The real pleasure of science is discovery. You may be alone in the lab late at night, no doubt wishing you were somewhere else. Perhaps the last few months have not gone so well, but this is the crucial experiment. If it works, those hours of hard work and despair evaporate away and it all becomes worthwhile. Even if your finding is just a small piece in a very big jigsaw, it means that your hard work has paid off, you have that longawaited result – and hopefully something publishable. Publishing data, whether we like it or not, is a key step in successful research. In academia the phrase ‘publish or perish’ is of course exaggerated. But realistically, however good your research may be, and however important your next paper will be (and everyone believes that their next paper will be their best), success in most areas of science rests on what you have published.

WHY AND WHEN TO PUBLISH

While science is, at least to most dedicated researchers, a personal activity, its ultimate success depends on collective effort, on the achievements and interactions of a vast community of scientists with varied and complementary skills.