I'm really bad at networking. I managed to swap 3 business cards at the EMAC Conference last month. I didn't become an academic to have to interact with people. Inside of the classroom fine - I'm a performer in their acting out some version of myself and every teacher in every Educating Rita knock off ever. But real life me, jeez. Sat in the canteen during lunch whilst big shot academic cliques surround felt like being lonely and forlorn back at high school all over again. I'm just not very sociable. Retreating back to my office here I go. Thank goodness for articles, blogs, online dating and the like.
Drug companies have what they call pipelines. This refers to the future drugs they are developing and which they hope will eventually come to market and make them lots of money (and cure sick people blah blah). There are lots of points in the pipeline that a drug can fail - clinical trials etc. It is an expensive, time consuming, and uncertain journey. So drug companies try to always have some things in the pipeline at any one time, at various stages of development. This way there is always some hope of success. I think academics can apply the same principle. Getting an article published is expensive, time consuming and uncertain. It is better to have a few options on the go so that if one hits a snag - an unresponsive collaborator, reviewers taking ages, a rejection - you still have other things to be working on. So consider your own pipeline. How does it look? Ideally a few mature projects close to completion. Some others which are still at a draft phase but well on the way in term...
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