COVID-19 and the Research Community: Being Vulnerable
Early-career researchers feel discouraged from exposing vulnerability even during a global crisis.
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Early-career researchers feel discouraged from exposing vulnerability even during a global crisis.
Early analyses suggest that female academics are posting fewer preprints and starting fewer research projects than their male peers.
Postdoctoral researchers play a crucial role in many research groups, serving as mentors, teachers, and leaders as they develop their skills and prepare for scientific careers. However, the coronavirus disease crisis has put funding and support for postdoc positions at risk, threatening to upend the career paths available to these junior scientists.
As the world attempts to cope with the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers about to start PhDs and postdocs face particular challenges.
The postdoctoral experience is in need of reform. Here the authors outline concrete steps that institutions, postdocs and mentors can take to improve the landscape.
Graduate students face many of the same challenges as faculty members during COVID-19 but have received fewer assurances. Top on their wish list are extended funding and time-to-degree extensions.
Research and reading helped Shipra Jain to gain confidence in her abilities.
Paying conference expenses up front from personal accounts is a significant burden, this grad student writes
Graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shut down campus Thursday as part of their ongoing strike for a cost of living adjustment, and all other system campuses saw their own one-day protests. Santa Cruz graduate assistants went on a grade strike in December, then a full labor strike this month. Tensions mounted last week when the university fired or disqualified 80-some grads from spring assistantships for continuing to withhold undergraduate grades. Graduate assistants blocked all entrances to the Santa Cruz campus before dawn, forcing the university to cancel classes, except those offered online. Many faculty and undergraduate supporters joined the picket lines on that campus and across the UC system starting midmorning. As of last week, graduate assistants at the Santa Barbara campus are also on a labor strike for a COLA, and assistants at the Davis campus are on a grade strike. Systemwide, graduate instructors make about $2,400 pre-tax, per month, for nine months out of the year. Strikers say that they need between $1,400 and $1,800 extra per month to be able to secure housing in California's expensive rental markets and have anything left over for utilities and food. The United Auto Workers, with which UC's graduate workers are affiliated, has urged the university to reopen their contract to bargain for a COLA. This week it authorized a systemwide strike vote for April on the grounds that the university has committed unfair labor practices. The university has filed a similar claim against graduate workers. The system said in a statement that it "values all our graduate students, including academic student employees (ASEs) who are essential to UC's teaching mission, supporting the university as teaching assistants, readers and tutors. However, that mission is in jeopardy when ASEs refuse to fulfill their teaching obligations." The system noted that these assistants are striking in violation of their union contract, negotiated in 2018, and said it's "unfortunate that the UAW has resorted to announcing a strike authorization vote as the university continues pursuing opportunities to engage productively with graduate students on housing affordability and other issues."
Ruthless labor exploitation? Generational betrayal? Understanding the job crisis in academia requires a look at recent history.
An example of finding the balance between personal and professional lives during moves overseas and in and out of academia.
This report shows the results of a survey conducted in spring 2019 among all people who received a PhD in political science from a Swiss university during the last eleven years (2008 to 2018) and among postdocs working in a Swiss university in June 2019. Thus, this survey sheds light on the experiences and career paths of both postdocs and doctors in political science who left academia. Moreover, it compares the results regarding postdocs with a similar study carried out in 2012.
Three searchable databases provide information on global opportunities for graduate students, postdocs and junior faculty members.
A move from Germany taught Deb Raj Aryal how to acclimatize to a new research culture.
John Malloy shares his experiences of risking debt to travel - and discusses what to do about it.
Failed funding applications are inevitable, but perseverance can pay dividends.
Students should actively consider and prepare for the work they are personally most suited to, whether within or beyond the academy.
Academic systems rely on the existence of a supply of "outsiders" ready to forgo wages and employment security in exchange for the prospect of uncertain security, prestige, freedom and reasonably high salaries that tenured positions entail.
Where are the white guys when we talk about changing the way Ph.D.s are advised and trained?
The publication output of doctoral students is increasingly used in selection processes for funding and employment in their early careers.
What chief academic officers think about the academic health of their institutions, the role of tenure, general education and much more.
Global study highlights long hours, poor job security and mental-health struggles.
Let 2020 be the year in which we value those who ensure that science is self-correcting.
Navigating the turbulent waters of the doctoral voyage
Little is known about the long-term effects of early-career setback. Here, the authors compare junior scientists who were awarded a NIH grant to those with similar track records, who were not, and find that individuals with the early setback systematically performed better in the longer term.
OASPA webinar of 2019: invitation to speakers to consider contemporary debates in open research and open access.
An EPFL Bachelor's student has solved a mystery that has puzzled scientists for 100 years.
It's time to trust students to handle doubt and diversity in science, says Jerry Ravetz.
In this second article to mark Nature's 2019 graduate survey, respondents call for more one-to-one support and better career guidance.
By examining publication records of scientists from four disciplines, the authors show that coauthoring a paper with a top-cited scientist early in one's career predicts lasting increases in career success, especially for researchers affiliated with less prestigious institutions.