Early career researchers: Scholarly behaviour and the prospect of change

Abstract

Early career researchers (ECRs) are of great interest because they are the new (and biggest) wave of researchers. They merit long and detailed investigation, and towards this end, this overarching paper provides a summary of the first‐year findings of a 3‐year, longitudinal study of 116 science and social science ECRs who have published nearly 1,200 papers and come from 7 countries and 81 universities. ECRs were interviewed in their own languages face‐to‐face, by Skype, or telephone. The study focused on the attitudes and behaviours of ECRs with respect to scholarly communications and the extent to which they are adopting new and disruptive technologies, such as social media, online communities, and Open Science. The main findings include: publishing in high‐impact factor journals is the only reputational game in town; online scholarly communities, and ResearchGate in particular, are gaining ground; social media are beginning to have an impact, especially in the dissemination arena; outreach activities have become more important; libraries are becoming increasingly invisible to ECRs; Open Science is not gaining traction; and more transformational ideas are being expressed, especially in the US and UK.

How publishers and editors can help early career researchers: Recommendations from a roundtable discussion

“…The ECRs we spoke with reported pains and gains through their research work, from the stage at which they conceive a research idea, through their work to begin and complete a research project, and onwards to sharing and communicating their work in ways that achieve maximal impact. What they told us reinforces findings from work by others (Glover et al ., ; Nicholas, Rodríguez‐Bravo, et al ., ; Nicholas, Watkinson, et al ., ; Nicholas et al ., ). What is unique about our work is that we derived a set of recommendations for practical steps that editors, publishers, and societies that publish, likely working in collaboration, can take to ensure they keep up with the evolving needs of researchers.…”

“…ECRs are the newest cohort of researchers (Nicholas, Watkinson, et al ., ) and are a large cohort. Like their more‐established counterparts, they are under considerable pressure to publish, but ECRs need to gain a good scholarly standing from their work rather than just maintain that standing.…”

“…According to Nicholas, Watkinson, et al . (), ECRs ‘have little choice but to abide by the established rules, at least until these are changed’, with many ECRs conventionally following well‐used publishing routes chosen by their seniors. There is evidence of enthusiasm among ECRs for more open research practices and greater transparency (Nicholas et al ., ), but ECRs also report that the opportunity for change is currently limited: They perceive their position to be precarious as research ‘apprentices’ and may be less able to take risks with new approaches.…”

Uncovering the scholarly use of Twitter in the academia: Experiences in a British University

“…A recent study (Nicholas et al 2017) reported that social media platforms are beginning to have an impact, especially in the dissemination arena. One of the most common forms of social media used in academia is microblogging through Twitter (Lupton 2014;Page 2012;Rowlands et al 2011).…”

What publishers can take away from the latest early career researcher research

“…We have shared much of our first‐year Harbingers research results on the scholarly communication attitudes and practices of early career researchers (ECRs) with the readers of this journal (Nicholas, Boukacem‐Zeghmouri, et al, ; Nicholas, Rodríguez‐Bravo, et al, ; Nicholas, Watkinson, et al, ; Rodríguez‐Bravo et al, ). Now, at the end of the second year of the 3‐year, longitudinal study, which involved interviewing more than a hundred ECRs from seven countries (China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, UK, and USA), we have sufficient data on change to share an assessment of the implications of the research for publishers.…”