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Latin America is a vast and diverse continent. Not only are there dozens of different nations, but each country is also marked by stark regional differences. Nevertheless, the academic profession in all countries shares some common features that are important for an emerging scholar to know. Here, maybe more than in other parts of the world, early career decisions have significant and long-lasting consequences. This chapter presents the Latin American academic context focusing on the academic career ladder, as it is organized both in the public and the private sectors, exploring the many sources of tension and challenges, as well as opportunities for early career scholars in the region.

The current book chapter seeks to respond to the existing literature on early career researchers, using an autoethnographic approach to further unravel the crossroads of identity formation, research politics, and successful promotion through the eyes of early career researchers. Combining autobiography and ethnography, we systematically analyze our own experiences to make sense of wider social and political practices. Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2010) remind us that autoethnography is not to be dismissed as a form of self-therapy but is to be presented in a rigorous manner as other research forms by carefully justifying the data sources and techniques, analyzing the data and crafting the findings. Our sources were both found texts (e.g., university policies) and created texts (our journal entries and personal communications). Using analytic techniques such as highlighting critical incidents or epiphanies, we structured coherent narratives to illuminate the complexity and uncertainty of the lives of early career academics. This chapter’s focus on early career researcher experiences makes poignant commentary on neoliberalism’s impact on and within higher education. The chapter concludes with the authors’ reflections on the dilemmas of academic and research choices made within the limitations of institutional structures, processes, and systems that shape career trajectories.

Implementation of research evaluation policies based on neoliberal orientations of performativity has transformed higher education institutions globally, reshaping academic work and the academic profession. Most lately, the mantra of “publish or no degree” has become the norm in many contexts. There has been little empirical research into the unintended consequences of this neoliberal academic performativity for inexperienced researchers. This article focuses on the role institutional research evaluation policies play on doctoral students and early-career doctoral graduates’ publication practices and on their decision to sometimes publish in journals with ethically “questionable” publishing standards in particular through the concept of figured worlds.

The study was conducted in a higher education setting employing a variety of research incentive schemes to boost research productivity where “publish or no degree” policy is the norm. It employs qualitative approach and involves in-depth interviews with nine doctoral students and seven early career academics who have been working part-time or full-time for five years following PhD completion.

Findings demonstrate publishing in journals with ethically “questionable” publishing standards is not always simply the result of naivety or inexperience. Some authors choose these journals in order to retain a sense of self-efficacy in the face of rejection by more highly ranked journals. Under institutional pressure to publish, they are socialized into this “shadow academia” through (existing) academic networks, conferences and journal special issues.

It is often assumed that scholars are trapped into “questionable” journals through the use of unsolicited emails. This paper challenges this assumption by demonstrating the crucial role research evaluation policies based on neoliberal orientations of performativity and contextual dynamics play on the publication practices of doctoral students and early-career doctoral graduates on their decision to submit to journals with “questionable” publication practices. It introduces the concept of unethical publication brokering, an informal network of ties promising fast and easy publication in outlets that “count”.

Scholarly interest in carrying out impactful research continues to remain high. Yet, given that citations of scholarly work can never decrease with time, traditional measures of research impact (such as raw counts of citations) unwittingly discriminate against early career researchers and also make it hard to identify future high impact scholars. In the current study, the paper compares several commonly used measures of research impact to identify one that best normalizes for the effect of career stage. The measure thus applies equally across most career stages, providing a usable impact benchmark for logistics scholars irrespective of seniority level. The paper also aims to present benchmarks on that metric to help logistics scholars identify their research impact vis-à-vis their peers.

Bibliometric data on the research of 702 logistics scholars were collected and analyzed by dividing the scholars into different cohorts based on seniority. Comparisons of different citation metrics were then made.

The h-rate provides the most appropriate basis for comparing research impact across logistics scholars of various career stages. Benchmark h-rates are provided for scholars to identify their research impact.

The authors are unaware of any other work in the logistics field that measures the research impact of logistics scholars in this manner.

This chapter is presented in four distinct sections designed specifically to help early career scholars gain valuable insight into the complexities of preparing for and succeeding as a faculty member in the United States’ (US) system of higher education. The first section will explore the vast and multifaceted landscape of higher education across the US, anticipating that readers will be inspired to seek more regionally and institutionally specific perspectives as appropriate to their own interests. The second section offers a reflective narrative from the perspective of a doctoral candidate working strategically to help ensure a smooth transition to a faculty appointment in the US system. This section will provide perspectives on doctoral program aims and structures in the US along with the day-to-day work of a doctoral candidate working within the context of a college of education. In the following section of this chapter the authors offer guidance for engaging in impactful and innovative work to help ensure early career success. Such advice includes working across traditional academic boundaries and pursuing timely and influential research questions that deepen understandings across often distinct lines of inquiry. Finally, the authors present brief perspectives from several experienced faculty who remind us of the larger picture of what it means to truly thrive in the competitive environment of higher education.

Researcher development is an important but underexplored topic with implications for knowledge production, graduate education, faculty development and equity in higher education. The purpose of this constructivist instrumental case study was to understand how the process of writing and publishing from qualitative dissertations sparked researcher development among two pre-tenure faculty members in higher education.

Two researchers and seven data sources (i.e. six essays and one dialogue transcript) were used to construct the case. Researchers first inductively and independently coded the data sources. Researchers then collectively used the constant comparative technique (Charmaz, 2014) for data analysis.

Data analysis uncovered an iterative, three-phase process of seeking “better ways” (Evans, 2011) to translate dissertations into publications. This process included (1) recognizing one or more issues in the research design or conveyance of data, (2) rallying in a multitude of ways to seek better ways to address the issue(s) and (3) resolving the issue(s) by following internal voices and finding “better ways”.

Findings offer implications for faculty members’ approaches to mentoring and graduate preparation, and for postdoctoral and early career scholars’ agentic approaches to publishing, teaching and reflecting on one’s own researcher development.

Historically, academic careers in many European universities have been characterized by the civil servant status of academics (i.e., an open vacancy model) based on the German Lehrstuhl (professorial chair) tradition. The chair system has been abandoned in many countries, and the status of civil servants has been changed to private employment. At the same time, many European universities have introduced some variant of the tenure track model to increase the attractiveness of academic careers at their institutions; however, open vacancy models continue to dominate academic careers in Europe. This chapter describes recent changes in academic promotion systems using case examples from tenure track models in two European countries, Finland and Austria. In conclusion, this chapter offers examples based on the best practices and challenges identified in the analyzed tenure track models.

This paper aims to explore the contrast between stable and dynamic labour markets in academe in light of career theories that were originally developed for business environments.

A conceptual design, offering the eco‐system as a framework.

It evaluates their relevance and applicability to dynamic and global academic labour markets using the emerging novel eco‐system theory. Lessons are drawn for individual scholars employed in the higher education sector as well as to institutions.

The paper suggests practical indications for people‐management within academe. It integrates human capital theory, psychological‐contract concepts and career perspectives about people‐management with practical career advice for the sector.

The paper offers a conceptual framework to better understand labour markets, in particular academic labour markets, using eco‐system as a strong explanatory power.

This conversation presents the reflections from four inspirational early career disaster scholars on the opportunities and challenges associated with post-disaster research and disaster studies in general.

This paper is based on the conversations that took place on Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast livestream on the 15th September 2021.

The prominent themes in this conversation include representation, power imbalances and research extractivism and reciprocity.

The conversation contributes to the ongoing discussions around how research is conducted immediately following disasters.

This paper aims to use the technology acceptance model 2 (TAM2) to investigate the perceived ease of use, perceived benefits, barriers to use and acceptance of Arab scholars of informal communication tools in research writing.

This study adopted a quantitative approach using a questionnaire distributed among Arab scholars in Jordan, Egypt and Oman. The questionnaire based on the TAM2 model aimed to measure the acceptance of the sample of informal scholarly communication tools.

The study’s findings confirmed that the sample is considering informal scholarly communication tools are useful for their research. Informal scholarly communication tools increase the papers’ visibility, leading to a higher number of citations, building scholars’ reputation, creating new collaboration opportunities and maintaining the established collaboration.

The study’s findings can only be generalized on Arab scholars. The sample size could be one of the limitations, and the sample’s distribution was limited to three Arab universities in Jordan, Oman and Egypt. The authors recommend that future researchers use TAM2 model as a framework for studying the adoption of informal scholarly communication tools in different cultural contexts to achieve a better understanding of factors influencing the adoption of such tools.

A practical implication of this research is in drawing the attention of higher education institutions for the potentials of these scholarly communication tools in increasing the availability of publications of their scholars and increasing the citation of these publications, which would help in increasing the ranking of scholars, and the rank of these institutions which opens new opportunities of international research collaboration.

The outcomes of this research have several implications for the successful adoption of the TAM2 model. This study brings new knowledge to the literature related to informal scholarly communication adoption by the application of TAM2 constructs to determine the adoption behavior; the findings offered evidence of the TAM2 success in predicting adoption of such tools.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, adopting TAM2 in this research will add to knowledge by being one of the first studies to adopt TAM2 to measure acceptance of informal scholarly communication tools.