Perspectives on Open Science and Scholarly Publishing: a Survey Study Focusing on Early Career Researchers in Europe

Background: The value of Open Science (OS) for the academic community and society has been becoming more evident recently, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, significant challenges regarding its implementation arise that are likely to affect researchers, especially those in early career stages. Hence, monitoring early-career researchers’ views, knowledge, and skills on OS and related policies, is crucial for its advancement. The main aim of this exploratory study was to gain new perspectives regarding the awareness of and attitudes towards OS and related practices having in consideration geographical, economic and research career variables. Methods: The survey was conducted during May-August 2020 as part of a collaboration between Eurodoc and the Open Research Europe project. The data from the survey were analyzed by European region, Gross domestic product, Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a percentage of gross domestic product, field of study, and career stage. Results: The awareness and positive attitude regarding OS, specifically among early-career researchers, is high in Europe. However, there are significant career stage group differences in views and knowledge about OS. Generally, awareness and positive attitude tend to increase with increasing career seniority. Regarding European regions, we spotted three main groups sharing similar awareness levels and attitudes: researchers in Western Europe - the most informed group towards OS; researchers in northern, central, and southern Europe - a moderately informed group with some minor differences; and researchers in eastern Europe - the least informed group, whose opinions deviate the most. Conclusions: We found that there is an “evolution of needs and focus” regarding scientific publishing: researchers in most European regions are in different stages of transition from the competitive to collaborative levels, while researchers in eastern Europe are largely beginning their transition to the competitive level.

Thorns amongst Roses? Lived Experience of Philippine Male College Students Aspiring to Become Professional Elementary Teachers

There is a noticeable under-representation of the male gender particularly in the field of elementary teacher education. The main aim of this paper is to understand the lived experience of male college students aspiring to become professional elementary teachers. As phenomenological research, it involved six purposively selected male students enrolled in a predominantly female elementary teacher education program in a Philippine university. The data were gathered through online interviews and analyzed based on a phenomenological analysis framework. The following themes emerged: 1.) We hear discouraging stereotypes about teaching; 2.) We are passionate about educating the young ones; 3.) We feel that awkward moment in a room of females; and 4.) We have an inclusive learning environment. These themes are based on the individual textural and structural descriptions and form the basis for the composite textural and structural descriptions of the phenomenon of interest. This paper confirms the experiences encountered by males in the formal teaching career stage as relative to experiences received by males in the early stage of the teacher preparation. It also identifies factors that encourage males to enter elementary teacher education as a field of study, providing practical insights for designing a more inclusive program.

Career stages in management studies: a systematic review of scientific production from 2011 to 2020

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to present a systematic review of scientific production on career stages in the last decade (2011–2020). More specifically, it seeks to understand the methodological approaches, how career stages have been operationalized in research in the Management field, and the main results of these researches.Design/methodology/approachThe authors searched articles about career stages on the Web of Science database published between 2011 and 2020. The final portfolio for the systematic review included 20 article based on pre-established criteria for the selection.FindingsThe results present an overview of these articles, as well as the methodological approaches used. The authors confirmed that there is no consensus on the operationalization of the career stage. Five topics associated with career stages were discussed: workers' attitudes and behaviors; training and mentoring; intentions; perception of success and work-life balance; and work values.Originality/valueThe authors found no other studies concerning the review of scientific production on career stages and divergences in the operationalization of the theme. However, considering the large number of research studies that deal with careers and their stages, it is relevant to discuss how the career stages can be operationalized and whether their operationalization is valid.

Post-Retirement Paid Work and Inequalities at Older Ages

Participation in paid work frequently extends beyond pensionable age, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development observing, in “Pensions at a Glance” (2017, pp. 126–7), that effective retirement ages in high-income countries exceed normal full-pension-eligibility ages by 10 months for men and two months for women. While working after pensionable age is becoming ever more common, not all workers on the cusp of retirement are able to continue in their current position or find a new job. Remarkably, little is known about the implications of unequal access to post-retirement work for social and income inequalities in later life, nor how job quality might change as people work into the years normally set aside for retirement. The four papers in this symposium address the following questions: 1) do bridge employment transitions exacerbate or mitigate income inequality later in life? 2) how does job quality (job satisfaction, physical and psychosocial working conditions) compare before and after pensionable age? 3) which processes lead to changes in working conditions in the late career? and 4) might empirical and theoretical gains be made by considering post-pensionable-age paid work as a specific career stage? The presenters use longitudinal data from the United States (the Health and Retirement Study, HRS), Sweden (Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health, SLOSH), and Japan (Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement, JSTAR) complemented by interviews with older workers in Sweden. This symposium will provide insights into the nature and consequences of working after pensionable age in contrasting institutional settings.

Facets of Specialization and Its Relation to Career Success: An Analysis of U.S. Sociology, 1980 to 2015

We investigate how sociology students garner recognition from niche field audiences through specialization. Our dataset comprises over 80,000 sociology-related dissertations completed at U.S. universities, as well as data on graduates’ pursuant publications. We analyze different facets of how students specialize—topic choice, focus, novelty, and consistency. To measure specialization types within a consistent methodological frame, we utilize structural topic modeling. These measures capture specialization strategies used at an early career stage. We connect them to a crucial long-term outcome in academia: becoming an advisor. Event-history models reveal that specific topic choices and novel combinations exhibit a positive influence, whereas focused theses make no substantial difference. In particular, theses related to the cultural turn, methods, or race are tied to academic careers that lead to mentorship. Thematic consistency of students’ publication track also has a strong positive effect on the chances of becoming an advisor. Yet, there are diminishing returns to consistency for highly productive scholars, adding important nuance to the well-known imperative of publish or perish in academic careers.

Valuation regimes in academia: Researchers’ attitudes towards their diversity of activities and academic performance

Evaluation systems have been long criticised for abusing and misusing bibliometric indicators. This has created a culture by which academics are constantly exposing their daily work to the standards they are expected to perform. In this study we investigate whether researchers’ own values and expectations are in line with the expectations of the evaluation system. We conduct a multiple case-study of five departments in two Dutch universities to examine how they balance between their own valuation regimes and the evaluation schemes. For this we combine curriculum analysis with a series of semi-structured interviews. We propose a model to study diversity of academic activities and apply it to the multiple-case study to understand how such diversity is shaped by discipline and career stage. We conclude that the observed misalignment is not only resulting from an abuse of metrics, but also by a lack of tools to evaluate performance in a contextualised and adaptable way.

Increasing doctors working in specific rural regions through selection from and training in the same region: national evidence from Australia

Background ‘Grow your own’ strategies are considered important for developing rural workforce capacity. They involve selecting health students from specific rural regions and training them for extended periods in the same regions, to improve local retention. However, most research about these strategies is limited to single institution studies that lack granularity as to whether the specific regions of origin, training and work are related. This national study aims to explore whether doctors working in specific rural regions also entered medicine from that region and/or trained in the same region, compared with those without these connections to the region. A secondary aim is to explore these associations with duration of rural training. Methods Utilising a cross-sectional survey of Australian doctors in 2017 (n = 6627), rural region of work was defined as the doctor’s main work location geocoded to one of 42 rural regions. This was matched to both (1) Rural region of undergraduate training (< 12 weeks, 3–12 months, > 1 university year) and (2) Rural region of childhood origin (6+ years), to test association with returning to work in communities of the same rural region. Results Multinomial logistic regression, which adjusted for specialty, career stage and gender, showed those with > 1 year (RRR 5.2, 4.0–6.9) and 3–12 month rural training (RRR 1.4, 1.1–1.9) were more likely to work in the same rural region compared with < 12 week rural training. Those selected from a specific region and having > 1-year rural training there related to 17.4 times increased chance of working in the same rural region compared with < 12 week rural training and metropolitan origin. Conclusion This study provides the first national-scale empirical evidence supporting that ‘grow your own’ may be a key workforce capacity building strategy. It supports underserviced rural areas selecting and training more doctors, which may be preferable over policies that select from or train doctors in ‘any’ rural location. Longer training in the same region enhances these outcomes. Reorienting medical training to selecting and training in specific rural regions where doctors are needed is likely to be an efficient means to correcting healthcare access inequalities.

The information system stress, informatics competence and well-being of newly graduated and experienced nurses: a cross-sectional study

Background The use of information systems takes up a significant amount of nurses’ daily working time. Increased use of the systems requires nurses to have adequate competence in nursing informatics and is known to be a potential source of stress. However, little is known about the role of nursing informatics competence and stress related to information systems (SRIS) in the well-being of nurses. Moreover, the potential impact of nurses’ career stage on this matter is unknown. This study examined whether SRIS and nursing informatics competence are associated with stress and psychological distress in newly graduated nurses (NGNs) and experienced nurses. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in Finland between October and December 2018. The participants were NGNs (n = 712) with less than two years of work experience and experienced nurses (n = 1226) with more than two years of work experience. The associations of nursing informatics and SRIS with nurses’ stress and psychological distress were analyzed with linear regression analysis. Analyses were conducted separately for NGNs and experienced nurses. Models were adjusted for age, gender, and work environment. Results SRIS was associated with stress / psychological distress for both NGNs (β = 0.26 p < 0.001 / β = 0.22 p < 0.001) and experienced nurses (β = 0.21 p < 0.001/ β = 0.12 p < 0.001). Higher nursing informatics competence was associated with lower stress (β = 0.20 p < 0.001) and psychological distress (β = 0.16 p < 0.001) in NGNs, but not among experienced nurses. Conclusions SRIS appears to be an equal source of stress and distress for nurses who are starting their careers and for more experienced nurses, who are also likely to be more experienced users of information systems. However, informatics competence played a more important role among NGNs and a lack of adequate competence seems to add to the strain that is already known to be high in the early stages of a career. It would be important for educational institutions to invest in nursing informatics so that new nurses entering the workforce have sufficient skills to work in increasingly digital health care.

Investigation of Faculty Members’ Emotional Intelligence

<p style="text-align: justify;">The main aim of the present study is to investigate the emotional intelligence of faculty members based on their career stage and gender. In the study, a mixed method was employed to determine the emotional intelligence of faculty members and to reach generalizable findings. The convenience sampling method was used in the quantitative study, while the quota sampling method was used in the qualitative section. The quantitative section sample included faculty members in various stages in their careers. In the qualitative dimension, the sample included faculty members who participated in the quantitative application. The quantitative study findings demonstrated that there were significant differences between the emotional intelligence competencies of female and male faculty members in the workplace based on the empathy and self-awareness dimensions. The qualitative study findings revealed that there were differences between the emotional intelligence dimensions, especially based on the career stage and gender. Recommendations are presented based on the study findings.</p>