Effective Self-Management for Early Career Researchers in the Natural and Life Sciences

Abstract

Early career researchers (ECRs) are faced with a range of competing pressures in academia, making selfmanagement key to building a successful career. The Organization for Human Brain Mapping undertook a group effort to gather helpful advice for ECRs in self-management.

Overcoming the Obstacles Faced by Early Career Researchers in Marine Science: Lessons From the Marine Ecosystem Assessment for the Southern Ocean

“…Maintaining a work-life balance benefits academic productivity and publication outputs (Bielczyk et al, 2019). Without consideration for personal well-being, researchers, disproportionately PhDs and ECRs (Mitra and McAlpine, 2017;O'Neill and Schroijen, 2018), run the risk of experiencing burnout and mental health issues (e.g., Petersen, 2011).…”

Next‐generation field courses: Integrating Open Science and online learning

“…This approach develops a collaborative field course environment, as opposed to a hierarchical student/teacher set up, by allowing students to play an active role in constructing their learning experience (Carwile, 2007). Finally, linking to the broader research community, course participants and facilitators can use online platforms (i.e., websites, social media accounts, blogs) to promote educational and scientific practice (Sugimoto et al., 2017), as well as the ECRs themselves, increasing their scientific visibility at a critical stage in their career (Bielczyk et al., 2020). Ecological and evolutionary research is strengthened by global networks, which are often developed during early career attendance of field courses, workshops, and conferences.…”

From a crisis to an opportunity: Eight insights for doing science in the COVID‐19 era and beyond

“…Early career researchers in academia often struggle to manage competing pressures. Bielczyk et al (2018) provide useful guidelines for better self-management. One of their key suggestions is to envision our research activity as an "investment portfolio," diversifying the skills that we acquire so the inability to complete a project due to unforeseen events does not ruin our entire career or project.…”

“…ECRs that have to cancel their field studies or do not have access to laboratory equipment are especially vulnerable in our discipline compared to established researchers, as training and hands‐on experience are usually gained through field campaigns and laboratory work. Here, the first step toward not only maintaining research activity, but incorporating this new reality into planning for the future, is to realize that every project suffers bottlenecks that delays in its completion, and that these are often beyond our control (Bielczyk et al., 2018). A useful starting point is to invest some time to reflect on the research priorities of the project, and to determine which parts should be focused on and which can and may need to be rescheduled or changed.…”