May 3, 2019 | Data, FOR meetings, Surveys & Forums
The eLife ECR community currently has a survey open, until June 1st, with the goal of Assessing the quality of mentorship in research environments. They are looking for responses from around the world, from the perspective of early-career researchers. They have surveys for pre-independence (i.e. graduate and postdoc) and junior group leaders/scientists/faculty. The 5-7 minute surveys ask whether about mentoring they receive from those in later career stages. In their own words: “We aim to surface what mentees believe is most important for a positive mentoring experience and to identify common gaps in skills or resources that can be addressed. We also hope that the findings will help us understand the factors that negatively impact the mentee-mentor relationships in research environments. The results will serve as a basis to offer recommendations for maximizing the benefits of mentoring in academia.” As part of our effort to create a greater focus on mentoring in departments, we are of course very keen to see their findings and how they can inform our work, so please complete the survey and share it with your colleagues! Don’t forget – Future of Research is organizing a meeting focused on mentorship – registration closes May 14th for the Chicago meeting: Mentoring Future Scientists Lack of prioritization of mentoring practices is partly responsible for preventing ECRs from reaching their fullest potential as the next generation of leaders in STEM. To cultivate a productive training environment, those who are given training responsibilities should also be trained, supported and evaluated by institutions to provide competent and appropriate mentoring to the next generation. To ensure mentoring is an institutional...
Apr 30, 2019 | Surveys & Forums
June 28th will mark the last day for staff support at Future of Research on our seed grant, and so will see the departure of Executive Director Dr. Gary McDowell. This gives the organization an opportunity to look back over the 3 years of the non-profit’s full-time operations to see what has worked, what hasn’t, and plan future directions. To help with this effort, we would like your help – please complete this survey (all sections optional) to tell us your thoughts. There’s also the chance to be entered into a draw for a hand-stitched FoR motif on a tote bag by our own ED! Please feel free to be honest – the organization and our ED would all appreciate critiques in moving forward, to learn from mistakes or past successes that we may not be fully aware of....
Apr 29, 2019 | Peer Review, Resources, Surveys & Forums
Last year at an ASAPbio meeting on peer review, one discussion centered around the role of early career researchers (ECRs) in peer review, and particularly how frequently ECRs contribute to peer review behind the scenes. This was fueled by a survey in eLife, a journal publishing life sciences research, indicating that 92% of those surveyed had undertaken reviewing activities, but more than half had done so without the assistance of their advisor. Dr. Gary McDowell (FoR Executive Director) and Dr. Rebeccah Lijek (former FoR BoD member and faculty member at Mount Holyoke College) led workshops discussing the reasons for, and questions about, the likely unrecognized involvement of ECRs in the peer review process. Those conversations inspired a year-long project to collect data on how frequently ECRs contribute to peer review when they are not the invited reviewer (“co-review”), and how commonly ECRs co-review without being acknowledged to the journal editorial staff (“ghostwrite”). Results and recommendations have now been published as a preprint here at bioRxiv. You can also read an article about the preprint in Physics Today. 1,952 publications in the peer-reviewed literature were evaluated though an exhaustive search and no previous studies about ECRs ghostwriting peer review reports were found. 498 researchers were then surveyed about their experiences with, and opinions about, co-reviewing and ghostwriting as ECRs. This found: 3/4 of those surveyed have co-reviewed and most find it to be a beneficial (95% agree) and ethical (73% agree) form of training in peer review; co-reviewing is the second most commonly reported form of training in peer review besides receiving reviews on one’s own papers; 1/2 of those surveyed have...
Sep 13, 2018 | Ideas for change, Surveys & Forums
The National Institutes of Health is developing recommendations for its institutes to support the next generation of biomedical researchers. This is part of the Next Generation Researchers Initiative, or NGRI, mandated under the 21st Century Cures Act. The working group is currently meeting and, while an official Request For Information has not been issued for the initiative, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) has put out a request for comments. You can make your voice heard here. See more details below from ASBMB: “Make your voice heard. Provide feedback on the National Institutes of Health’s Next Generation of Researchers Initiative. The National Institutes of Health is developing recommendations for its institutes to support the next generation of biomedical researchers — and we want to know what you think. The initiative aims addresses the difficulties that early- and mid-career investigators face as they seek funding for their research. The initiative aims to provide long-term stability for scientists developing independent research careers. The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology wants your comments on this NIH initiative. The ASBMB supports policies and programs that make the life science research enterprise more sustainable. The ASBMB, led by its Public Affairs Advisory Committee, is paying attention as the NIH proposes new policies, and we are working to provide substantive comments and feedback. The NIH plans to finalize its recommendations for the NGRI by December. The ASBMB wants the agency to hear your opinions. Please provide you feedback on the NGRI by Friday, Sept. 28, in the fields below. We will collate all comments and send them to the NIH. Your identifying information will...
Sep 5, 2018 | Data, Grassroots movements, Ideas for change, News, Peer Review, Policy, Resources, Surveys & Forums
Reminder: our survey on attitudes and experiences in peer review is open until September 21st – please fill it in and urge your peers to do so too! https://tinyurl.com/ECRs-in-peer-review As part of our effort to increase transparency about the role of early career researchers in peer review, we are trying to collect data on the policies that journals have implemented with respect to involvement of early career researchers. Particularly we are looking at how transparent co-reviewer policies are, and whether expectations around co-reviewing are made clear. We are part of a collaborative project, TRANsparency in Scholarly Publishing for Open Scholarship Evolution or TRANSPOSE, to work on gathering this and other data about scholarly publishing. This project has been accepted as part of the Scholarly Communication Institute 2018 Meeting in Chapel Hill, NC, where the theme is “Overcoming Risk“. One of the risks identified in our project is the risk ECRs face when it comes to ensuring their scholarly contribution is recognized. What is TRANSPOSE? TRANSPOSE (TRANsparency in Scholarly Publishing for Open Scholarship Evolution) is a grassroots project to crowdsource journal policies on peer review and preprints. The project is a collaborative effort across a number of different organizations dedicated to making publishing more transparent. Future of Research is particularly interested in the component you can search below – which journals allow co-reviewers to be named! Why TRANSPOSE? Journal policies on peer review and preprints are variable and complex. Existing databases (such as SHERPA/RoMEO and Publons) contain some, but not all, of this information. How can I help? If you’d like to...
Aug 23, 2018 | Data, Ideas for change, Peer Review, Policy, Resources, Surveys & Forums
We are launching our #ECRPeerReview effort – focused on ensuring the recognition of peer review efforts by early career researchers. Please help us start by filling out, and sharing, this survey: https://tinyurl.com/ECRs-in-peer-review Peer review is viewed as central to the evaluation of research, and in the case of peer review of manuscripts for journal publication, an activity that is seen as part of the service of a researcher. Graduate students, as those training in how to carry out research, should therefore clearly be participating in, and receiving training in, constructive peer review. Postdocs are researchers in a position of mentored independence – working on their own projects and research plans, and learning how to manage a research group from an independent principal investigator. As such, postdocs are already intellectually capable of being fully involved in the peer review process. But, how involved are these early career researchers (ECRs) in journal peer review? A recent survey in eLife, a journal publishing life sciences research, indicated that 92% of those surveyed had undertaken reviewing activities. But more than half, and 37% of graduate students, had done so without the assistance of their advisor: This statistic may come as a surprise to some but, anecdotally, discussions with ECRs (particularly in the life sciences) point to a number of incidences of “ghostwriting” of peer review reports: that is, carrying out peer review of a manuscript, writing the report, and submitting it to a supervisor, who submits the report (or some version of it) under their own name, and without the name of the co-reviewer. This led us to ask: just how often...
