Intellectual Synthesis in Mentorship Determines Success in Academic Careers

Liénard, Jean‐Sylvain; Achakulwisut, Titipat; Acuña, Daniel E.; David, Stephen V.

doi:10.1101/273888

Cited by 30 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…3I), and were more likely to have changed their career plans (n=7,565, χ 2 =224.633, p<0.0001). These results complement recent studies suggesting that individual career choice is influenced by changing job attribute preferences and self-awareness 22 , and that academic success is influenced by mentorship during the postdoctoral period 26 .…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Career Choice, Gender, and Mentor Impact: Results of the U.S. National Postdoc Survey

McConnell

et al. 2018

Preprint

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The postdoctoral community is an essential component of the academic and scientific workforce. As economic and political pressures impacting these enterprises continue to change, the postdoc experience has evolved from short, focused periods of training into often multidisciplinary, extended positions with less clear outcomes. As efforts are underway to amend U.S. federally funded research policies, the paucity of postdoc data has made evaluating the impact of policy recommendations challenging. Here we present comprehensive survey results from over 7,600 postdocs based at 351 academic and non-academic U.S. institutions in 2016. In addition to demographic and salary information, we present multivariate analyses on the factors that influence postdoc career plans and mentorship satisfaction in this population. We further analyze gender dynamics and expose wage disparities and career choice differences. Academic research positions remain the predominant career choice of postdocs in the U.S., although unequally between postdocs based on gender and residency status. Receiving mentorship training during the postdoctoral period has a large, positive effect on postdoc mentorship satisfaction. Strikingly, the quality of and satisfaction with postdoc mentorship appears to also heavily influence career choice. The data presented here are the most comprehensive data on the U.S. postdoc population to date. These results provide an evidence basis for informing government and institutional policies, and establish a critical cornerstone for quantifying the effects of future legislation aimed at the academic and scientific workforce.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Career Choice, Gender, and Mentor Impact: Results of the U.S. National Postdoc Survey

McConnell

et al. 2018

Preprint

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“…The amount of literature on supervision and mentoring differs between disciplinary fields. Mentoring received extensive attention in medicine [26,27] and substantial attention in psychology [28]. Mentoring and supervision have primarily been used as tools to foster diversity by encouraging minority groups to stay in science and engineering fields [29,30], but received little attention in themselves.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Researchers’ perceptions of research misbehaviours: a mixed methods study among academic researchers in Amsterdam

Haven

Tijdink

Pasman

et al. 2019

Res Integr Peer Rev

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Background: There is increasing evidence that research misbehaviour is common, especially the minor forms. Previous studies on research misbehaviour primarily focused on biomedical and social sciences, and evidence from natural sciences and humanities is scarce. We investigated what academic researchers in Amsterdam perceived to be detrimental research misbehaviours in their respective disciplinary fields. Methods: We used an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. First, survey participants from four disciplinary fields rated perceived frequency and impact of research misbehaviours from a list of 60. We then combined these into a top five ranking of most detrimental research misbehaviours at the aggregate level, stratified by disciplinary field. Second, in focus group interviews, participants from each academic rank and disciplinary field were asked to reflect on the most relevant research misbehaviours for their disciplinary field. We used participative ranking methodology inducing participants to obtain consensus on which research misbehaviours are most detrimental. Results: In total, 1080 researchers completed the survey (response rate: 15%) and 61 participated in the focus groups (3 three to 8 eight researchers per group). Insufficient supervision consistently ranked highest in the survey regardless of disciplinary field and the focus groups confirmed this. Important themes in the focus groups were insufficient supervision, sloppy science, and sloppy peer review. Biomedical researchers and social science researchers were primarily concerned with sloppy science and insufficient supervision. Natural sciences and humanities researchers discussed sloppy reviewing and theft of ideas by reviewers, a form of plagiarism. Focus group participants further provided examples of particular research misbehaviours they were confronted with and how these impacted their work as a researcher. Conclusion: We found insufficient supervision and various forms of sloppy science to score highly on aggregate detrimental impact throughout all disciplinary fields. Researchers from the natural sciences and humanities also perceived nepotism to be of major impact on the aggregate level. The natural sciences regarded fabrication of data of major impact as well. The focus group interviews helped to understand how researchers interpreted 'insufficient supervision'. Besides, the focus group participants added insight into sloppy science in practice. Researchers from the natural sciences and humanities added new research misbehaviours concerning their disciplinary fields to the list, such as the stealing of ideas before publication. This improves our understanding of research misbehaviour beyond the social and biomedical fields.

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“…offspring, collaborators). The automatic delineation of family connections based on first author-last author pairs provides an alternative to previous efforts requiring user input (David and Hayden, 2012;Hirshman et al, 2016;Lienard et al, 2018) (see also Mathematics Genealogy Project: https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/). However, this approach may underestimate offspring counts in the case of first or last co-authorship, when first authors change the field of interest and in the case of alphabetical author lists or of field-specific author ranking (Waltman, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

TeamTree analysis: a new approach to evaluate scientific production

Pfrieger

2020

Preprint

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Advances in biomedicine and other fields of science and technology depend on research teams and their peer-reviewed publications. The scientific literature represents an invaluable socioeconomic resource guiding future research. Typically, this growing body of information is explored by queries in bibliographic databases concerning topics of interest and by subsequent scrutiny of matching publications. This approach informs readily about content, but leaves the workforce driving the field largely unexplored. The hurdle can be overcome by a transparent team-centered analysis that visualizes the teams working in a field of interest and that delineates their genealogic and collaborative relations. Context-specific, but citation-independent metrics gauge team impact and reveal key contributors valuing publication output, mentorship and collaboration. The new insight into the structure, dynamics and performance of the workforce driving research in distinct disciplines complements ongoing efforts to mine the scientific literature, foster collaboration, evaluate research and guide future policies and investments.

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Intellectual Synthesis in Mentorship Determines Success in Academic Careers

Abstract: 1As academic careers become more competitive, junior scientists need to understand the value that mentorship 2 brings to their success in academia. Previous research has found that, unsurprisingly, successful mentors

Cited by 30 publications

References 44 publications

Career Choice, Gender, and Mentor Impact: Results of the U.S. National Postdoc Survey

Career Choice, Gender, and Mentor Impact: Results of the U.S. National Postdoc Survey

Researchers’ perceptions of research misbehaviours: a mixed methods study among academic researchers in Amsterdam

TeamTree analysis: a new approach to evaluate scientific production

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