A scientific paper has a dull structure: Title, List of Authors, Abstract, Introduction, Results, Conclusions, References are the headings of sections to be found in many papers. However exciting and new the results of your paper are, do not experiment by inventing a new, original structure that will surprise and confuse your readers.

But given this rigid structure where do you announce your results first: in the title? In the abstract? In the introduction? Or, in the results paragraph? If you wait to long your paper will become a whodunit and readers will get bored and stop reading your paper. If the clue of your paper is already in the title you might fear that many of your readers will only read your title and will then go on to read the next paper.

I still remember those days that my thesis supervisor didn’t have to justify why he wanted to buy a particular, expensive, piece of equipment. When I became a group leader those golden days were already gone forever.

Nowadays scientists fight for research money in fierce competitions. I certainly agree that some competition is healthy. Although, I would like a situation where the science policy makers themselves and the board members of science-supporting agencies, for the sake of improving their quality, would have to write and defend as many proposals as we scientists have to do; given the funding rate that these science managers find socially acceptable for us, I would suggest for them also a funding rate of about 5%.

When a junior scientist - graduate student or postdoc - starts working the end of his contract seems very far away. In all cases (my experience relates to 30+ supervised PhD theses) the end of this period comes in sight much quicker than anticipated both by the junior as by the supervisor. So you have to be very efficient with your time.