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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.

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.

Numerous studies have explored international students' and graduates' experiences around the globe but with less emphasis on exploring international academics' experiences. Internationalisation of higher education is not only about international students, it also includes mobility of academic staff members. Therefore, this chapter reflects on my ups and downs as well as many other opportunities that I gained in a privileged journey as an international early-career academic from Malaysia. The chapter starts with my personal experiences of how I identify myself as an international academic, the motivations to migrate, professional challenges that I face not only as an international academic but also as an early-career academic, the strategies that I adopted to overcome the challenges and how I self-created opportunities not only for myself but also for other colleagues – international academics and early-career academics. I will end the chapter with significant successes that came my way.

The purpose of this paper is to present reflections of five early career researchers on the challenges of journal publishing and how to tackle them.

The authors attended a participatory workshop on demystifying academic publications. Working individually and in groups the authors shared, discussed, analysed, visualised and ranked perceived challenges and opportunities concerning academic publishing. The authors then delved into the existing literature on the subject. Following their enhanced understanding of the area, the authors reflected on the experience and learnings.

Personal confidence relating to the development of a scholarly identity was found to be a critical factor in the attitude towards journal publishing. Supervisory and peer support, accessibility to journal editors, as well as opportunities to reflect on the writing, publishing and peer review processes through participatory workshops and writing groups, were deemed more effective than formal and conventional guidance schemes.

This work adds to the available literature regarding the issue of academic publishing for PhD students and early career researchers.

The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of issues surrounding publishing apprehension, by laying out thoughts that are seldom expressed.

Working in the academy can be both challenging and exciting as it can be trying and difficult to negotiate if one is unprepared. Past research has acknowledged the importance of reflective practice in order to face such trials positively. This study utilises arts-based/multimodal reflection to contemplate the lived experience of one early career researcher in her first five years of employment. Adopting an arts-based approach, the researcher regularly reflected via the medium of collage. The purpose of this paper is to report on recollaged artefacts that are analysed in relation to meta-semiotic meanings as well as how they correspond to Schwab’s “lines of flight”, revealing both positive and negative acuities. Findings show that taking the time to delineate feelings via arts-based reflection can illuminate silent thoughts and deliberations and support an early career academic in appreciating and improving awareness of higher education regularities. Implications highlight how recollage can be an effective tool for the self-care of early career academics.

Adopting an arts-based approach, the researcher regularly reflected via the medium of collage. This paper reports on recollaged artefacts. These were analysed in relation to meta-semiotic meanings as well as how they corresponded to Schwab’s “lines of flight”, taking both positive and negative acuities.

Findings showed that taking the time to delineate feelings via arts-based reflection can reveal silent thoughts and deliberations and support an early career academic in appreciating and improving awareness of higher education regularities as well as self-care.

Implications highlight how recollage can be effective for early career academics in reflecting on their everyday work and improve self-care.

Practical implications include the fact that readers will be able to adopt the arts-based methods used in this paper in order for them to reflect on their everyday work in the academy. The recollaged practice will improve their self-care and allow time to reflect effectively and creatively.

Social implications include that colleagues could do recollaged practice together. Reflection done collaboratively can also improve self-care and well-being for those working in the academy.

Recollage is a new method of autoethnography the author has developed for the purpose of reflecting on my journey as an early career researcher. Now, in leadership roles, this approach has allowed the author to move forward positively in the academy.

During the rapid transition online, university educators had to reconsider how they supported students with disabilities and neurological differences in accessing a high-quality remote learning experience. This chapter explores my personal experiences as an Early Career Academic (ECA) tasked with supporting our faculty during the transition to remote learning. By collating my personal experiences leading up to and throughout this period, I reflect on my own coping strategies required to fulfill this role. I also explore the forms of resilience that I utilised to support my colleagues who had a spectrum of perspectives and knowledge of inclusive digital pedagogies.

Transitions – as a focus of study – have been missing from information behaviour research. The purpose of this paper is to explore the topic of transitions – their characteristics and influences, the related concept of liminality and Transitions Theory – and what it can contribute to the field of information behaviour. This exploration includes the application of liminality and Transitions Theory to an empirical study of participants making the transition from doctoral student to early career academic.

In addition to an extended literature review, this paper reports on a qualitative study that used constructivist grounded theory methodology for data collection and analysis. Early career academics were followed for a five- to seven-month period and data were collected using interviews and “check-ins”. Transitions Theory and liminality were used to guide the analysis.

Three important findings were highlighted: the complicating effects of being in a liminal space on information behaviour; the changing information needs of those undergoing a transition; and the importance of comparison as a way of using information to understand new situations. A revised model of Transitions Theory (Meleis et al., 2000) is also proposed, to incorporate information behaviour.

This paper demonstrates that by examining information behaviour over longer periods of time and by making transitions a focus of research, new understandings and insight can be gained into what information individual needs, how they find, share and use that information. This research demonstrates that information behaviour research adds important elements to the study of transitions and, conversely, that transitions (and Transitions Theory) add important elements to the study of information behaviour.

This paper has two aims: to investigate the relationship of self‐efficacy beliefs in terms of research on publication output; and, to identify the relationship of self‐efficacy beliefs about research to the publishing outputs of neophyte lecturers.

A questionnaire was utilised to obtain responses from lecturers working full‐time at two large Australian universities (n=343). The data from this sample were analysed using factor analysis, correlation, and multiple regression analysis. Data from two sub‐samples of neophyte lecturer (n₁=47; n₂=78) were then subjected to a multivariate analysis of variance.

Four research self‐efficacy subscales were derived from a factor analysis. These subscales were positively and significantly related and accounted for 46 percent of the total variance in total publications accrued. Significant differences were found between two groups of neophyte lecturer on nearly all items forming the respective research self‐efficacy subscales. And, group membership accounted for 45.4 percent of the total variance.

The findings have implications both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, the research self‐efficacy construct was shown to have four underlying dimensions and to be highly predictive of a measure of publication output. From a practical perspective, the items forming the research self‐efficacy subscales could be a useful tool to promote discussion about the tasks a lecturer may need to perform during an academic career. Further, the items could be ranked in terms of their discriminative capacity and, as a result, be used as the basis for researcher development and interventions to promote improved research self‐efficacy and therefore increased publication output.

Short-term international mobility has become popular among academics who are seeking new scholarly experiences abroad for a limited period. Short-term international mobility refers to staying abroad for a few days, weeks or months for scholarly work, although there is no specific definition of ‘short’. In this chapter, I describe my experience of a five-month international stay on my first sabbatical. After positioning myself as a researcher on academic mobility and a mobile academic, I describe the international mobile experience from preparing to travel to returning home. Based on personal reflections, the chapter shares the challenges that early-career academics might confront and offers strategies to enjoy meaningful experiences in short-term mobility.

Journals are the essential tools of researchers, especially academicians, to present their scientific findings. So, choosing the right journal helps not only science development but also their academic promotion. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that Iranian medical researchers consider when selecting scholarly journals in which to submit their work.

A self-administered online questionnaire was emailed in May 2021, with 101 responses received. The sample included all the faculty members with the role of “lecturer” in Iranian medical universities and who have 1–5 articles in the Scopus database as early-career Iranian medical researchers. The questionnaire consisted of 36 items, divided into five sections: basic information, attitudes and beliefs, ways to choose a journal, problems and familiarity with the components of scientometrics/validity metrics related to journals.

The findings indicate that these researchers value the expertise of experienced researchers and professionals, like librarians, when selecting publication venues. They often use journal indexes to guide journal selection. They also consider factors like the length of typical peer review and the complexity of submission guidelines when making decisions.

The study of one country, though detecting requirements of journal selection behavior, cannot be generalized to the entire region.

The current study has academic implications as far as decisions on journal selection are concerned. University policymakers in Iran may consider re-examining their emphasis on academicians’ promotion policies at Iranian universities of medical sciences.

These findings may support the work of early-career researchers and those individuals (e.g., librarians) that serve them, as well as publishers and editors of scholarly journals.