Early Career Researchers' Quest for Reputation in the Digital Age

Abstract

The purpose of this article is twofold: a) to describe and compare methods of early career researcher (ECR) assessment/appraisal; b) to explain how ECRs build, showcase, and monitor their reputation in an era of novel developments in scholarly communications. In all, 116 ECRs from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, the UK, and the US were questioned about appraisal and reputation in structured in-depth interviews. Desk research supplemented the interview data. It was found that ECRs are assessed very traditionally, largely on journal papers, and cannot (although some would like to) see this state of affairs changing. Mainly, they would prefer that less weight be given to the volume of papers published and more weight given to the quality of their research and its impact on the body of knowledge in their field. Unavoidably, then, ECRs' efforts to build, showcase, and monitor their reputation are still very much associated with research achievements. Nevertheless, online scholarly communities, and ResearchGate in particular, are gaining ground among ECRs, with increase in visibility and citations, and therefore a maximization of research impact, considered to be their main reputational benefits. Metrics are regarded as ‘a rule of the game' that has to be accepted, although ECRs have minimal interest in altmetrics.