Researcher blogs

How can academia improve?

In the previous two sections I explored the reasons why researchers are leaving academia recently and how this is driven by the “publish or perish” mindset. In this final section I want to suggest how all different parties in the academic research ecosystem can start tackling these challenges.

Collective Intelligence: Learn from eachother

While most of these issues discussed apply globally it also feels like every country and institute has a different academic structure and mindset. Some are more hierarchical and/or hypercompetitive than others and have different requirements for career progression and a different career ladder. Even institutes within the same country can have a completely different structure and approach. This goes even further with discrepancies between departments/units/divisions in the same institute, even ones that share the same building! Research is universal and more platforms for administration, management and leadership staff to communicate and implement new changes would be welcome. The challenge here is that every institute and department within a institute competes with each other for funding which discourages collective intelligence and mutual learning. While competition is good in the right amount, constant pressure and hypercompetition is detrimental to research which thrives on collaboration.

Overall, smaller, less prestigious research institutes are much better at supporting research than larger ones. Partially it’s because they cannot rely on their prestige, so they have an incentive to try and the smaller size leads to a more of a community feel.

This is where PhD unions, Postdoctoral unions, associations of research administrators/managers and research leaders generally can make a difference. By comparing, contrasting and figuring out what works, these people can slowly campaign for change within the institutes. Yes, this does mean that the pressure in on them (again) but somehow, the work and enthusiasm have to come from them. Even if it is not recognised in their CV and is more unpaid work.

Teach good habits early with good PhD training

The PhD is the first introduction to research and taking on long term responsibility for research projects. It’s vital that the skills for being a researcher (not just academic) are thoroughly taught and that this can happen in a supportive environment. This is about training good colleagues and collaborators as much as the technical skills too.

A doctoral degree as a qualification should be valuable and transferable. It’s the core training for research and good career development. Since most PhD graduates leave academia, it cannot be focussed on just the academic system (see here for more discussion on PhD education). For the PhD graduates staying in academia, they need to be good future colleagues and need to be aware of how academia operates and the various challenges that they may face. PhDs and Postdocs need to be properly informed about what the academic path entails and if it’s the best career option for them. We can’t responsibly recommend 75% of PhD students in a department pursue a professorship long term as that just isn’t possible and would provide false hope. It’s always a tough conversation but it must be done so that researchers can properly plan their next steps and understand the reality of what academia is like right now. This is where mentoring from more experienced researchers can help.

When we as PhD graduates are planning our career it’s worth looking at your employer with a critical eye. Instead of “Is this the most prestigious place I can be?” we should be asking “Will I be happy here?”,” Will I be supported?”, ”Will I thrive here” and ”Is relocating worth the disruption in my personal life?”.

There are fantastic institutes that really value their researchers and have tackled the challenges discussed here and some that don’t. So as researchers we should be going where we will be happiest, not falling into the prestige trap. Over time this will force larger institutes to support their researchers better.

This is where people who run PhD programs have a responsibility to shape PhD education for the 21^st century. These people are often researchers themselves and need to be campaigning for 21^st century PhD training in their own institutes so that their own graduates are prepared for any career path. Not just the 3% who make it to a permanent position in academia.

Tackle the structures that create publish and perish

“Publish or Perish” is a model from 1955 reinforced by the whole research ecosystem. Publishers, funding bodies and research institutes all contribute in some way to this mindset. Changing that will require a big political capital and many decades.

Publishing research is a central part of not only research but more broadly, disseminating the knowledge that universities produce. Peer review must be central to that process to ensure results are properly and objectively scrutinised. However academic publishing is just another profit driven industry which won’t always prioritise this. To make matters worse, there is virtually no governmental regulations about academic publishing. Publishers can make their own rules, drop peer review and scrutiny entirely and set their own prices.

However, there are signs of change. Recently there has been a large antitrust, class action lawsuit against 6 global academic publishers. The plaintiff (Professor Lucina Uddin from the University of California Los Angeles) claims that these 6 publishing giants have agreed to not pay peer reviewers and set high prices. This could be a one-off court case, or the catalyst that starts real conversation on how academic publishing should work. As long as the publishers are unchallenged and researchers are judged by papers in prestigious journals, its hard to see the status quo changing.

Research institutes need to realise that if researchers feel unsupported and pressured, they will leave. When more researchers vote with their feet and feel that they cannot carry on doing what they love the research institutes will have to adapt or have research positions unfilled. The onus is on them to value researchers as valuable, talented professionals that contribute to society and human understanding. This means providing good support, competitive salaries, a positive environment free of harassment and bullies, and fighting to keep researchers in their institute. Not the cold-hearted hard publication/grant metrics and nothing else matters approach.

Funders also need to realise that they fund this whole cycle and dictate many of the rules. In most cases, they set the bar for postdoc salaries, requirements for open access publishing. Of course, the journals will strongly oppose open access, but the fight is worth taking on. So often the conversation with funding bodies is about “research output” – you put money in, publications/Intellectual property comes out. The PhDs and Postdocs are seen as expendable and the vital research training, they need for their own careers is ignored. Instead, they should change the conversation to training talent, good research culture and talent retention. That way, researchers are better supported and have an incentive to stay in academia.

Publishers have a big role here. They need to realise that the current system massively favours them and that must change for the sake of research globally. That does mean putting science above profit margins which is extremely unlikely to happen without significant external pressure.

As one famous Swede said “No one is too small to make a difference” so researchers at all levels need to advocate for themselves. The large amount of people leaving has shown that people will “vote with their feet”. I think this will be the catalyst for change, but it saddens me to see so much enthusiasm and potential leave with little response from their employers. In reality all of these people need to do something and change and challenging the status quo needs to be done daily.

Influence University/Institute management

Universities are slowly becoming more of a service model that sells experiences instead of being beacons of education and research. The primary goal of universities is to create and disseminate knowledge, other words “do good research and educate people”. But increasingly they have been commercialised to take maximum tuition fees (especially from international students) and offer poor value for money academically, while prioritizing the “university experience” with sports facilities and fun events. So, universities want to entice international students with fantastic photos and social experiences. While on the whole they deliver that promise you also leave universities with a lot of student debt (not in all countries though) that is crippling many people. It takes an average of 20 years to pay off student debt according to one analysis, so that long term investment in your employability and education comes at a significant cost. Employers also want people with university degrees which reinforces this.

Research is affected by this mindset as less money goes towards research and the researchers themselves are valued less. This would be a good time to challenge this. Universities are first and foremost about research and education. That is the central tenet to their foundation. To change this, people in university management need to have a genuine desire to educate and conduct research and not treating higher education as a profit seeking business. However, researchers, managers and other university related employees could also promote this education and research first mindset at their institutions.

Researchers need to be vocal and advocate for change

Ultimately the structure and ecosystem of research needs to change and researchers need to speak up. Researchers are (generally), very forgiving and happy to tolerate abuse and poor working conditions because they love research so much and are afraid to speak out. But they must if they want to see change. Even better, they need to broaden this discussion to the wider public and taxpayers and let people know that the people who contribute to human understanding are working in a broken and exploitative system.

Researchers need to make change within their own institutes. This is hard as they don’t have much free time to dedicate to this and with short term contracts, they can’t do anything that risks their job. However, through representation and interacting with the managerial structure, change can be made.

Value all the work that researchers do

The prestige economy is holding research back and focusses unnecessary on brand recognition rather than the research process. Fortunately, there have been international initiatives for valuing researchers more holistically.  this such as the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). This is an agreement that institutes sign up to and agree to conform on 10 commitments to judge researchers more holistically. This includes valuing all the contributions such as administrative tasks, teaching and mentorship, misuse of publication-based metrics and looking at less obvious positive impacts on research. CoARA is gaining traction as many institutes have signed up, but the real impact and adherence remains an open question.

Other movements have supported narrative CVs where instead of the big grants and papers, researchers can emphasise less visible roles and impacts they have in their day to day work. This would allow researchers to be understood better and recognise important roles such as outreach and public communication, a very important but overlooked part of being an academic (read more about it here). Then there is the hidden REF competition to recognise the “unsung heroes” of research who help with technical expertise or contribute in less visible ways.

The prestige economy is hard to break down. Academia is obsessed with fancy titles and committees which don’t accurately portray your skills or what you are like. This is where academia can learn from others. Value people from their skills and real achievements, not just see “PhD” or “Prof” or “(insert a research institute or journal name here)” and assume that they are genius that can be the best at everything and can’t be questioned.

Other countries are exploring better alternatives to national level research assessments. These achieve the same goal of having a census of the state of research, but don’t quantify and judge as much. Importantly these assessments are less linked to the funding decisions. Perhaps these will become more popular internationally.?

Stop the constant pressure on researchers and support them long term

The common theme here is to allow a stress free and calm environment for researchers to do what they do best, research. Longer contracts and more permanent positions in research would help a lot. This helps in the research process as you have people who can onboard and train new researchers and provide continuity. You can have robust and efficient protocols for lab techniques and know exactly which reagents from which companies are reliable and most efficient. This also allows for research group to dedicate time into creating new protocols and tools to catalyse research, instead of having to publish smaller projects constantly. Some institutes such as Max Plank do give longer contracts but this needs to become the norm to help keep good researchers in the system

It’s this long term stress that I feel wears down researchers until they can give no more. They can never stop, it’s always about the next big paper to keep your job and when you can never take a break, people snap. So instead of always requiring researchers to do tedious and lengthy grant applications, give researchers guaranteed long term financial stability to do good research.

Lack of a central voice

So far nothing there is nothing surprising or original and perhaps everyone agrees. But even if many people agree I feel there is no central voice for academics to make change globally. There are forums like ResearchGate, LinkedIn and many blogs, and major journals have opinion pieces and some longer papers. But rarely is there anything that spans multiple institutes or countries that drives substantial change. A few individuals passionately advocate for change, but the rest of us are too busy, accept it, or have already left for a job outside academia.

Every country and even institute has a different structure and different interpretations on how to manage research. While all the issues mentioned here apply universally, this is a task that require the formal backing of institutes and entire countries and international bodies.

Conclusion

Academia is simply unsustainable and outdated. The problems are complex and will not be solved quickly. Ultimately if people are unhappy, they will leave, even if it means leaving the profession that they love so dearly. However, it is desperately needed to support the thousands of passionate and dedicated researchers striving to progress human knowledge.

As of now in 2024 it’s hard to speculate on this trend of academics leaving and get hard data on it. It could be transient blip and retention in academia may go up again. However, I see this as a major warning that change is needed and if nothing is done, there will be so few researchers in academia that major alarm bells will ring and academia risks not being able to fill their positions and shrinking. I am positive that this will start a conversation stimulate positive change. However, these challenges may take 15-20 years to fully tackle and make sure that change is permanent globally.

I love research and the researchers I have met, I love their enthusiasm, brilliance and hard work they put in. But I cannot stand the lack of respect and the constant inaction from the institutes that conduct, fund and publish it. Researchers are valuable professionals. They create new knowledge for human understanding, lay the groundwork for new technologies and contribute to society in many ways. Yet they do it in a pressure cooker, an environment that pushes people away and scars mnay of those who stay. So many talented and passionate researchers leave and I strongly feel we should not let that happen and learn from our mistakes so that they can continue doing what they love.

Nevertheless, I am optimistic that changes will be made and that enthusiastic researchers can thrive in a more welcome and supportive environment.