, the Science publication was a step toward a job leading a lab. But it wasn’t clear how I would find the energy to keep going. After 8 years pouring myself into one postdoc project and submitting to Nature and Science, I barely had 50% left.

Years earlier, when I moved to France to start the project, I was full of enthusiasm and happy to work long hours. But as time went on and I struggled to get my project off the ground, pressure and insecurity became my main motivators. If I failed, I feared I would never get a job in academia.

Haunted by low self-esteem, I put pressure on myself to work harder and felt guilty whenever I took a break. Weekends disappeared into experiments, vacations shrank to a few days, and my mind no longer knew how to rest.

Nearly 3 years into the project, I finally saw a glimmer of hope: Under specific conditions, my mutants began to show a phenotype. It wasn’t the dramatic breakthrough I had imagined, but as I followed these early hints, the findings deepened.

Around that time, our group realized another lab was poised to potentially scoop us. That ramped up my anxiety even further. After some time working separately, we decided to join forces with our competitors. That eased the pressure. But I constantly feared they’d end the collaboration and submit first, as my experiments were perpetually behind schedule. Eventually, though, we submitted a joint paper to Nature.

The manuscript was rejected. But the editor left a small back door open, so we worked through about 50 reviewer comments, running new experiments and rewriting the paper—an effort that consumed 1 year of work. After another rejection, we fought on for another year. In the end, the appeal was denied. The editors offered to send the manuscript to one of Nature’s sister journals, which could have been an easier path to publishing. But we opted to submit to Science instead.

When the next round of reviewer comments—some very negative—came back, I almost cried. “Not again,” I remember thinking. Again it took well over a year to address another long round of revisions. But in the end we received an acceptance letter.

When the paper finally appeared in print, I was in no condition to rejoice. An old tic disorder had returned. My back and neck ached constantly. Skin rashes appeared. I struggled with focus, depression, and exhaustion. My creativity and energy had deserted me. I tried to write a follow-up grant but I couldn’t finish it. I was spent in body and mind.

After my postdoc contract was not renewed, I decided not to seek a new position in academia because I feared the stress would overwhelm me. I spent 2 years sending applications to biotech and pharma companies, without success.

Unemployed and receiving basic social welfare, I felt worthless and like an even bigger failure. This was the lowest point of my life, and I sought psychotherapy. It helped me see that I had tried to mold myself to academic expectations and lost sight of who I was and what I needed to thrive.

Now, at 44, with the help of my therapist, I have rediscovered myself through writing, dance, volunteering, and working as a barista. I also decided to dip my toes back into science. I wrote a grant proposal with a former colleague, and I plan to start doing some work in her lab next month. If our proposal is funded, I’ll lead a small team, on my terms.

The relentless pursuit of academic success through publications in prestigious journals nearly broke me. Looking back, I’m not sure it was worth the sacrifice. I might not have felt the need to step away from academia had we aimed for a lower impact journal. After taking time for recovery, I have come to appreciate that success isn’t solely a matter of high-impact papers or the steep climb up the academic ladder. For me, it now means tracing my own path, one that is sustainable and isn’t defined by what others expect of me.

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