Time and funding the biggest challenge for researchers, LinkedIn favorite social media for scientific resources
What are the biggest challenges for researchers and scientists today? Where do they find the best resources for the work? How do they go along with social media? We got interesting feedback from our colleagues, researchers, and scientists answering our polls on social media. We want to share them with you in this story and add some global biotech industry trends.
Scientific research is exciting but faces many challenges. For example, sometimes research projects require more time or funding than what is available concerning you scientists and us as vendors and companies that support your research.
We have asked researchers and scientists who follow us on our social media about their challenges in planning, organizing and executing scientific projects. Here are the results.
Q: What is the biggest challenge you face during a research project?
Here are answers to our poll:
Fundings availability and time pressure are the biggest challenges for researchers.
The pressure of publishing, application deadlines, grant renewals, reviewer questions all factor that can override the joy of working on a research project and to bring it to completion.
According to global trends, funding allocation in the biotech industries should not be a problem (see fig…). But how about academia? Universities differ substantially with regard to research funding sources and allocation.
Interesting to read...
The acceptability of using a lottery to allocate research funding: a survey of applicants. Liu, M., Choy, V., Clarke, P. et al. Res Integr Peer Rev 5, 3 (2020).
Value share of total biotech sector worldwide by therapeutic area.
The global biotechnology industry was worth 627.63 billion US dollars in 2020 and it is expected to reach 727.1 billion by 2025 (Source: PR Newswire). Experts predict that the biotech employment rate will grow by 5% between 2019 and 2029 (Source: seedscientific.com). It can be also interesting to see the value share of total biotech sector worldwide as of November 2021, by therapeutic area (Source: statista.com).
Q: What is the primary source of information for your professional work?
Our fellow scientists and students responded this way to the question:
Another issue for researchers is the source credibility when it comes to finding and/or expanding their scientific knowledge. Finding credible sources for scientific information is essential because using unreliable sources will hurt the credibility and make the scientific arguments weaker.
Whether your source is a research literature database, a science magazine, a companies' website, or a science forum, the ability to identify credibility requires an understanding of the depth, objectivity, authority, and purpose of the source and the information.
So, how to begin? There are many tips on how to choose your source of information. Here are some simple yet fundamental questions to ask yourself:
- Who is the author? And does he have a degree in the field?
- How up-to-date and backed up is the information?
- What is the purpose of the source?
- Does the information come from a source that will profit from a particular point of view?
- Who is the intended audience?
- What is the depth of coverage of the information?
Q: How did you first hear about Atlas Antibodies?
We at Atlas Antibodies are the original manufacturer and provider of over 21,000 validated primary antibodies. In addition, we are devoted to creating and share rich and credible scientific content through our white papers, infographics, protocols, guides, and social media channels etc.
As a reliable partner and with a website enriched with valuable scientific resources, we asked our followers how they first heard about Atlas Antibodies. Here are the top four answers:
Find out more about valuable resources on Atlas Antibodies.
Q: Which social media do you find most reliable for scientific content?
Modern times bring modern solutions. How about social media as resources for scientific content? Social media channels allow you to interact instantly with people across the globe,
Our followers are using more and more social media not only for private scopes but also for their professional life, to promote their research and share it with as many peer colleagues and scientific communities as possible.
Here are the poll results related to social media as resources for scientific content:
Q: How often do you use Google search for your scientific work?
Researchers have papers to write, reviews to submit and a lot of information to read and learn. With so many resources online, it is challenging to narrow it down and find the ones that are reliable and useful. Google appears to be used in most of the cases by our followers:
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and discipline.
Thank you all for your feedback!
We are researchers supporting other researchers. That is why you are always welcome to give us your feedback. Write to us and let us know how we can support your research further.
(273 people participated in our social media polls)
Interesting fact about biotechnology
Biotechnology is the exploitation of biological processes for industrial and other purposes. Most biotechnology-related fun facts include relatively recent inventions and milestones. However, people tend to forget how broad biotechnology is.
One of the best ways to demonstrate this is to point to fermentation, the earliest (ancient) known example of biotechnology which is around 9,000 years old. In fact, the earliest instance of fermentation dates as far back as 7,000 BCE, recorded in Sumerian and Babylonian texts.
(Source: Genetic Literacy Project)
As a result, beer became one of mankind’s flagship biotechnology inventions, a pleasure for humanity for millennia.