What one change would most improve work-life balance for scientists?

NICOLÁS BONEL

Science

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Año: 2013 vol. 342 p. 36 - 38

1095-9203

Almost every scientist knows that the relationship between work and life is unbalanced??mainly skewed toward work. A multitude of variables influence our personal and academic lives daily. I believe, however, that the inappropriate use of the journal impact factor as an assessment of the quality of scientific research has adversely affected the researcher´s work-to-life balance and, ultimately, the science that he produces. From the moment we became involved in the scientific arena, the premise "publish or perish" became indelibly imprinted in our brain. Nevertheless, since the journal impact factor has been used to assess the individual researcher´s impact, the "publish-or-perish" mandate has turned into a "publish-in-a-high-ranking-journal-or-perish" ultimatum. As scientists, however, we should be worried about how our work impacts on the scientific community and not how the impact of a journal affects our research. Unfortunately, the success of getting awarded a fellowship or a grant mostly depends on having an academic dossier containing papers published in high-ranking journals. Thus, we are indirectly involved in a massive time-consuming process trying to get our work published in those journals in order to keep ourselves competitive. To confront this problem, the scientific community should definitely espouse alternative criteria for measuring the scientific impact of our research. Consequently, we would be able to redistribute our energy and time to do science instead of trying to fit our work in high-ranking journals to be granted and promoted. I strongly believe that this change would represent an initial giant step toward the balancing of work and life.