Early career researchers in the pandemic-fashioned ‘new scholarly normality’a first look into the big changes and long-lasting impacts (international analysis)

  1. Nicholas, Dave 1
  2. Herman, Eti
  3. Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Cherifa 2
  4. Watkinson, Antony 1
  5. Sims, David 3
  6. Rodríguez-Bravo, Blanca 4
  7. Świgoń, Marzena 5
  8. Abdullah, Abrizah 6
  9. Xu, Jie 7
  10. Serbina, Galina 8
  11. Jamali, Hamid R. 9
  12. Tenopir, Carol 3
  13. Allard, Suzie 3
  1. 1 CIBER Research Ltd
  2. 2 University of Lyon System
    info

    University of Lyon System

    Lyon, Francia

    ROR https://ror.org/01rk35k63

  3. 3 University of Tennessee
  4. 4 Universidad de León
    info

    Universidad de León

    León, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02tzt0b78

  5. 5 University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn
    info

    University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn

    Olsztyn, Polonia

    ROR https://ror.org/05s4feg49

  6. 6 University of Malaya
    info

    University of Malaya

    Kuala Lumpur, Malasia

    ROR https://ror.org/00rzspn62

  7. 7 Wuhan University
    info

    Wuhan University

    Wuhan, China

    ROR https://ror.org/033vjfk17

  8. 8 Tomsk State University
    info

    Tomsk State University

    Tomsk, Rusia

    ROR https://ror.org/02he2nc27

  9. 9 Charles Sturt University
    info

    Charles Sturt University

    Bathurst, Australia

    ROR https://ror.org/00wfvh315

Zeitschrift:
El profesional de la información

ISSN: 1386-6710 1699-2407

Datum der Publikation: 2022

Titel der Ausgabe: Media psychology

Ausgabe: 31

Nummer: 4

Art: Artikel

DOI: 10.3145/EPI.2022.JUL.18 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen Access editor

Andere Publikationen in: El profesional de la información

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

Zusammenfassung

Después de dos años de entrevistas repetidas a alrededor de 170 investigadores de ciencias/ciencias sociales en las primeras etapas de su carrera de China, España, EUA, Francia, Malasia, Polonia, Reino Unido y Rusia sobre su vida laboral y prácticas de comunicación académica en tiempos de pandemia, el proyecto Harbingers ahora está en posesión de una montaña de datos sobre un tema académico muy relevante. El propósito del artículo es compartir los aspectos más destacados obtenidos de los datos, con un enfoque en los impactos principales y duraderos de la pandemia. Los datos presentados provienen de los entrevistadores nacionales, que realizaron 3 rondas de entrevistas a 20 o más investigadores jóvenes o early career researchers (ECR) durante dos años y, por lo tanto, los conocían bien. Se les pidió que proporcionaran una ‘vista aérea’ identificando los impactos más importantes que habían detectado mientras las entrevistas estaban aún frescas en sus mentes. Los principales hallazgos son que: 1) los ECRs, son los investigadores más dedicados y, en general, han demostrado ser resistentes y perseverantes y algunos han prosperado; 2) la pandemia ha empujado a los investigadores rápidamente a un mundo académico virtual y remoto, con todas las ventajas y desventajas que conlleva. Los datos, sin embargo, tienen matices, con diferencias significativas entre países, especialmente en China y Francia. El artículo también actualiza una revisión de la bibliografía sobre el tema publicada anteriormente en esta revista.

Bibliographische Referenzen

  • AAS; EMCR-Early; Mid-Career Researcher Forum (2020). Impacts of COVID-19 for EMCRS. National survey report, August 12. Australian Academy of Science. https://www.science.org.au/files/userfiles/support/documents/covid19-emcr-impact-report.pdf
  • Aubry, Lise M.; Laverty, Theresa M.; Ma, Zhao (2021). “Impacts of COVID-19 on ecology and evolutionary biology faculty in the United States”. Ecological applications, v. 31, n. 2, e2265. https://doi-org.ezproxy.haifa.ac.il/10.1002/eap.2265
  • Baker, Simon (2020a). “HE financial crisis risks ‘lost generation of researchers’”. Times higher education, June 11. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/he-financial-crisis-risks-lost-generation-researchers
  • Baker, Simon (2020b). “Most early career academics face funding cliff edge, survey suggests”. Times higher education, May 18. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/most-early-career-academics-face-funding-cliff-edge-survey-suggests
  • Baynes, Grace; Hahnel, Mark (2020). “Research practices in the wake of COVID-19”. In: Digital science report. The state of open data 2020. London: Digital Science; Figshare, pp. 22-25. ISBN: 978 1 9993177 5 1 https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13227875.v2
  • Bennion, Alice; Locke, William (2010). “The early career paths and employment conditions of the academic profession in 17 countries”. European review, n. 18, S1, S7-S33. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798709990299
  • Brechelmacher, Angelika; Park, Elke; Ates, Gülay; Campbell, David F. J. (2015). “The rocky road to tenure - career paths in academia”. In: Fumasoli, T.; Goastellec, G.; Kehm, B. M. (eds.), Academic work and careers in Europe: Trends, challenges, perspectives. Cham: Springer, pp. 13-40. ISBN: 978 3 319 10720 2
  • Byrom, Nicola (2020). “COVID-19 and the research community: The challenges of lockdown for early-career researchers”. eLife, n. 9, e59634. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.59634
  • Cardel, Michelle I.; Dean, Natalie; Montoya-Williams, Diana (2020). “Preventing a secondary epidemic of lost early career scientists. Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on women with children”. Annals of the American Thoracic Society, v. 17, n. 11, pp. 1366-1370. https://doi.org/10.1513/AnnalsATS.202006-589IP
  • Castellacci, Fulvio; Viñas-Bardolet, Clara (2020). “Permanent contracts and job satisfaction in academia: Evidence from European countries”. Studies in higher education, v. 1, n. 15. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1711041
  • Christian, Katherine; Johnstone, Carolyn; Larkins, Jo-ann; Wright, Wendy; Doran, Michael R. (2021). “Research culture: A survey of early-career researchers in Australia”. ELife, n. 10, e60613. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60613
  • Gao, Jian; Yin, Yian; Myers, Kyle R.; Lakhani, Karim R.; Wang, Dashun (2021). “Potentially long-lasting effects of the pandemic on scientists”. Nature communications, v. 12, 6188. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26428-z
  • Gates, Lucy; Gavin, James-Peter (2021). Key survey findings: Impact of COVID-19 on University of Southampton early career researchers. Southampton: University of Southampton (Project report). https://doi.org/10.5258/SOTON/P0071
  • Gewin, Virginia (2022). “Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?”. Nature, n. 606, pp. 211-213. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01512-6
  • Górska, Anna-Maria; Kulicka, Karolina; Staniszewska, Zuzanna; Dobija, Dorota (2021). „Deepening inequalities: What did COVID‐19 reveal about the gendered nature of academic work?”. Gender, work and organization, v. 28, n. 4, pp. 1546-1561. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12696
  • Hangel, Nora; Schmidt-Pfister, Diana (2017). “Why do you publish? On the tensions between generating scientific knowledge and publication pressure”. Aslib journal of information management, v. 69, n. 5, pp. 529-544. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-01-2017-0019
  • Harrop, Clare; Bal, Vanessa; Carpenter, Kimberley; Halladay, Alycia (2021). “A lost generation? The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early career ASD researchers”. Autism research, v. 14, n. 6, pp. 1078-1087. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2503
  • Herman, Eti; Nicholas, David; Watkinson, Anthony; Rodríguez-Bravo, Blanca; Abdullah, Abrizah; Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Chérifa; Jamali, Hamid R.; Sims, David; Allard, Suzie; Tenopir, Carol; Xu, Jie; Świgoń, Marzena; Serbina, Galina; Parke-Cannon, Leah (2021). “The impact of the pandemic on early career researchers: what we already know from the internationally published literature”. Profesional de la información, v. 30, n. 2, e300208. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2021.mar.08
  • Hollywood, Amelia; McCarthy, Daniel; Spencely, Carol; Winstone, Naomi (2020). “‘Overwhelmed at first’: the experience of career development in early career academics”. Journal of further and higher education, v. 44, n. 7, pp. 998-1012. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2019.1636213
  • Korbel, Jan O.; Stegle, Oliver (2020). “Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on life scientists”. Genome biology, v. 21, n. 113. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-020-02031-1
  • Kwon, Diana (2020). “After conference cancellations, some scientists find a way”. The scientist, March 23. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/after-conference-cancellations-some-scientists-find-a-way-67310
  • Lederman, Doug (2021). “Higher ed workforce shrank by 4% in fall 2020”. Inside higher ed, December 14. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/12/14/higher-ed-workforce-shrank-4-fall-2020
  • Maas, Bea; Grogan, Kathleen E.; Chirango, Yolanda; Harris, Nyeema; Liévano-Latorre, Luisa-Fernanda; McGuire, Krista L.; Moore, Alexandria C.; Ocampo-Ariza, Carolina; Palta, Monica-Marie; Perfecto, Ivette; Primack, Richard B.; Rowell, Kirsten; Sales, Lilian; Santos-Silva, Rejane; Silva, Rafaela-Aparecida; Sterling, Eleanor J.; Vieira, Raísa R. S.; Wyborn, Carina; Toomey, Anne (2020). “Academic leaders must support inclusive scientific communities during COVID-19”. Nature ecology and evolution, n. 4, pp. 997-998. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1233-3
  • Maher, Brendan; Sureda-Anfres, Miquel (2016). “Young scientists under pressure: What the data show”. Nature, v. 538, n. 7626, pp. 444-445. https://doi.org/10.1038/538444a
  • McGaughey, Fiona; Watermeyer, Richard; Shankar, Kalpana; Suri, Venkata-Ratnadeep; Knight, Cathryn; Crick, Tom; Hardman, Joanne; Phelan, Dean; Chung, Roger (2021). “‘This can’t be the new norm’: academics’ perspectives on the COVID-19 crisis for the Australian university sector”. Higher education research & development, online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2021.1973384
  • McQuarrie, Fiona A. E.; Kondra, Alex Z.; Lamertz, Kai (2020). “Do tenure and promotion policies discourage publications in predatory journals?”. Journal of scholarly publishing, v. 51, n. 3, pp. 165-181. https://doi.org/10.3138/jsp.51.3.01
  • Minello, Alessandra; Martucci, Sara; Manzo, Lidia K. C. (2020). “The pandemic and the academic mothers: Present hardships and future perspectives”. European societies, v. 23, n. sup1. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2020.1809690
  • Morin, Andréanne; Helling, Britney A.; Krishnan, Seetha; Risner, Laurie E.; Walker, Nykia D.; Schwartz, Nancy B. (2022). “Research culture: Surveying the experience of postdocs in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic”. Elife, v. 11, e75705. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75705
  • Müller, Ruth (2014). “Postdoctoral life scientists and supervision work in the contemporary university: A case study of changes in the cultural norms of science”. Minerva, v. 52, n. 3, pp. 329-349. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-014-9257-y
  • Myers, Kyle R.; Tham, Wei-Yang; Yin, Yian; Cohodes, Nina; Thursby, Jerry G.; Thursby, Marie C.; Schiffer, Peter; Walsh, Joseph T.; Lakhani, Karim R.; Wang, Dashun (2020). “Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists”. Nature human behaviour, v. 4, n. 9, pp. 880-883. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0921-y
  • Nicholas, David; Herman, Eti; Jamali, Hamid R.; Rodríguez-Bravo, Blanca; Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Chérifa; Dobrowolski, Tom; Pouchot, Stephanie (2015). “New ways of building, showcasing, and measuring scholarly reputation”. Learned publishing, v. 28, n. 3, pp. 169-183. https://doi.org/10.1087/20150303
  • Nicholas, David; Jamali, Hamid R.; Watkinson, Anthony; Herman, Eti; Abrizah, Abdulah; Rodríguez-Bravo, Blanca; Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Chérifa; Xu, Jie; Świgoń, Marzena; Polezhaeva, Tatiana (2020a). “A global questionnaire survey of the scholarly communication attitudes and behaviours of early career researchers”. Learned publishing, v. 33, n. 3, pp. 198-211. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1286
  • Nicholas, David; Rodríguez‐Bravo, Blanca; Watkinson, Anthony; Boukacem‐Zeghmouri, Chérifa; Herman, Eti; Xu, Jie; Abrizah, Abdulah; Świgoń, Marzena (2017). “Early career researchers and their publishing and authorship practices”. Learned publishing, v. 30, n. 3, pp. 205-217. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1102
  • Nicholas, David; Watkinson, Anthony; Boukacem‐Zeghmouri, Chérifa; Rodríguez‐Bravo, Blanca; Xu, Jie; Abrizah, Abdulah; Świgoń, Marzena; Clark, David; Herman, Eti (2019). “So, are early career researchers the harbingers of change?”. Learned publishing, v. 32, n. 3, pp. 237-247. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1232
  • Olena, Abby (2020). “COVID-19 ushers in the future of conferences”. The scientist, September 28. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/covid-19-ushers-in-the-future-of-conferences-67978
  • Petsko, Gregory A.; Anderson-Thompkins, Sibby; Bernard, H. Russell; Greider, Carol; Plummer, James; Reece, E. Albert; Schwartz, Nancy; Stephan, Paula; Tracey, Lorraine; Turner, Michael (2014). The postdoctoral experience revisited. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. ISBN: 978 0 309 31446 6 https://doi.org/10.17226/18982
  • Powell, Kendall (2015). “The future of the postdoc”. Nature, v. 520, n. 7546, pp. 144-147. https://doi.org/10.1038/520144a
  • Radecki, Jane; Schonfeld, Roger C. (2020). The impacts of COVID-19 on the research enterprise: A landscape review. Ithaka S+R. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.314247
  • Rijs, Chantelle; Fenter, Frederick (2020) “The academic response to COVID-19”. Frontiers in public health, n. 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.621563
  • Roach, Michael; Sauermann, Henry (2017). “The declining interest in an academic career”. PLoS one, v. 12, n. 9, e0184130. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184130
  • Ross, John (2020). “Pandemic’s impact on Australian research ‘protracted’”. Times higher education, May 11. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/pandemics-impact-australian-research-protracted
  • SMaRteN; Vitae (2020). Release of initial findings to sector following response to COVID-19 survey, 17 May. The Student Mental Health Research Network; Vitae. https://www.vitae.ac.uk/news/vitae-news-2020/release-of-initial-findings-to-sector-following-response-to-covid-19-survey
  • Thatcher, Arran; Zhang, Mona; Todoroski, Hayden; Chau, Anthony; Wang, Joanna; Liang, Gang (2020). “Predicting the impact of COVID-19 on Australian universities”. Journal of risk and financial management, v. 13, n. 9, p. 188. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13090188
  • Vatansever, Asli (2020). At the margins of academia: Exile, precariousness, and subjectivity. Leiden: Brill. ISBN: 978 90 04 43134 8
  • Vitae (2020). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on researchers in universities and research institutes. 8 October 2020. https://www.vitae.ac.uk/impact-and-evaluation/covid-19-impact-on-researchers
  • Vitae (2021). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on researchers and research - Wave 2. June 2021. https://www.vitae.ac.uk/vitae-publications/the%20impact%20of%20the-covid-19-pandemic-on-researchers-and-research
  • Watchorn, Deirdre; Heckendorf, Esther; Smith, Chris (2020). Locked down, burned out: Publishing in a pandemic: The impact of COVID on academic authors. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter. https://blog.degruyter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Locked-Down-Burned-Out-Publishing-in-a-pandemic_Dec-2020.pdf
  • Watermeyer, Richard P.; Crick, Tom; Knight, Cathryn; Goodall, Janet (2020). “COVID-19 and digital disruption in UK universities: afflictions and affordances of emergency online migration”. Higher education, n. 81, pp. 623-641. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00561-y
  • Watermeyer, Richard P.; Shankar, Kalpana; Crick, Tom; Knight, Cathryn; McGaughey, Fiona; Hardman; Joanna; Suri, Venkata-Ratnadeep; Chung, Roger Y-N.; Phelan, Dean (2021). “‘Pandemia’: A reckoning of UK universities’ corporate response to COVID-19 and its academic fallout”. British journal of sociology of education, v. 42, n. 5-6, pp. 651-666. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2021.1937058
  • Weissgerber, Tracey; Bediako, Yaw; De-Winde, Charlotte M.; Ebrahimi, Hedyeh; Fernández-Chiappe, Florencia; Ilangovan, Vinodh; Mehta, Devang; Paz-Quezada, Carolina; Riley, Julia L.; Saladi, Shyam M.; Sarabipour, Sarvenaz; Tay, Andy (2020). “Point of view: Mitigating the impact of conference and travel cancellations on researchers’ futures”. eLife, v. 9, e57032. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.57032
  • Woolston, Chris (2020). “Pandemic darkens postdocs’ work and career hopes”. Nature, v. 585, n. 7824, pp. 309-312. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02548-2
  • Woolston, Chris (2021a). “The state of science salaries/Stagnating salaries present hurdles to career satisfaction”. Nature, n. 599, pp. 519-521. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03041-0
  • Woolston, Chris (2021b). “Scientists count the career costs of COVID”. Nature, n. 599 (7884), pp. 331-334. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03040-1
  • Yan, Wudan (2020). “Early-career scientists at critical career junctures brace for impact of COVID-19”. Science magazine, April 7. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.caredit.abc1291
  • Xing, Yanmeng; Zeng, An; Fan, Ying; Di, Zengru (2019). “The strong nonlinear effect in academic dropout”. Scientometrics, v. 120, n. 2, pp. 793-805. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03135-7