The end of 2023 is a symbolic time for me, as it marks ten years since I defended my doctoral thesis. According to the Law on Scientific Activity, earning a scientific degree also grants the status of 'young scientist', which remains in effect for ten years. For me, the end of this status coincides with the decision to leave a career in Latvian science. It seems I am not destined to become a mid-career scientist!

Some of the reasons for this decision are personal. One is the growing realisation that there are opportunities to do something outside the academic sphere. However, the Latvian scientific environment also plays a role.

What do you think is required to succeed in sports? You would probably say something like: long periods of training; good equipment; support staff; and, most importantly, focus and a purposeful drive to improve your results. Although I am not an athlete, it seems that sport and science are quite similar in some respects. In both fields, it is possible to measure achievements in a relatively objective way. Of course, one cannot compare the achievements of, say, a hockey player and a long jumper, but it is clear that within any one sport, there are high achievers and those who are mediocre. Similarly, in science, it is quite easy to tell which studies are influential and which are forgotten, and this can—at least partially—be quantified using bibliometric indicators.

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The project applicants themselves often come up with additional restrictions. For instance, the specific nature of National Research Programmes (NPP) is the requirement for mandatory cooperation between institutions. All other flaws in the NPP approach could largely be offset by the opportunity for researchers to define the promising topics they would like to work on within the programme. (Nominally, NPP topics are defined by the state itself. In reality, the state sets the direction, but the specific topics are proposed by the scientists themselves, as it is simply impossible for non-specialists to do so.) I wanted to study a topic concerning a specific type of Internet of Things (IoT) network—large-scale networks with low energy consumption. In the end, the project plan included one sub-task on this topic, but combined with the requirement to cover IoT, 5G, and to involve a group from another university dealing with optical network and sensor research. The resulting combination created an impossible trilemma—in a single sub-task, one might somehow combine two of these three very different technologies, but it seems completely hopeless to include all three at once... At least if one wants to achieve practically useful results in the study, in accordance with the aims of the NPP.

I could continue the list with other issues, including procurement (we have all used our personal budgets to buy 'some minor bits and pieces' just to save time); timesheets (scientific experiments cannot always be fitted into a standard working day, let alone dividing all working hours by the minute among several projects); the unclear personal financial liability of project managers (unlike in business, the most popular form of which is SIA, or a company with limited liability), and others.

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https://atiselsts.github.io/raksti/kapec-es-pametu-darbu-lv-zinatne.html