I had just said goodbye to some of my coworkers, during the last consortium meeting I attended as a member of the NanoBubbles project, or during my farewell party at the office this week. It is a mix feeling, I knew from the beginning that this was a temporary position, but finishing this very special time of my career is not so easy. I am proud of the achievements of the project, and I see how much I had grown as a person and as a scientist since I started as a post-doc researcher in the Post-Publication Peer Review initiative.
I worked in this project for almost three years. My main role was to critically analyse articles in nanobiosciences, discuss the issues with the other annotators, post comments on PubPeer and check interactions with authors (for cases on which they answered to our comments). This insightful experience gave me a lot of opportunities, and below I summarize the knowledge I acquired in this journey.
· Research integrity is fundamental, and as many scientists are not aware of the problems we have, it is urgent to talk more about it, provide training (specially for early career researchers) and work as a community to mitigate the effects of misconduct and errors in science.
· Anyone can correct science from anywhere. PubPeer is a good example of that, as the comments do not need to be long, the anonymity of people can be protected and authors are notified when their articles are commented on.
· Developing the critical thinking is necessary for performing coherent research, as well to justify the rationale of the work, discuss data based on claims presented in articles and read materials in the literature for establish new knowledge.
· A nanoscientist can also work outside the lab. Contribute to research integrity is as important as performing experiments and publishing data. But before NanoBubbles, I had never realized that we can be nanoscientists without wearing a lab coat.
· A post-doc is a great opportunity to expand our network, as well to explore what we want/need to do in our career steps. Further, during the past few years I could consider other positions (in academia or not) that still require my skills acquired during the PhD.
· Productivity does not necessarily mean to be in front of the computer during working hours; sometimes it can come from scientific discussions during a walk in the nature, as I learned from our workshops and outdoor activities we organized for master and PhD students.
· With the many events that I attended as part of NanoBubbles (conferences, workshops, symposiums, round tables, etc.), I had been provided with a lot of feedback from my colleagues, which helped me to improve not only my presentation skills, but also my spoken and written English.
· Last but not least, I had moved to France because of NanoBubbles, and at the beginning I barely knew how to say « bonjour ». Now I am happy to share that I speak at least intermediary French, which could never be possible without this project and the members who encouraged me to speak. Merci beaucoup!
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