Why scientific societies should involve more early-career researchers

Bankston, Adriana; Davis, Stephanie M.; Moore, Elisabeth; Niziolek, Caroline A.; Boudreau, Vincent

doi:10.7554/elife.60829

Cited by 24 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Organizational hierarchies often exclude ECRs from decision-making roles [ 27 ]. Without decision-making power, ECRs struggle to implement change and improve the scientific system.…”

Section: Recommendations For Stakeholdersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Organizations should integrate ECRs at different career stages into their decision-making processes [ 27 ] ( Table 1 ). Options include creating an early career advisory group, adding ECR representatives to committees or combining both approaches.…”

Section: Recommendations For Stakeholdersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The perception that ECRs lack the experience and expertise to improve science is sometimes used to justify excluding ECRs from decision-making roles [ 27 ]. This inaccurate perception may also cause others to overlook valuable materials and solutions generated by ECRs.…”

Section: Recommendations For Stakeholdersmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Recommendations for empowering early career researchers to improve research culture and practice

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Early career researchers (ECRs) are important stakeholders leading efforts to catalyze systemic change in research culture and practice. Here, we summarize the outputs from a virtual unconventional conference (unconference), which brought together 54 invited experts from 20 countries with extensive experience in ECR initiatives designed to improve the culture and practice of science. Together, we drafted 2 sets of recommendations for (1) ECRs directly involved in initiatives or activities to change research culture and practice; and (2) stakeholders who wish to support ECRs in these efforts. Importantly, these points apply to ECRs working to promote change on a systemic level, not only those improving aspects of their own work. In both sets of recommendations, we underline the importance of incentivizing and providing time and resources for systems-level science improvement activities, including ECRs in organizational decision-making processes, and working to dismantle structural barriers to participation for marginalized groups. We further highlight obstacles that ECRs face when working to promote reform, as well as proposed solutions and examples of current best practices. The abstract and recommendations for stakeholders are available in Dutch, German, Greek (abstract only), Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Serbian.

show abstract

“…Organizational hierarchies often exclude ECRs from decision-making roles [ 27 ]. Without decision-making power, ECRs struggle to implement change and improve the scientific system.…”

Section: Recommendations For Stakeholdersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recommendations For Stakeholdersmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Recommendations for empowering early career researchers to improve research culture and practice

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We deem it particularly important to present the views of ECRs because their views are currently underrepresented in conference planning ( Bankston et al, 2020 ), despite the prevalent belief that they must travel in order to build a professional network ( Higham et al, 2019 ; Matthies et al, 2021 ). This gives ECRs a special position within the discourse on academic conference travel, which we would like to comment on.…”

Section: Aim Of This Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Need for Sustainability, Equity, and International Exchange: Perspectives of Early Career Environmental Psychologists on the Future of Conferences

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

At the 2019 and 2021 International Conference on Environmental Psychology, discussions were held on the future of conferences in light of the enormous greenhouse gas emissions and inequities associated with conference travel. In this manuscript, we provide an early career researcher (ECR) perspective on this discussion. We argue that travel-intensive conference practices damage both the environment and our credibility as a discipline, conflict with the intrinsic values and motivations of our discipline, and are inequitable. As such, they must change. This change can be achieved by moving toward virtual and hybrid conferences, which can reduce researchers’ carbon footprints and promote equity, if employed carefully and with informal exchange as a priority. By acting collectively and with the support of institutional change, we can adapt conference travel norms in our field. To investigate whether our arguments correspond to views in the wider community of ECRs within environmental psychology, we conducted a community case study. By leveraging our professional networks and directly contacting researchers in countries underrepresented in those networks, we recruited 117 ECRs in 32 countries for an online survey in February 2022. The surveyed ECRs supported a change in conference travel practices, including flying less, and perceived the number of researchers wanting to reduce their travel emissions to be growing. Thirteen percent of respondents had even considered leaving academia due to travel requirements. Concerning alternative conference formats, a mixed picture emerged. Overall, participants had slightly negative evaluations of virtual conferences, but expected them to improve within the next 5 years. However, ECRs with health issues, facing visa challenges, on low funding, living in remote areas, with caretaking obligations or facing travel restrictions due to COVID-19 expected a switch toward virtual or hybrid conferences to positively affect their groups. Participants were divided about their ability to build professional relationships in virtual settings, but believed that maintaining relationships virtually is possible. We conclude by arguing that the concerns of ECRs in environmental psychology about current and alternative conference practices must be taken seriously. We call on our community to work on collective solutions and less travel-intensive conference designs using participatory methods.

show abstract

“…Because previous horizon scans in ecology have been overly represented by senior researchers from the Global North, in this effort we sought a core group of early career vegetation scientists (featuring different academic backgrounds and career stages), with a diverse geographical representation. We considered this to be particularly important given that a great deal of published, peer‐reviewed research is led by early career researchers (Bégin‐Caouette et al, 2020), with proven impact on emerging ideas in the field (Bankston et al, 2020). Detailed methods used in the process can be found in the .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifteen emerging challenges and opportunities for vegetation science: A horizon scan by early career researchers

Yannelli

Bazzichetto

Conradi

et al. 2022

J Vegetation Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

With the aim to identify future challenges and opportunities in vegetation science, we brought together a group of 22 early career vegetation scientists from diverse backgrounds to perform a horizon scan. In this contribution, we present a selection of 15 topics that were ranked by participants as the most emergent and impactful for vegetation science in the face of global change. We highlight methodological tools that we expect will play a critical role in resolving emerging issues by providing ways to unveil new aspects of plant community dynamics and structure. These tools include next generation sequencing, plant spectral imaging, process‐based species distribution models, resurveying studies and permanent plots. Further, we stress the need to integrate long‐term monitoring, the study of novel ecosystems, below‐ground traits, pollination interactions and global networks of near‐surface microclimate data at fine spatio‐temporal resolutions to fully understand and predict the impacts of climate change on vegetation dynamics. We also emphasize the need to integrate traditional forms of knowledge and a diversity of stakeholders into research, teaching, management and policy‐making to advance the field of vegetation science. The conclusions reached by this horizon scan naturally reflect the background, expertise and interests of a representative pool of early career vegetation scientists, which should serve as basis for future developments in the field.

show abstract

Why scientific societies should involve more early-career researchers

Cited by 24 publications

References 6 publications

Recommendations for empowering early career researchers to improve research culture and practice

Recommendations for empowering early career researchers to improve research culture and practice

The Need for Sustainability, Equity, and International Exchange: Perspectives of Early Career Environmental Psychologists on the Future of Conferences

Fifteen emerging challenges and opportunities for vegetation science: A horizon scan by early career researchers

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About