You will probably have heard this saying before, the idea being that if you don’t regularly write articles for ‘research’ journals then your career will start to go backwards.

I think there may be a modicum of truth to this, particularly if you are planning to climb up the greasy (and slightly corporatised) academic pole of a tertiary university hospital.

Having said that, when I look around at my colleagues in microbiology, some publish profusely and others completely ignore this avenue. Fortunately none, as far as I am aware, have ‘perished’ due to failing to publish.

It is also worthwhile noting, just how commercialised the whole business of publishing research articles has become… With the advent of ‘Open Access’ journals, where the contributor pays, and not the user, the ease with which one can get something published has changed dramatically. I will not comment on the quality of the articles…

I would get an average of two emails a day in my Inbox asking/pestering me to publish an article in some (Open Access) journal or other, no doubt at significant expense to myself!

So from a personal point of view I have been fairly quiet on the publication front recently. However, always wanting to be a little bit different from my colleagues, and never being one to conform to what is traditionally expected, I have opted to bring out my own publication, “The Art of Clinical Microbiology”.

This is a book which draws on content from this website, presented in a nicely ordered format and with some other bits and pieces included.

The manuscript goes to the printers in the next few days so I will keep you posted on how to get hold of a copy in due course.

And the nicest part of the whole process was getting the ISBN (publication) number for the book. That’s when the reality (and satisfaction) of writing your own book hits home!

Michael