scholarly journals The impact of the pandemic on early career researchers: what we already know from the internationally published literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eti Herman ◽  
David Nicholas ◽  
Anthony Watkinson ◽  
Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo ◽  
Abdullah Abrizah ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Work Life ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Pertinent Literature ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Analytic Review ◽  
Scholarly Communications ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Development Prospects

In order to take account of the impact of the pandemic on the already changing scholarly communications and work-life of early career researchers (ECRs), the 4-year long Harbingers study was extended for another two years. As a precursor to the study (featuring interviews and a questionnaire survey), currently underway, an analytic review of the pertinent literature was undertaken and its results are presented here. The review focuses on the challenges faced by ECRs and how these compare to the ones more senior researchers have to tackle. In the examination of the literature three general questions are posed: Q1) What are the identifiable and forthcoming impacts of the pandemic-induced financial pressures felt in the Higher Education sector on ECRs’ employment and career development prospects? Q2) What are the identifiable and forthcoming pandemic-associated disruptions in the pace/focus/direction of the research undertaking? Have any disruptions been predicted to exert an impact on ECRs’ research activities, and if so, with what scholarly consequences? Q3) How is the work-life of ECRs shaping up under the virus-dictated rules of the ‘new normal’ in the research undertaking? What challenges, if any, arise from the changes in practices identified, and what might their potential consequences be for ECRs? The broad conclusion of the study is that the literature leaves little room for doubt: junior researchers are already disproportionally affected by and bear the burden of the ongoing pandemic-incurred hardships and they are likely to remain similarly impacted when more trials, still unfolding, materialise.

scholarly journals The impact of the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK for doctoral and early career researchers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia C. Jackman ◽  
Rebecca Sanderson ◽  
Tandy J. Haughey ◽  
Caroline E. Brett ◽  
Naomi White ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Work Environment ◽  
Work Life ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Academic Leadership ◽  
Life Balance ◽  
Considerable Heterogeneity ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Qualitative Survey ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

AbstractDoctoral researchers and early career researchers (ECRs) are crucial to producing scientific advancements and represent the future of academic leadership. Their research endeavours were changed radically by lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study was to explore the perceived benefits and challenges of the national lockdown in the UK from the perspective of doctoral researchers and ECRs. We present analysis of qualitative survey data from 1,142 doctoral researchers and ECRs on their experiences of the first UK lockdown collected from April 16, 2020–May 14, 2020. Our findings suggest considerable heterogeneity in how the pandemic impacted this key group of academic workers. Challenges arising from the lockdown largely cohered around a poor work environment, limited access to resources, perceptions of pressure, and negative psychological outcomes. Conversely, respondents also highlighted several benefits in the early stages of the pandemic, with the change to working from home creating more time, resulting in greater productivity and a better work-life balance. Collectively, findings indicate the importance of considering the personal circumstances and needs of individual researchers. We discuss the implications for support these researchers require to rebuild their careers in the wake of the initial disruption.

Constructing academic identity in the European higher education space: Experiences of early career educational researchers

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-268
Author(s):  
Sanja Djerasimovic ◽  
Marialuisa Villani
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
Academic Identity ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Geographic Mobility ◽  
Academic Values ◽  
Professional Identification ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Entrepreneurial Spirit ◽  
European Higher Education

This exploratory paper presents insights from a qualitative interview-based study of the academic identity-building among a group of early career researchers working in the field of education across the European higher education space. Set against a policy background framed by the initiatives in European higher education and research policy, geared towards a production of a mobile, entrepreneurial researcher in pursuit of ‘valuable’ knowledge, the respondents’ narratives reveal individual complexity, but also emerging patterns of professional identification. We identify the traditional academic values of creating and sharing knowledge validated by an epistemic community, and pursuing autonomy and collegiality in research, as still dominant, however, find these interacting with the demonstration of a strong proactive, entrepreneurial spirit, and a lack of institutional attachment. The narratives indicate the availability of supportive, encouraging communities as being of high significance, and contest the notions of Europeanisation and the utility of geographic mobility in researchers’ identities. The paper discusses different types of academic identification driven by value orientation and social attachment that emerged from the early career researchers’ interviews, alongside pervasive issues around mobility raised in most narratives, and concludes with suggestions for further study.

scholarly journals How is open access publishing going down with early career researchers? An international, multi-disciplinary study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nicholas ◽  
Hamid R. Jamali ◽  
Eti Herman ◽  
Jie Xu ◽  
Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Career Progression ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Openness To Change ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Scholarly Communications ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many

This study explores early career researchers’ (ECRs) appreciation and utilisation of open access (OA) publishing. The evidence reported here results from a questionnaire-based international survey with 1600 participants, which forms the second leg and final year of a four year long, mixed methods, longitudinal study that sought to discover whether ECRs will be the harbingers of change when it comes to scholarly communications. Proceeding from the notion that today’s neophyte researchers, believed to hold millennial values of openness to change, transparency and sharing, may be best placed to power the take-up of OA publishing, the study sought to discover: the extent to which ECRs publish OA papers; the main reasons for their doing or not doing so; and what were thought to be the broader advantages and disadvantages of OA publishing. The survey data is presented against a backdrop of the literature-based evidence on the subject, with the interview stage data providing contextualisation and qualitative depth. The findings show that the majority of ECRs published in OA journals and this varied by discipline and country. Most importantly, there were more advantages and fewer disadvantages to OA publishing, which may be indicative of problems to do with cost and availability, rather than reputational factors. Among the many reasons cited for publishing OA the most important one is societal, although OA is seen as especially benefiting ECRs in career progression. Cost is plainly considered the main downside.

Millennial researchers in a metric-driven scholarly world: An international study

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nicholas ◽  
Eti Herman ◽  
Hamid R Jamali ◽  
Abdullah Abrizah ◽  
Cherifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Millennial Generation ◽  
International Study ◽  
Research Impact ◽  
Early Career ◽  
International Survey ◽  
Attitudes And Practices ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Scholarly Communications ◽  
Waking Up

Abstract The study Investigates the attitudes and practices of early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to citation-based metrics and altmetrics, providing the findings in the light of what might be expected of the millennial generation and in the context of what we already know about researchers in today’s ‘culture of counting’ governed scholarly world. The data were gathered by means of an international survey, informed by a preceding, 3-year qualitative study of 120 ECRs from 7 countries, which obtained 1,600 responses. The main conclusions are: 1, citation indicators play a central and multi-purpose role in scholarly communications; 2, altmetrics are not so popular or widely used, but ECRs are waking up to some of their merits, most notably, discovering the extent to which their papers obtain traction and monitoring impact; 3, there is a strong likelihood that ECRs are going to have to grapple with both citation-based metrics and altmetrics, mainly in order to demonstrate research impact; 4, the Chinese are the most metric using nation, largely because of governmental regulations.

scholarly journals Sexual violence during research: How the unpredictability of fieldwork and the right to risk collide with academic bureaucracy and expectations

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa T Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Competitive Disadvantage ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Research Endeavour

In a contradictory fashion, researchers, their departments and universities simultaneously recognize the unpredictability of fieldwork experiences and outcomes and help establish a bureaucratic system of planning every component of their research. Ethnographic unpredictability and its consequences are a fact of fieldwork and it is essential that researchers and institutions are prepared to view these as part of interpretable data, to learn from them and not mask them. This article examines ethnographic unpredictability through the lens of sexual violence which I experienced during my doctoral fieldwork in Sierra Leone. I show how I redirected my research and renegotiated my position as an academic. I discuss the culture of risk and analyse the influence of neoliberalism on the university. I describe how ‘market logic’ conceptualizes unpredictability as competitive disadvantage. I show the impact that the imaginary ‘perfect academic’ has on early career researchers and the complicity of mainstream academic (re-)presentation in nourishing the image of the ‘in-control academic’ through muting personal field experiences and vulnerabilities and silencing unpredictable occurrences in academic writing. I conclude with recommendations on how personal situatedness, vulnerabilities, and transformations can be approached as factors in every research endeavour which must not pose threats to an institution’s competitive advantage.

Work‐life balancing strategies used by women managers in British “modern” universities

2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Women Managers ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Work Life ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Integrate Work ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThe “work‐life balance” literature is mainly concerned with the provision and up‐take of flexible employment patterns. The purpose of this qualitative study of women managers' coping strategies for reconciling work with their other roles and responsibilities is to provide a complementary perspective.Design/methodology/approachSemi‐structured extended interviews were carried out with 16 women managers of academic or “support” departments in eight UK post‐1992 universities, about their working practices and how they sought to integrate work with other parts of their lives.FindingsThese women reported high workloads, requiring long working hours, which consumed time and energy otherwise available for other relationships and commitments and their own leisure. Various strategies were adopted to manage the situation, including establishing rigid boundaries between work and non‐work, and shifting these boundaries in favour of work when necessary. Temporal, spatial and symbolic distinctions were used to contain work. Women without dependent children were more likely to be able to redefine boundaries when necessary to favour work.Research limitations/implicationsAs a small and possibly unrepresentative sample of UK women managers in higher education, the study could usefully be extended through comparisons with male peers, and with women managers in other sectors. (It is the preliminary phase of a comparative study of women employed in universities in the UK and Japan.) However, the findings broadly replicate other studies.Practical implicationsThere are policy implications for universities, which need feedback from staff about the impact of equal opportunities initiatives to inform further progress.Originality/valueThis study provides qualitative information on women working in non‐traditional key posts in higher education, who are well‐placed to challenge organisational cultures and act as role models.

scholarly journals Future leader to watch – Tania Martins-Marques

Biology Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Intercellular Communication ◽  
Heart Diseases ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Cardiac Diseases ◽  
First Person ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Selection Of

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Tania Martins-Marques is first author on ‘ Connecting different heart diseases through intercellular communication’, published in BiO. Tania is a postdoc in the Faculty of Medicine, at Coimbra Institute for Clinical and Biomedical Research (iCBR), Portugal, investigating the impact of impact of proteostasis and intercellular communication derailment in cardiac diseases.

scholarly journals Higher education research in African contexts: reflections from fieldwork in Flagship Universitiesin South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Addisalem Tebikew Yallew ◽  
Paul Othusitse Dipitso
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Higher Education Research ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Fieldwork Experience ◽  
Access To The Field

This article is written with the recognition that, as higher education studies evolve as a multidisciplinary area of inquiry, there is a need to reflect on the theoretical and practical concerns emerging from conducting higher education research. This is especially the case for early-career researchers who enter this relatively new field of study. This article attempts to explore the fieldwork component of the research process considering our experiences as early-career researchers conducting PhD studies in four universities in southern and eastern Africa. The article focuses on issues related to ethics, gaining and negotiating access to the field, and dealing with positionality during fieldwork. While reflecting on these experiences, we also attempted to explore if there are any fieldwork dynamics, which are peculiar to the African higher education context that may be considered during data collection. Reflecting on our experiences, we have argued that, in some institutions, necessary procedures for researching higher education need to be in place, while with the ones that have institutionalised mechanisms the procedures adopted need to be aligned with contextual realities and should focus on ethical considerations rather than protecting the reputation of universities. Our fieldwork experience has also made us realise that the advice given to early-career researchers both in the literature, seminars and courses they attend may not adequately prepare them for the unpredictable fieldwork dynamics. In that regard, we have suggested that there is a need to prepare emerging researchers to be open-minded, flexible, reflexive, innovative and adaptable when going out to the field.

scholarly journals Data from a survey on the impact of the pandemic on early-stage academics

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Edyta Swider-Cios ◽  
Katalin Solymosi ◽  
Mangala Srinivas
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Group Leaders ◽  
Early Career Researchers ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Share Data ◽  
The Impact

We would like to share data from a survey run by the Young Academy of Europe (YAE) from June to October 2020, with questions aiming to unravel the situation of early-career researchers (including early stage group leaders) working in Europe, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were particularly interested in the impact of care activities (related to young children or other family members), and the impact of gender. We include the online survey and collected data, without identifying information. The survey is published in Nature Career Column (July, 2021) (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01952-6).

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