Dear Early Career Researcher (ECR),

 

We are postdocs and a reader in the humanities and sciences at the University of Cambridge. We are concerned about the desperate need for publishing reform to increase transparency, reproducibility, timeliness, and academic rigour of the production and dissemination of scholarly outputs (see Young et al. 2016, Smaldino & McElreath 2016). 

 

We have identified actions that institutions and managers can take to better support ECRs (below). These actions are crucial for our success because we are eager to publish openly and at places that keep profits inside academia in accordance with many modern online publication venues (Logan 2017). However, ECRs are often pressured into publishing against their ethics through threats that we would not get a job/grant unless we publish in particular journals (Carter et al. 2014, Who is going to make change happen?, Kent 2016; usually these journals are older and more familiar, have a print version, a high impact factor, and are not 100% open access). These out of date practices and ideas hinder ECRs rather than help us: evidence shows that publishing open access results in increased citations, media attention, and job/funding opportunities (McKiernan et al. 2016). Open dissemination of all research outputs is also a fundamental principle on which ECRs rely to fight the ongoing reproducibility crisis in science and thus improve the quality of their research.

 

To support ECRs in this changing publishing landscape, we encourage funders, universities, departments, and politicians to take the following actions (below) and to announce these actions in public statements. We consider these actions essential for enabling ECRs to do and disseminate our research as we intend it, in an open, modern, and rigorous way. We feel that failure to adequately support ECRs, which are a vulnerable group, will prevent us from delivering outstanding academic outputs and becoming the academic leaders of the future, and thus decrease our nation’s reputation for world-leading research.

 

If you, too, have felt pressured into taking professional actions that are against your ethics, please mark which actions you agree with and join our effort to change academic culture. We will send letters that include the number of ECRs who signed each action (and their names and affiliations, plus some anonymised anecdotes about ECR experiences) to relevant institutions, focusing on UK politicians, universities, and funders, and to the press to generate publicity. Our aim is to instigate institutions into taking actions that are relevant to us to improve academic culture for ECRs. You can stay updated with the progress of this effort and view the letters with the actions and signatories at www.CorinaLogan.com. The actions and their signatories will be available for reference by others who wish to create change in academic culture beyond the UK.

 

Yours faithfully,

Dr Corina Logan

Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge

Dr Laurent Gatto

Senior Research Associate, Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge

Dr Stephen Eglen

Reader, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge

Dr Ross Mounce

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge

Dr Adrian Currie

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge