What did early career researchers ever do for us?

Until Plan S took everyone’s mind off all topics (perhaps with the exception of Brexit), there was much talk about early career researchers (ECRs) and their relationship with scholarly communications. Were they going to shake everything up? Would they stick to the status quo? Are publishers providing sufficient support and encouragement? Are we building journal brand recognition with these next-generation authors and readers? Are we providing the right tools and technologies to meet their expectations? Do they still have the same allegiance to top-ranked journals as their senior colleagues? Will they be the leaders of change or the followers of fashion? The Harbingers project sought to investigate this subject with its 3-year study of ECRs from around the world, and their findings are summarized in this issue (Nicholas et al., 2019). On the one hand, their findings are a comfort for traditional publishers as the ECRs confirmed their adherence to the established norms: publish in high-impact journals, rely on the traditional metrics, and focus on authorship. However, on the other hand, it is somewhat depressing that – with the exception of more use of social media – they seem to be treading the same path as their predecessors. Whilst they are strongly in favour of open science, open access, and collaboration, it is really only collaboration where there has been notable change during the duration of the project (or, indeed, during the past 20 years). The scholarly publishing environment can truly be described as one in a situation of flux, in which most of the stresses pushing and pulling the existing system come from funders and publishers – and not from the target audience of these publications (readers and authors). The focus of both the funders and publishers (public availability of content and money) appears to be at odds with those of the academics. Whilst academics – of course – want content to be open and free, they (like most people) tend to respond to immediate pressures, and in the current environment, this is publishing in the best journal to reach the best audience and obtain the best career enhancement. The Harbingers report also confirmed that, whilst in favour of OA publishing, early career authors do not actively seek these outlets – frequently relying instead on traditional, highly ranked journals as their targets for publication. Once a researcher is in a senior position and established in their field, there is far greater freedom to challenge the existing systems and to support open publications, but this freedom is not available to more junior academics. This point was well made in the article by Merga, Mason, and Morris (2018), which reported their experiences of publishing in their early careers and the more recent article about the publishing experiences of PhD students (Merga, Mason, & Morris, 2019). They stated that ‘ECRs do typically have a strategy, but in essence, this simply involves publishing the highest quantity of journal articles in the best quality journals as possible’. They describe the lack of knowledge (or naivety) of ECRs and PhD students. Whilst the system of publishing is generally well understood, the more subtle nuances of how the system works are only gained through experience. The result of this is both greater publishing stress and making mistakes (e.g. capitulating to bullying reviewers or selecting the wrong journals). If an ECR is attempting to navigate this complexity, how much time do they have to challenge the traditional models of journals? Instead of worrying about the larger publishing environment, research from Editage demonstrates that more mundane concerns are the focus of most researchers. Their large survey of authors indicated that the top five concerns of authors are publication delay, poor quality peer review and processes, high publication costs, complex journal systems and guidelines, and (finally) insufficient adoption of open access. Whilst the last item chimes in well with the funder concerns, the proposals for OA will only exacerbate the problem over publication cost (Editage, 2019), especially for researchers in less-well-supported institutions or regions (Poynder, 2019).