Case A.  One method is to choose something you love, and hope for the best.  If you are very good, this generally works out OK.  Every field can use a new leader.  But if you are closer to the average, this approach is risky.

Case B.  Since you mention academia, you may be able to help yourself by looking at some numbers.  Is it a field that looks to be increasing, or something that's near a steady state? You can get answers to this question from asking professors what is "hot".   In the first case, unless interest dies out quickly, you should be fine.  In the second case, you can do a static calculation to calculate demand in the future.  One way to do that is through teaching demand.  Compute the number of 18 year olds being produced every year, then the fraction going to uni, then the fraction likely to take a class in the topic, etc., and then do similar calculations on professor death/retirement rate.  Thus you can get the number of professors who will need to be hired each year.  If it is a more research-oriented field you can do the calculation based on postgraduate students.

So far I've touched only on getting into academia.  Your question about how to do well is trickier.  You have identified some of the challenges, but there's no way to know about future challenges.  Funding can turn on and off quite quickly.  The massive science funding in the US through the 1960s was a result of exogenous factors that have dried up ... but there's no way to know whether the same thing could happen again in a decade.  

All you can do is go with the flow.  Some things you know already.  Publishing more is better than publishing less.  Getting more grant money is better than getting less.  But be sure to plant as well as harvest.  For example, if you develop a method early in your career, it might get used a lot, which will build up your citations and reputation.  Keep an eye out for such possibilities.  If you're in a field that involves measurement, try to get funds at an early stage so you can buy a useful instrument that will get you invited onto research projects for years to come.  Generally, make yourself useful.

As for online teaching, that is an issue mainly for second rate institutions.  MIT is providing a lot of online material, but you can be sure it is not hurting enrolment.  But the reverse is true of local colleges that hire lecturer who barely understand the material; these institutions are going to be in trouble.  Again, if you are good, there is nothing to worry about because you won't be at a second rate institution.

A final remark on teaching: unless you are at a top-quality university, your Dean will care more about quantity than quality.  So if you get hired and they ask you to teach that class with 1000 bored students, take it.  The work will be less than teaching 10 dedicated students, since you'll have teaching assistants to do grading and run tutorials.  Try to balance such service teaching with the teaching of within-field classes, so that you will be seen as someone who contributes well to both styles in your department.

Do some talking with people in departments like the one you would hope to join.  If everyone is demoralized, I return to my first (and main) point: pursue the field if you are very good, but find another field if you are average.

Case A.  One method is to choose something you love, and hope for the best.  If you are very good, this generally works out OK.  Every field can use a new leader.  But if you are closer to the average, this approach is risky.

Case B.  Since you mention academia, you may be able to help yourself by looking at some numbers.  Is it a field that looks to be increasing, or something that's near a steady state? You can get answers to this question from asking professors what is "hot".   In the first case, unless interest dies out quickly, you should be fine.  In the second case, you can do a static calculation to calculate demand in the future.  One way to do that is through teaching demand.  Compute the number of 18 year olds being produced every year, then the fraction going to uni, then the fraction likely to take a class in the topic, etc., and then do similar calculations on professor death/retirement rate.  Thus you can get the number of professors who will need to be hired each year.  If it is a more research-oriented field you can do the calculation based on postgraduate students.

So far I've touched only on getting into academia.  Your question about how to do well is trickier.  You have identified some of the challenges, but there's no way to know about future challenges.  Funding can turn on and off quite quickly.  The massive science funding in the US through the 1960s was a result of exogenous factors that have dried up ... but there's no way to know whether the same thing could happen again in a decade.  

All you can do is go with the flow.  Some things you know already.  Publishing more is better than publishing less.  Getting more grant money is better than getting less.  But be sure to plant as well as harvest.  For example, if you develop a method early in your career, it might get used a lot, which will build up your citations and reputation.  Keep an eye out for such possibilities.  If you're in a field that involves measurement, try to get funds at an early stage so you can buy a useful instrument that will get you invited onto research projects for years to come.  Generally, make yourself useful.

As for online teaching, that is an issue mainly for second rate institutions.  MIT is providing a lot of online material, but you can be sure it is not hurting enrolment.  But the reverse is true of local colleges that hire lecturer who barely understand the material; these institutions are going to be in trouble.  Again, if you are good, there is nothing to worry about because you won't be at a second rate institution.

A final remark on teaching: unless you are at a top-quality university, your Dean will care more about quantity than quality.  So if you get hired and they ask you to teach that class with 1000 bored students, take it.  The work will be less than teaching 10 dedicated students, since you'll have teaching assistants to do grading and run tutorials.  Try to balance such service teaching with the teaching of within-field classes, so that you will be seen as someone who contributes well to both styles in your department.

Do some talking with people in departments like the one you would hope to join.  If everyone is demoralized, I return to my first (and main) point: pursue the field if you are very good, but find another field if you are average.

I agree with Dan_Kelley that doing something you love will help you achieve success.  How you define success is really the key to achieving it.  In reading Ariana Huffington's book "Thrive" I've found many strategies to define success and pursue it.

 I would disagree that online teaching is for second rate institutions.  Our IVY League schools have embraced it while maintaining their brick & mortar delivery as well.  Online delivery is expected for many of our young students.  Adult learners like it for the flexibility.  Strong online faculty engage their students face to face in a virtual format.  It can be just as demanding, creative, or structured as your subject and students need.

Building an academic career for tenure does still require publishing and generating grant funding. 

Building a portfolio of publications can be achieved in a number of ways including engaging your students and guiding their work, identifying a whole in your specialty area and becoming the expert, or simply publishing more of what you write.  

In Nursing academia we are expected to engage the evidence, perform extensive structured literature reviews etc. to develop curriculum.  We write these up but never consider submitting them for publication.  If there is no evidence we may pilot an idea/intervention etc. but don't share the results.  Those who do are brought forward as innovators, department leaders etc.  Another way to achieve success.

To create a successful career need to keep in mind some aspects of life that are valid for all fields and for the work  that they want to pursue. You have to give evidence of rigor, spirit work, a good knowledge of the issues your work, tenacity, ambition.

By Daniel Nehring 

I recently completed the first five years since the end of my PhD. I felt that this was a suitable moment to take stock of my professional achievements and shortcomings and to make plans for the further development of my career. In order to do so, I booked an advising session with Karen Kelsky, an academic careers consultant and former professor at a major US university. (Do take a look at her blog. It considers, from a US perspective, professional development issues similar to those I discuss on this site.) At some point during our correspondence, she made a point about the need to know the rules by which academic careers work and to follow these rules closely. This comment stuck with me, and it made me think. So what exactly are the rules by which academic careers work? Where does one learn them? How does one learn them? And how, exactly, is playing by the rules to the benefit of one’s career?

The answers to these questions might seem self-evident: You learn the rules while you do your PhD and grow into academic labour through your initial appointments afterwards. The rules tell you, for example, that you need to be well-regarded by your students, teach to a high standard, score highly in student evaluations, produce a lot of publications that will play well in the REF, attract substantial research grants, build collaborative networks with colleagues in your field, and so forth. However, while all this is both important and at least fairly self-evident, it’s not enough to make it in academic sociology. I know lots of very good sociologists who have been doing all these things and are nonetheless unemployed, underemployed and, most certainly, underappreciated. They seem to be doing everything right and still do not make it into stable careers. Interestingly, they mostly feel uncertain about the reasons for their predicament, and many of them can point to peers with similar or lesser achievements who have made it big.

An obvious reason for the struggles faced by many recent PhD graduates is, of course, that universities produce far more graduates than they could possibly ever employ. Just as important is the fact that academic labour is not only governed by formal, overt rules and expectations, such as those that I mentioned above and that are typically listed in job advertisements. In order to make it, you also need to understand many of the more subtle aspects of academic life – how to build a reputation in your field of research, how to make sure that your work is read, recognised, and cited, how to belong to the right networks, etc. The formal, overt rules are clearly stated and easy to notice. The informal rules and techniques of academic labour often remain opaque to PhD students and early-career scholars. I think that a reason for this might be that traditional PhD programmes are today often unable to properly socialise students into academic life and teach them these rules and techniques. Being informal, you discover them through contact, collaboration and mentoring relationships with your supervisor and other established academics. However, PhD programmes today are often too large and senior academics are often far too busy for such mentoring relationships to be easily possible. What might have worked at Oxbridge in 1900 won’t necessarily function in a modern PhD programme with 30, 50, or 100 students. Thus, as a matter of serendipity, some students do get to be mentored, but many others don’t. The latter might complete their PhDs and do well in academic terms, but, more likely than not, they might miss out on a crucial part of their education. Not knowing all the rules, it is quite easy to remain an outsider and fail to make it, lots of publications, grants and good teaching evaluations notwithstanding.

To be sure, many PhD programmes are not like this at all, and many departments have recognised the problem and taken steps to address it. Nevertheless, the problem does continue to be significant, both for current students and for those who have already graduated and are struggling to get by. To begin with, there might need to be a firmer and more explicit recognition of the fact that PhD programmes today cannot limit themselves to teaching students how to write intellectually sophisticated theses and papers. In an age in which academia has reconfigured itself as an ‘industry’ and in which the term ‘cut-throat’ hardly does justice to the scale of the problems graduates face on the academic job market, PhD programmes, to a large extent, ought to be about ‘training for the job’. Students need to be taught how to find an academic job in the first place and how to do this job. By this I do not mean the intellectual pursuits that are typically identified with academic labour – I mean all the rest: the admin work, the routines necessary to effectively teach large numbers of students, the formalities of successfully applying for grants, how to build a reputation and effective research networks, and so on. A clear understanding of all these issues is necessary for PhD students to become credible candidates for academic jobs. The traditional model of largely self-directed intellectual development by which many PhD programmes operate just does not work anymore.

Dear Alexander,

I really don't know if it is worth at all having a task like that.

If you like research and you are able to do it, while you find interesting results, then the concept of a career will rise up without so much try.

Otherwise you will be trapped in a great set of advices, taken from individual success-stories, but, remember, people do not use to write the whole story when they are dealing with their success...

Ana-Maria https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ana-Maria_Ciobotaru;

What do you mean by "spirit work"?

• Gayle Jean Logan

In a successful academic career, you need some collaborations, projects, research team. In this case, you need to pay attention to each other's ideas, to consider significant aspects. You need to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of teammates (much like a SWOT analysis).

I believe that a fulminant academic career is related very much "how to work with others, to interact with others, your work with others (in case it is about team!)".

Dear All

You should decide what does mean successful academic career for you - it seems there may be various shades of it:

- publishing many interesting and widely cited research papers,

- publishing many popular scientific books,

- conducting many big (many people, huge budget) ambitious projects,

- be well recognized reviewer, editorial board member, and scientific grant expert,

- become well recognized teacher and thesis advisor, constituting own group/school (it may last for years),

- achieve important posts (dean, provost, or even ministry) and power,

- in case of medical specialist - be increadible effective clinician,

- in case of engineers - be great constructor and inventor (patents!),

- achieve wealth and possibility of early retirement :),

- all from aforementied - may be rather hard to achieve imultaneously,

or simple: put (sometimes using only one research/publication) another milestone within your discipline? and become immortal in the history of science?

Of course all it need strategic planning, but own talents will decide if you achieve the success.

Dear All,

One day Confucius said to his disciples: forget who I am and who are you: fancy and tell me what would you like to do if you were distinguished men in a high state position!

The first disciple said: Let us suppose that there is a little state of 1000 chariots surrounded by powerful big states. This little state is threatened from outside by foreign armies and there is famine within. If I were its ruler I would need 3 years and the people could regain their courage and would know what to do.

The second disciple said: If I had got a country to rule the dimensions of which would be 60 times 60 lis (one li = 0,5 km) I could attain in 3 years that the people would live well but regarding the development of rites and manners as well as the music, one should wait somebody else who could do more than I.

The third disciple said: I would like to wear the best clothes and assist in the temple of ancestors or at diplomatic occasions. I do not say I am able to do it but I would like to learn it.

The fourth disciple, Zeng Xi said: in late spring when people wear light clothes I would like to have a bathe with others and then to allow a refreshing breeze to embrace me and to go home singing.

Confucius said: I agree with Zeng Xi.

Thanks a lot everyone! Lots of great advice! I fully agree that enjoying what you are doing is tremendously important here. I have just realised that I haven't met even a single successful academic who didn't like most of what he/she was doing.

The making of a scientist!

An expert in STEM education weighs in as researchers recount their own childhood experiences with science.

"Getting children interested in science is crucial to ensuring continued scientific progress in coming generations. The question is how to go about it. We asked four researchers to tell us about the childhood experiences that put them on the path to careers in science. Education expert Tim Höffler also weighs in, explaining how these scientists’ experiences relate to findings in STEM education research..."

An interesting article follows. 

https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/the-making-of-a-scientist

One of the unspoken rules in research is that a successful career in science is only possible with one or more papers with an impact factor above 10 or higher. This belief creates a lot of peer pressure among young scientists and may be even one of the causes of increasing numbers of scientific fraud cases. But is it true?

To answer this question it is crucial to get a very clear idea what “a successful career in science” means for you. It is very simple: If you want to work and succeed in an environment where high impact papers are necessary you must have high impact papers. Interestingly, PhD students and postdocs are quite often not aware in which contexts impact factors play a role – and where not!

...

In summary, choose consciously and decide wisely whether high impact factor publications are important for your very personal concept of a successful career in science...

http://www.smartsciencecareer.com/do-i-need-nature-papers/

Ten tips to a successful academic career

1. Carve out research time and treat it like any other appointment you wouldn’t cancel.

2. Say yes to all opportunities that will help you to develop as a researcher at first, and then learn when it’s better to say no.

3. Be flexible.

4. Choose quality over quantity.

5. Run your own studies in graduate school, if possible.

6. If you are interested in clinical outcome research, continue to see patients and/or supervise graduate student therapy cases.

7. Welcome criticism.

8. Build collaborative relationships that complement your own research interests.

9. Maintain relationships with your mentors and other faculty you admire after you finish your degree and move into an academic career.

10. Have a clear idea of the lines of research you plan to develop and how you plan to build your research program, but be open to new directions or ways of thinking about your research plan.

Best Regards Alexander S. Solntsev

Dear Osama Rahil , you should not practice plagiarism. You must bring the original resource which was used in "your" contribution. The author of this contribution is Dr. Kate Wolitzky-Taylor .

Here is the link to the resource.

https://www.div12.org/ten-tips-to-a-successful-academic-career/

Consistency and determination