Publish or perish? He chose to just walk away

In 2023, Luis Toledo had had enough.

At that point, he had led a research group at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences for seven years, investigating the role of cells in human DNA.

He told the University Post at the time that he could no longer handle the pressure to publish and would be leaving the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), even though he had no other job lined up.

Since October 2024, Luis Toledo has worked as a senior researcher at the company Novo Holdings. From his new vantage point in the private sector, he now says:

»I can see even more clearly than back then that working in an academic system is like standing in a blizzard, constantly battered.«

Luis Toledo says that his career shift was due to him losing his motivation:

»At the core of my realisation about changing jobs was that I no longer had the necessary passion. You can only remain in an academic setting if you truly burn for the cause. I had lost that spark — and that’s particularly unsustainable when you’re a leader. It’s a lonely job, and you have to be strong all the time, with the resilience to withstand all kinds of pressure and resistance. If you don’t have that strength, your very foundation starts to crumble.«

At UCPH, Luis Toledo felt that he was trapped in a binary system of success or failure, he says.

If he managed to get articles published in prestigious scientific journals and secured funding for his research group, he was a success. But if he failed to get his papers accepted or to land crucial research grants, he felt like a failure.

And the sense of meaninglessness started to take over:

»If I were to decide tomorrow to change jobs again, I would be able to talk about everything I’ve done in my current role at Novo Holdings — and all of it would be of value for the next company. But for a researcher in academia, none of it matters if the results are not published in a journal article,« says Luis Toledo.

Feels like a detox

He is still settling into his new role, but has found a better balance. He works in a team of eight colleagues that is developing new treatments for diseases.

»At the university, teams are built around a goal of academic excellence. That is undoubtedly the key factor for a group to succeed. In a private company, the most important thing is that each team member brings a different set of skills and knowledge that can collectively contribute to the team’s success,« says Luis Toledo.

»At Novo Holdings, I contribute every day to creating something new together with others. I feel like an important part of the company,« says Luis Toledo, before adding:

»And I get recognition from my colleagues and managers for my efforts.«

He describes encountering the new workplace culture as a kind of detox, while noting that there can, of course, be challenges in the private sector. Job satisfaction depends greatly on who your manager is, how you yourself behave, and who your colleagues are.

»You have to be helpful and generous yourself, and everyone else has to be too, or it won’t be a good team. Creating a positive atmosphere in a group is an art,« says Luis Toledo.

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Young researchers can change the system

Luis Toledo has seen many talented young researchers work tirelessly to gain a foothold at universities, only to be slowly chewed up by the system — and spat out, he says.

And there is one thing he believes is taboo in academia — even though it shouldn’t be:

»There is a lack of incentives beyond purely academic ones. This is due to an outdated notion of the researcher as someone who is only interested in research — and should be grateful just to be allowed to do it. But I think younger researchers are beginning to challenge this taboo, because they are dissatisfied with the bare-bones level of counsel that academics receive in general. Instead, they want jobs with a broader range of incentives — for example, a decent salary,« says Luis Toledo.

The competition is admittedly tough in his current field as well, but he is glad he made the leap:

»There are so many researchers in the same situation I was in at the university. The academic system is relentless and keeps demanding more and more from researchers. But maybe the time has come for postdocs and PhD students to push back against the pressure they are under. They should first understand what they’re up against — and then ask themselves whether an academic career is really the right choice for them,« says Luis Toledo.