ANALYSIS AND NEWS
PUBLISHERS ‘COULD DO MORE FOR EARLY-CAREER RESEARCHERS’
In an article based on his presentation at the recent STM Frankfurt conference, Jonathan Foster asks how early-career researchers and publishers can help each other
T
he days when students completing a PhD could expect to spend a few years doing a postdoc abroad before walking into a faculty position back home are long gone. A recent survey showed that in biological sciences only 15 per cent of post-doctoral research associates will gain a permanent academic position within six years of completing their PhD.
There is a growing population of researchers, estimated at 90,000 in the USA alone, who are spending years on temporary contracts and who don’t fall into the traditional categories of ‘student’ or ‘faculty’. These early-career researchers (ECRs) are often the ones in the laboratory training PhD students, undertaking research and writing, reading and reviewing literature on a day-to-day basis. There is therefore a strong incentive for the publishing industry to try to understand this growing market in order to tailor products to its needs.
A key difference between tenured academics and ECRs is their lack of job security in a competitive market place. Researchers must ‘publish or perish’ if they want to secure their next position. A typical post-doc position lasts two years, although many ECRs are employed on much shorter or even rolling contracts. In the session on ECRs at the STM Frankfurt conference, a fellow speaker, Anna Villar-Piqué of the University Medical Center, Goettingen reported the situation of month- by-month contracts for researchers in her home country, Spain, since the financial crisis there. This type of situation leaves a very short window in which to move to a new institution, develop new skills and publish a paper. It therefore favours research on well-established, low-risk projects with a high chance of a publication at the end. Papers that take several months to get published or come back with years’ worth of further experiments can leave ECRs
with nothing to show for their previous years of work when applying for their next job. This is particularly important in the case of fellowship applications, which have annual, fixed deadlines and often don’t acknowledge publications in preparation or under review.
The reputation of the journal title is often the most important consideration for where to submit a paper as other metrics, such as citations, are meaningless for recent work, which is most important in securing the next position. Job insecurity means that ECRs must operate on tight timescales.
Building reputation Without a permanent position at a university or other research institution, ECRs are not eligible to apply for most research funding. ECRs therefore typically work in the laboratory of a tenured academic, employed either on a grant won by the academic as a ‘post-doctoral research
STARTING A DIALOGUE WITH PUBLISHERS
At the recent Internet Librarian International conference in London, Karin Byström of Uppsala University in Sweden emphasised the need for discussion in closing the gap between librarians and publishers
D
uring the 2013 UKSG conference, T Scott Plutchak urged librarians and publishers to get to know each other outside of the buyer/seller relationship, and to realise that we
have many common goals and ideals. Plutchak is head librarian at the University of Alabama and has been an editor for the Journal of the Medical Library Association, so he can see the problem from both sides. The publishing industry and academic libraries are both in a state of change, and both have new roles and
challenges. We often have false preconceptions about each other. We work in parallel worlds but rarely collaborate or cooperate.
Inspired by Plutchak, Uppsala University library initiated a discussion bettween librarians and publishers in May 2014. With the National library of Sweden and Södertörn University library, we organised a seminar with presentations and group discussions with the aim of opening up a dialogue between publishers and academic libraries. Both parties described their current situation and needs for the future.
6 Research Information DECEMBER 2014/JANUARY 2015
We focused the discussion on Swedish e-books. At the moment not many Swedish e-books are available to academic libraries, although the demand from our users is great, especially for non-fiction and textbooks. Some publishers sell to public libraries – but that is mostly fiction, and there has been problems finding a suitable pricing and access model. A few Swedish publishers already sell e-books to academic libraries, but most publishers don’t, so we saw the seminar as a possibility for publishers with little or no experience of e-books to hear from publishers with more experience in this area.
The seminar started with presentations from four publishers, two aggregators, a trade organisation, two academic libraries and the National library of Sweden – all briefly stating their current situation and forecasts for the future in regards to e-books.
@researchinfo
www.researchinformation.info
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32