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The study investigates the information-related challenges as well as the practices adopted by early-career researchers during transitions between roles and institutions. Its primary goal is to delve into how information behaviors serve as scaffolding during significant life shifts. Moreover, the research aims to provide actionable insights based on this scaffolding concept for individuals navigating transitions.

This preliminary and exploratory study took a phenomenological approach to examine the role of information seeking and personal information management (PIM) behaviors during life transitions. In-depth semi-structured interviews were held with 15 early-career researchers from various disciplines, who were about to finish their PhDs or had recently graduated.

By employing information seeking and PIM practices, participants were able to address three main information challenges that arose during the transition process: the timing of information behavior, the nature of information and the social components of the transition. The use of networked and independent information seeking/validation practices enabled to establish a sustainable network of transition-related information, reducing uncertainty. PIM practices helped planning the transition, maintaining information over the long-term and gaining control over personal information.

This study underscores the significance of information behaviors, encompassing both information seeking and PIM, as scaffolding mechanisms during crucial life transitions. It offers essential insights that can guide the creation of impactful interventions and resources. Additionally, the research illuminates the pressing demand for more in-depth exploration in this domain.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the implications of recent changes in doctoral education for supervisors who are developing early career researchers in terms of the need to develop their professionality.

This conceptual paper seeks to establish an historical benchmark in terms of the Von Humboldt model of doctoral education and the associated master‐apprentice model of supervision. It then sets out the key changes of the past three decades and summarises what is described as the post‐Humboldian doctorate. These changes are then related to the knowledge and skills needed for successful supervisory practice and to the professionality of research supervisors.

The paper demonstrates that the shift to the post‐Humboldtian doctorate has radically expanded the knowledge, understanding, and skills required by supervisors to successfully develop early career researchers and that these can be arrayed on a continuum represented by indicative characteristics of “restricted” to “extended” professionality as applied to supervisors.

The implications are that professional development programmes for supervisors developing early career researchers need to be reviewed in the light of how far they can support participants to make the full range of adjustments necessary to develop their own professionality as supervisors.

The paper is the first to apply the notion of professionality – and its “restricted”‐“extended” range – to the doctoral supervisory role.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate what can be learnt about early career researchers through a narrative self-reflection of two academics’ moving towards the end of the early career into middle career stage.

The two academics’ share their experiences as self- study reflective inquiries, specifically as a want and need for “more” through this respective involvement in critically thinking about and planning their career trajectory. Using Schwab's (1969) flights from the field as an interpretative tool, this event is the trigger used to story and re-story the personal experience of the academics through a reflective inquiry approach.

Looking across the reflective self-studies, the final analysis reveals similarities, differences and tensions of the lived experiences of early career researchers’.

Through listening to the voices of early career academics insights are gained that highlight the need for active agency in the academy while learning from others to focus on building research profiles.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an informal interdisciplinary peer-mentoring relationship between two early career researchers.

A case study approach, using autoethnography, was employed to explore the relationship from a complex adaptive systems (CAS) perspective.

Informal peer-mentoring relationships may improve the work effectiveness and quality of the doctoral student and early career researcher experience. CAS can be an effective overarching theory for expanding understandings about mentoring.

This case study is limited to two early career researchers.

Informal peer mentoring may help to overcome challenges encountered by doctoral students, early career researchers and university staff members. CAS accounts of mentoring have the potential to open new possibilities for future mentoring research.

This paper provides unique insights into the experiences of doctoral students postgraduation and a long-term informal peer-mentoring relationship. Explorations of mentoring relationships from a CAS perspective are innovative.

Depending on their institutional context, for new faculty members to successfully manage their transition from doctoral studies to early career, they must show potential as researchers. The purpose of this study was to learn about supports and barriers to researcher development in new faculty members.

The investigators solicited open-ended responses from early career faculty members (N = 49) in an online survey. Content analysis was used to provide an initial categorization of supports and barriers identified by the participants.

Ten barrier categories (e.g. lack of resources, previous training, lack of mentoring, workload) and eight support categories (e.g. effective research collaborations, supportive university environment, funding) were identified.

Findings were framed with a social cognitive conceptual model, which parallels previous studies in doctoral research training environments and research productivity and builds on our knowledge of early career faculty development. The study was limited in terms of number of participants and online response format.

Practical implications to minimize barriers and enhance supports for new faculty researcher development were identified (also drawing from the conceptual model, SCCT).

Thus, the study has value for university policymakers, administrators, faculty peers, research mentors and assistant professors or doctoral students seeking to develop as researchers.

This paper aims to identify the documented effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on early career researcher (ECR) activity, development, career prospects and well-being.

This is a systematic literature review of English language peer-reviewed studies published between 2020 and 2021, which provided empirical evidence of the impact of the pandemic on ECR activity and development. The search strategy involved online databases (Scopus, Web of Science and Overton); well-established higher education journals (based on Scopus classification) and references in the retained articles (snowballing). The final sample included 11 papers.

The evidence shows that ECRs have been affected in terms of research activity, researcher development, career prospects and well-being. Although many negative consequences were identified, some promising learning practices have arisen; however, these opportunities were not always fully realised. The results raise questions about differential effects across fields and possible long-term consequences where some fields and some scholars may be worse off due to priorities established as societies struggle to recover.

There is a need for revised institutional and national policies to ensure that sufficient measures are implemented to support ECRs’ research work in a situation where new duties and chores were added during the pandemic.

This paper provides insights into the impacts of the initial societal challenges of the pandemic on ECRs across disciplines that may have long-lasting effects on their academic development and well-being.

This paper is written to add to current knowledge of the views of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) discipline early career researchers (ECRs) about creativity. It aims to explore their understandings of and attitudes towards creativity, as well as their perceptions of which environmental factors facilitate creative research. By discussing the findings in the context of earlier work, the paper seeks to challenge developers to re‐examine current practice in developing creativity by suggesting a broader and deeper approach than is currently often taken.

The paper reports on a qualitative study which collected data from semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with STEM researchers. A thematic analysis was performed on the data.

This research demonstrates that young researchers have a complex range of perceptions of creativity, and that negative attitudes towards it are common in the STEM environment. Three key environmental facilitators of creativity were also uncovered which are: a positive research environment; sufficient constructive communication; and time and space to be creative. It is argued that more emphasis should be placed upon optimising the environment for creative work to occur.

Whereas most previous work has focussed on experienced scientists, this paper outlines the complex and important issue of creativity in the context of STEM ECRs. It offers those who wish to support such researchers an accessible summary and recommendations of how to improve practice in the development of creativity. In particular, the paper argues that placing a greater emphasis upon optimising the environment will enhance the impact of creativity development efforts.

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.

The premise of this chapter is that methodological ‘tribes’ in higher education create ‘territories’ of research practice that do little to encourage those new to research to reconceptualise methodology. This premise is based upon the perceived absence of dialogic space, beyond an expert academic community, that would allow open critique of the degree to which research methodologies make sense for those ‘on the ground’. As such, it is argued that practices of this nature signify methodological process over genuine debate around methodological theory, which can serve to encourage methodological idolatry. Phenomenography has been selected, and analysed, in this chapter as an example of a research methodology used in higher education, in order to reveal both the encoded messages of phenomenography and the layering of meaning that such messages convey. The chapter concludes by arguing for a repositioning of research methodologies as ontologically coherent heuristic devices that enable us to generate and test theory, rather than as processes of discovery that may lead us to unsubstantiated claims of knowledge generation.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to make explicit academics’ tacit knowledge of academic employment and to develop the educational research and employability skills of 12 postgraduate researchers.

Twelve postgraduate researchers from ten different disciplines conducted 24 semi-structured interviews (12 with early career academics, 12 with senior academics). Respondents shared the skills, experiences and attributes sought when hiring and their lived experience of being academics.

The importance given to both explicitly stated (publications, teaching experience) and implicit (values, behaviour) factors varies greatly among individual academics. There is a mismatch between stated job requirements and the realities of academic life. A students-as-partners project fosters critical engagement with these questions and offers other benefits to participants.

Most respondents work at one research-intensive English institution, potentially limiting generalisability to teaching-led and international institutions.

Researcher development programmes should make explicit the range of factors considered in hiring while also encouraging critical engagement with the realities of academic work. Through students-as-partners projects, postgraduate research students can uncover first-hand what academic life is like and what hiring committees are looking for.

Through involving students-as-partners, the research question changed to reflect the actual concerns of those contemplating an academic career. Students gained invaluable awareness of academic hiring and insights into academic life, as well as transferable skills.