INTRODUCTION
Academia is a highly competitive world on its own with many hidden rules that can be confusing for young researchers1. Beyond formal training and the skills learnt in the course of their education, young researchers could benefit from further guidance on how to enhance their way to success. Indeed, literature supports that the majority of young researchers start a career in science with limited knowledge on how to confront the expectations and challenges awaiting them2. Apart from the core requirements such as specific knowledge and research skills, several other factors are important to boost a successful research career.
A study about life in academia revealed that among the main challenges that postdoctoral researchers faced were: work–life balance, securing grant funding, and a competitive job market3. Considering that young researchers are particularly vulnerable for developing mental illnesses4-6 due to the nature of their occupation and their reduced ability to cope, the provision of advice/suggestions based on the collective experience of other senior and junior researchers with practical knowledge in the field could serve as a valuable tool. Especially young medical researchers, worldwide, often face several challenges in the early stages of their career, as formal acquisition of research skills in academic settings do not always offer sufficient guidance to tackle these obstacles2. In particular, a study among young medical researchers stressed the high levels of burnout, anxiety and depression in this vulnerable population4, due to lack of funds, short deadlines, competitive work environment and career challenges2,4.
Like many aspects of a person’s life, research can also be enhanced by heeding the advice of others. Although some suggestions may seem obvious to senior scientists, for young researchers – especially those with limited access to good mentors – it is unknown territory1. The summarized guidelines can accelerate young researchers’ performance to achieve the maximum of their potential while at the same time help them with their work-related anxiety and stress.
An appraisal of the current literature revealed that little guidance has been provided for novice researchers. To the best of our knowledge this is the first systematic review that has endeavored to synthesize career recommendations for junior researchers resulting in a comprehensive set of tips, applicable to a broad range of scientific fields. The main aim of this article is to enhance the efforts of young researchers by providing valuable recommendations on how to develop a successful scientific career and avoid some common, but not obvious, pitfalls during their early research steps.
METHODS
Literature search
A systematic literature review was performed in the PubMed database. Auto-alerts in Medline were also run during the course of the review, while reference lists of relevant articles were also checked. Two independent reviewers screened all articles, first by title, then by abstract and lastly full-text articles according to relevance. Disagreement was resolved by discussion, and where no agreement was reached, a third independent party acted as an arbiter. A core body algorithm and additional sub-algorithms (using alternatives and additional key words) were applied and critically appraised as described below.
Search algorithm
The core algorithm used (Supplementary file Table 1) in the study was: {(tips[Title] OR tip[Title] OR advice[Title] OR help[Title] OR guiding[Title] OR guidelines[Title] OR guideline[Title] OR assisting[Title] OR recommendations[Title] OR recommendation[Title] OR suggestions[Title] OR suggestion[Title] OR lessons[Title] OR mentoring[Title])} AND {(new researchers[Title] OR (new[All Fields] AND researcher[Title]) OR early career researchers[Title] OR early career researcher[Title] OR young researchers[Title] OR young researcher[Title] OR junior researchers[Title] OR junior researcher[Title] OR research career[Title] OR novice researchers[Title] OR novice researcher[Title] OR new scientists[Title] OR (new[All Fields]} AND {scientist[Title]) OR early career scientists[Title] OR early career scientist[Title] OR young scientists[Title] OR young scientist[Title] OR junior scientists[Title] OR junior scientist[Title] OR scientific career[Title] OR novice scientists[Title] OR novice scientist[Title])}.
Table 1
Data synthesis
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Three inclusion and exclusion criteria were adopted, as noted in Supplementary file Table 2. All articles written in English language, irrespective of the type, and that clearly provided advice that could be easily derived from the text, were included. Biographical articles that described authors own experiences/lessons learnt without giving specific advice, and articles with tips on very specific areas of a scientific field or regarding particular sectors (e.g. job search, award writing) that could not be generalized, were excluded from the analysis.
Table 2
Funding and research proposal writing
Data extraction and synthesis
The study selection process is outlined in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) flow diagram (Figure 1). In total, 62 published articles emerged from the search algorithm in PubMed. Furthermore, 1 article was added according to the snowballing approach. Overall, 63 articles were screened. Initially, 1 article was excluded due to duplication. A total of 13 studies were excluded from the title (4 due to not being written in English and 9 not being relevant). Additionally, 13 studies were excluded upon reading the abstract as they were not relevant; 36 articles were fully read upon reviewing the title and abstract of which 17 were rejected as they did not directly meet the criteria of the investigation. In total, 19 articles were included and utilized for the main findings of the study. The numerous valuable tips that emerged from the included articles (n=208) were then categorized into five broad thematic groups.
RESULTS
Nineteen articles were included in the analysis. Only two articles were published before 2000, one in 19967 and one in 19998, while another five studies were published between 2000 and 20109-13. Eight studies included in the review were published between 2011 and 20151,2,14-19. The last 4 articles were published between 2016 and 202020-23. Table 1 summarizes the data synthesis of each article, including, publication information, its main focus, type of evidence (opinion-based, empirical, evidence-based) and authors’ research career level (senior or junior researcher). Recommendations in Table 2 aimed to enhance grant proposal writing skills and guide new researchers on how to successfully obtain funds to carry out their research.
Table 3 focuses on tips regarding the ‘human element’ including how to facilitate collaborations, build professional networks and choose the right mentor. Advice in Table 4 is intended to help young researchers make themselves more visible in the scientific world by starting early to practice their writing skills and encouraging them to present their study findings by any means possible. Table 5 recommendations aim to help young researchers with writing and publishing articles by providing advice in several crucial areas such as which journal to target, how to prepare the manuscript and what ethical requirements need to be addressed. Finally, Table 6 gives a broader spectrum of useful tips for young researchers to flourish both personally and professionally.
Table 3
Mentorship, networking and collaboration
Table 4
Enhancing visibility as a researcher
Table 5
Writing and publishing a journal article
| Writing and publishing a journal article | Mentioned by |
|---|---|
| Apart from informing others, publishing papers benefits in building a good curriculum vitae. In addition, seeing your work in print is a very rewarding experience, and your head of department will be delighted to have an extra paper for the next research assessment. | Thompson 2013 |
| Get into the habit of writing papers as soon as you have accumulated enough material; it is easier to publish a short, concise paper than a long and grand magnum opus. | Thompson 2013 |
| While writing a paper, carefully check the materials. Write it up in a precise and readable way and generally try to become very familiar with it. | Thompson 2013 |
| Make sure your article is well-written. Read the author guidelines to ensure that style and format meet the journal's requirements. | Glover et al. 2016 Collins et al. 2015 |
| Be accurate. You are not only reporting what you did but also teaching your readers how to do it. This may be too much to ask of young researchers, but it's worth a try. | Thompson 2013 |
| Define your aim and research questions clearly. Confirm the feasibility of the idea by considering the FINER acronym: Is it 'Feasible, Interesting, Novel, Ethical, and Relevant’? | Cherry et al. 2012 Brannan et al. 2013 |
| Review the literature; identify a literature gap that the research will address and establish a framework and justification for a proposed study. | Brannan et al. 2013 |
| Set the objectives and hypotheses. The objective can be one or multiple statements and can be in the form of an overall objective, specific objectives, or both. | Brannan et al. 2013 |
| Use the research questions to inform study design. Construct a detailed description of how the research will be implemented including: study population, setting, sample size, research design, variables, data collection procedure, statistical tests, and statistical analysis. Methods of data collection must be standardized. | Cherry et al. 2012 Brannan et al. 2013 |
| When presenting a very new method give a detailed bulleted prescription in a later section or in an appendix where the steps are summarized one by one. | Thompson 2013 |
| Take a step back to see your research clearly. | Cherry et al. 2012 |
| Hardly anyone will read a paper from the beginning to the end. A normal busy scientist will look at the abstract, possibly the introduction, and then the conclusions; and is likely to look the figures. This must influence the way you write and organize your material. | Thompson 2013 |
| Have a comprehensive caption for each figure in which all the symbols/abbreviations are given their full name and the meaning of the graphs and diagrams is clearly explained. Do not introduce new notation just to be different. | Thompson 2013 |
| Draw good figures - get as much information as possible onto the screen. This may mean sacrificing artistic elegance by packing things together fairly tightly. | Thompson 2013 |
| Many journals require that IRB approval is received before the research is conducted. | Brannan et al. 2013 |
| If you use someone else's results in your paper, always cite them fully and unambiguously, making clear what parts of your paper are taken from theirs. | Thompson 2013 |
| Ethical research conduct is of utmost importance to science. Plagiarism is a serious ethical misconduct. | Collins et al. 2015 |
| Another unethical practice is using ghostwriters and honorary authors. | Brannan et al. 2013 |
| Understand how a contribution to a study is ranked. Author order is determined by how much each author contributed to the study. | Brannan et al. 2013 |
| Besides writing your own papers as a first author, publications can be achieved by getting others on board as co-authors. Primary publications and co-authorships need to be balanced: young researchers need to show that are productive and can write papers. | Peters 2014 |
| Don't publish repetitive work or publish your work piecemeal to get more publications. Nevertheless, putting too many topics in one long paper can make it opaque. | Thompson 2013 |
| If you wish your work to be remembered, publish it in a reputable journal. | Thompson 2013 |
| Researchers are strongly encouraged to submit to peer-reviewed journals. In some disciplines, high impact factor journals have high rejection rates. Even if an article is rejected, a novice researcher may benefit from the external reviewers’ comments. | Brannan et al. 2013 Glover et al. 2016 |
| Studies published in journals with too low impact factor may not be considered 'good' and could lead to lower evaluations by job search committees or funding agencies. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| To identify a target journal, consult its website to review the following considerations: aim and scope, target audience, authorship requirements, impact factor, cost. | Collins et al. 2015 |
| Online journal selection tools can be valuable to use for an automated assessment of what potential journals fit your work. | O’Carroll et al. 2020 |
| Make sure that the scope of the potential journal matches your paper. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| One helpful technique for choosing the right journal: check in which journals your cited references have been published in. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Consider the decision time of target journals, especially if you are under time pressure. Take journals information on decision and publication speed with a grain of salt. Consult your peers to get a more realistic estimate of start to finish (see also https://www.scirev.sc). Refer also to https://www.journalguide.com for decision and publication speeds. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Preprints are scientific articles that are not yet peer reviewed, but published online. Preprints get your work out to the scientific community as soon as possible. Furthermore, you can often first preprint, then publish in a traditional journal. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Many journals offer Open Access (OA) options. Take advantage of OA benefits while at the same time publishing in a highly-regarded journal. OA journals potentially accrue more citations due to their wider availability, which will ultimately increase your H-index. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| OA journals are establishing themselves as high-quality research outlets and their reputations have significantly improved in recent years. If you've dismissed them in the past, it may be time to reconsider them. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| OA journals acceptance rate is generally higher. Be aware though of OA publishing outlets with no adequate peer review system for quality control. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Suggestions and questions by reviewers, once addressed, should increase the value of your work. Systematically address each of the reviewer concerns in a polite manner. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Put yourself in the position of the editor/reviewer. Re-read your work and objectively. Generally, an effective strategy is to go point-by-point through the reviewer comments and either make the suggested changes or politely explain and clarify your disagreement. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Be prepared for discrepancies between reviewers' opinions and for diverging suggestions for manuscript improvement. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| When you have spent plenty of time creating something it is extremely difficult not to take criticism personally. Keep in mind that the function of peer review is not only to correct possible mistakes but to improve the quality of your work. Reviewers help authors. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Do not be overly angered by unfavorable reviews. Examine the review carefully to decide whether the reviewer was unequipped or your presentation wasn't clear enough. It is better to rewrite your article than to argue with the reviewer. | Thompson 2013 |
| Realize that the editor has always the final word. If you feel like the reviewers were unjust or misunderstood your work, make your case to the editor. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| As the first contact between you and the editor, a thought-out cover letter is crucial. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Be realistic with the quality of your research. Lean toward modesty but it is critical to highlight its novelty and importance in the article and cover letter to get published. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Review process can be unusually long. If the decision is delayed longer than promised at submission, do not hesitate to send a friendly inquiry email to the managing editor. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| Do not forget the random component. Due to unforeseen/subjective factors, you still might need a bit of luck to get accepted. | Glover et al. 2016 |
| If you publish a grievous error, don’t try to cover it up or persist in it out of pride. Publish an erratum or give notice of the error and correct it in a succeeding publication. | Thompson 2013 |
Table 6
Personal and professional development
DISCUSSION
Numerous articles in the literature have highlighted the various obstacles and difficulties that young scientists face while pursuing a research career, either within academia or outside it1-3,12,24. Among them, applying for fellowships and grants1-3,7,11, publishing and disseminating research results8,18,20,25, complying with research ethical requirements18,24,26, and developing successful interpersonal relationships both inside and outside the work environment1,20,27, are frequently mentioned. The above issues, along with many other aspects of launching a research career, were multifacetedly approached in this review by a number of recommendations drawn from several publications in order to secure a comprehensive and holistic approach on each theme.
Funding and research proposal writing
Among the biggest thresholds that young researchers have to face is obtaining sufficient funds to carry out their research. This is a real struggle as competition for grants is becoming more difficult, especially during the last decade, as many countries around the world face financial and economic crises. Limited budgets have resulted in more than just restricted research; they are damaging morale by making scientists afraid to take risks, when it is more important than ever to invest in innovative research28. It is obvious that learning how to apply for funds is one of the researcher’s most important skills, but it is also not well-addressed in university formal educational programs7. This review offers a number of practical tips regarding how to successfully write a research proposal in order to obtain research grants that could help young researchers kick-start their first funded project and advance their career.
Mentorship, networking and collaboration
It goes without saying that research is a collective effort that requires teamwork and collaboration. A researcher’s productivity has been strongly linked to both collaboration strategy and the number of collaborators20. Studies have shown that researchers who act collaboratively present enhanced number of published peer-reviewed journal articles29 and that collaborative studies result in more highly cited publications30. Furthermore, the importance of a great mentor must not be neglected. A good mentor can be very helpful in many aspects of a young researcher’s career development1. Therefore, building collaboration networks and forming strong partnerships along with the ability to recognize and choose a great mentor, have been included amongst the advice presented in this review directed to young researchers.
Enhancing visibility as a researcher
Successful publication is essential for scientists in order to disseminate their research findings and communicate insights to a broad audience20. This can be usually achieved through writing a journal article or presenting a study at a scientific conference. Especially for young researchers, publishing is important because it is the fundamental metric of career progress evaluation31. Nevertheless, literature has identified a number of commonly mentioned obstacles to publishing (e.g. lack of time and/or support, limited knowledge of the publication process, or fear of rejection and criticism)8. The relevant advice summarized, aim to advance young researchers’ publication rate and dissemination by encouraging them to invest in their writing skills and to boost their confidence with regard to making themselves and their research visible to the scientific community. Besides, the research process is considered lacking without dissemination of findings to peers’ audience18.
Writing and publishing a journal article
The ultimate aim of almost every research is to publish its findings, ideally in a peer-reviewed journal. Nevertheless, for many people switching from research to writing may be difficult18. It is essential for new researchers to familiarize themselves with journal manuscript requirements while at the same time exploring the publishing landscape and becoming accustomed to the ethical requirements. Insufficiency in scientific writing skills may lead to rejections that can have an adverse impact on the pursuit of an academic career or a position promotion25. Also, submitting research to an unsuitable journal can result in a lot of time wasted and unnecessary effort20, a fact that many young researchers ignore or choose to neglect in their first steps. In addition, young researchers often unknowingly violate research ethics such as proper publication process26. This review provides young researchers with a set of recommendations on how to select the appropriate journal for publishing their research, how to best handle ethical issues to prevent publication misconduct and which common pitfalls to avoid while preparing their manuscript to increase their chances of achieving publication acceptance.
Personal and professional development
Apart from doing great science, it is important for early career scientists to pay attention to some recommendations about their career and life21. Science will always be important for a devoted researcher but many other aspects of life such as personal development can also be rewarding. Evolving into a successful researcher requires being proactive; development of technical skills and specialization within a field are core aspects along with the right education, preparation and initiative12. In addition, personal components such as one’s energy, ability to preserve and critically analyze/reason along with the ability to respect the truth are important attributes that can lead to a successful scientific career27. In this section, a broad range of tips for both personal and professional growth are presented addressing multiple aspects of a young researcher’s life to enhance personal and professional development.
Finally, we would like to stress that science, like life, is evolving. That is also what the recent pandemic has taught us. A publication32 that emerged from the search algorithm but was excluded due to the focus of the recommendations on a particular circumstance (the COVID-19 pandemic) has some interesting insights to offer to early career researchers who may not have secure academic positions or funding. Key recommendations related to research (e.g. methodological considerations, ethical implications) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic are provided. Some are:
Mobilize new web-based/digital data collection tools and techniques that accommodate the constraints of the pandemic and ensure that digital data collection methods uphold high levels of personal data protection; and
During the pandemic, build new skills or shift focus to other areas of research projects (e.g. writing articles, reviewing manuscripts)32.
Briefly, it is of high importance to support young researchers in the development of their career to facilitate their transition to being highly effective and independent scientists33. The valuable knowledge and experience of senior and junior researchers in the form of recommendations that were presented in this review can serve as a valuable guide to all young scientists pursuing a research career, independent of field of expertise. If followed, these strategic steps could increase productivity and enhance motivation of young researchers. The necessity of this collective knowledge emerged both from the gap of such a brief synoptic overview in the literature, along with the authors’ personal interest as young researchers in seeking expert advice to advance their careers.
Strengths and limitations
Among the major strengths of this study is the novelty of the idea, as to the best of our knowledge this is the first systematic review to summarize existing recommendations for young researchers. In addition, a comprehensive search strategy was developed utilizing a robust and versatile algorithm, while two independent reviewers were involved at each stage of the review process. Furthermore, the provided tables are a valuable and easy to read tool that can serve as a quick guide for many young researchers working in a broad range of scientific fields.
Nevertheless, the limitations of this systematic review should also be acknowledged. Its main disadvantage is that it was performed in one database (PubMed). In addition, restricting studies that were published only in English may have excluded relevant studies published in other languages.
CONCLUSIONS
Young researchers are confronted by numerous challenges in the pursuit of their scientific career that can be personally draining. It is essential for young scientists to be aware that building a successful career path in research requires a number of strategic steps and careful planning along the way. The present systematic review offers a useful tool to encourage and support young people entering the field of research by summarizing valuable recommendations, published in the last 30 years, based on the collective experiences of other senior and junior researchers. The readers will need to select the recommendations that are most appropriate for advancing their own research career.
