Research Culture Challenges among Early Career Researchers

Early career researchers (ECR) experience challenges particular to their career stage. Defining ECR as those with up to 10 years post-PhD experience, which includes postdoctoral research associates (PDRA) and graduate research students (GRS), this paper identifies some of the key issues that impact ECR based on qualitative research findings. The method used was a questionnaire in which 79 PDRA and 272 GRS from University College Dublin (UCD) responded to open-ended survey questions about research culture improvement, university acknowledgments, and promoting a positive research culture. Additional feedback was obtained from 23 PDRA and 57 GRS through post-survey focus group discussions. The challenges for ECR that were raised most consistently were: precarity, mentoring, and acknowledgement.