{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005729","title":"Ten simple rules in considering a career in academia versus government","abstract":"This article is focused on a career point at which a higher degree is in hand-perhaps along with some practical experience-and it is time to make a career decision.One such decision might be between an academic scientific research career versus a non-research career in government service.There are many other opportunities, of course, and industry versus academia has been well covered previously in this series [1].With federal research funding as limited as it is, early-career scientific researchers are increasingly looking at nonacademic pathways; government service is one option.An example choice might be between accepting a postdoctoral fellowship or tenure track assistant professorship versus becoming a program officer for a funding agency, working in government relations, or working in government policy development.Obviously, these are only a couple of the many career choices available in academia and government.These rules are meant to be as generic as possible by recognizing the broad similarities and differences that exist in the 2 work environments.The rules do not cover the obvious differences, such as the ability to teach in academia but likely not in government.As indicated, academic research and government service both cover large amounts of career territory.While trying to be as evenhanded as possible between these 2 career paths, undoubtedly, bias stemming from my own experience creeps in, and it is important to understand from where my perspective derives.I have spent most of my career in academia as both a professor and a university administrator.More recently, I spent 3 years in the United States federal government, where I had both an administrative and research role, both in biomedicine.My experience is far from that needed to provide a complete picture of career options.For example, it does not address government service, federal or state, outside of the US.Nor does it truly address the myriad of options outside of working for a government funding agency focused on biomedical research.More problematic is having worked 3 years in government versus over 40 years in academia.Undoubtedly, it is a different article than if I had spent 40 years in government service and 3 recent years in academia.Keeping in mind these limitations and the fact that I have been strongly influenced by the excellent reviews of the first version of this article, what follow are the rules I have to offer, rules which are made as generic as I know how.Remember also that career options are not for life, and experience in government can be very useful to furthering a career in academia and vice versa.This is something that I can attest to, and which I try to capture. Rule 1: Public good means different thingsAs an academic, I rarely thought about public good, defined as a commodity or service provided without profit to all members of society.Yes, I did my research with the idea of","journal":"PLOS Computational Biology","year":2017,"id":9765,"datarank":0.31191623125197543,"base_score":2.0794415416798357,"endowment":2.0794415416798357,"self_citation_contribution":0.31191623125197543,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.31191623125197543,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":7,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.045,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2017-10-05","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":125,"name":"Philip  E. Bourne","orcid":"0000-0002-7618-7292","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":1,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}