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Dear friends,
I can’t believe it’s March already. Only one more month to reach all those first-quarter goals! Who else is sprinting?!
Today’s question: Has anyone told you to “focus” or “find your niche” or “narrow down your interests?” This is extremely common advice for early-career academics, and I think it is 100% wrong. I am a generalist by training and inclination, and I like following my interests where they lead. However, I find this advice wrong-headed for reasons that have more to do with external factors than with me.
Do you know some really impressive senior researchers who devoted their careers to a single topic? I do. I am sure there are some single-topic scientists leading your institutions who have done phenomenally well. They will often give advice based on what worked so well for them. Here’s my problem with that: the world has changed. People who were applying for grants before, in the 1990s through the early 2000’s, were living in a very different federal funding environment. Look at this NIH funding graph for an illustration of changes in the NIH budget over time- it’s been increasing, but in real terms we’re still below the 2003 budget. The consequence is that in 1998, R01-equivalent awards had a 31% success rate, and in 2019, this dropped to 21%. (Check out report.nih.gov for all the stats/ interactives you could want!) There is a world of difference between writing three R01 applications and writing five, in order to get one, as I can say from my own painful experience. When funding is less plentiful, it makes sense to have multiple lines of research.
Look around for a cohort effect where you are. At UCSF, I see a clear difference, with faculty who started before or around 2005 being much more likely to have a singular focus, while my peers (I started on faculty in 2008) and those coming after me are more likely to have a varied set of skills and interests.
Try this: Instead of thinking of your work as a linear trajectory, think of your research as a tree with many branches. You can take advantages of “offshoots” of your current work as long as they feel connected to your roots and strong enough to take your weight.
One strategy to grow is to expand your content area of expertise, for example, moving into an area with similarities to your current work. This can allow you to be a pioneer in a new area. (It turns out cancer survivorship is starting to act like a chronic condition, and that makes my prior diabetes work salient.) You can also apply your methodological expertise to a new area. If you know a specific method- like cost-effectiveness analysis or natural language processing- think creatively about how it might be used. Being the methods expert on someone else’s project is a fantastic addition to a research portfolio.
By keeping your mind open to new areas, you find new opportunities. I thought of an idea for a collaborative study while reading over residency applications- I noticed that female applicants were described differently in the recommendation letters than male applicants. Does that have anything to do with my expertise? Nope! Is it important to me? Definitely. The biggest reason not to over-focus is to maintain a broad collaborative network. Research is more inter-dependent than ever and finding more amazing people to work with enriches your life as well as your career.
Bottom line: Not all your work has to fit together perfectly or follow on prior work like links in a chain. You do not need to zero in on an ever-more-specialized niche. In fact, if you do, you may regret it. This advice is controversial. Your mentors may take issue with these ideas, or with me! Their objections will fade as long as you are a consistent performer and keep your commitments.
Don’t forget to send me your good news and accomplishments!
Warmly,
Urmimala