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The study focuses on academic career attrition in the context of neoliberal academia and science policies emphasizing the need for excellence and social responsibility in academic production. The goal is to understand the relation between the development of academic identity and attrition among those who have left the academic path up to five years after PhD completion, with acknowledgement of the effect that academic identity has on academic career ambitions. Based on 28 narrative interviews with former academics from various research fields, we identified four trajectories of academic identity development (one of stable academic identity and three of lost academic identity), four narratives of attrition (disillusionment, a search for new purpose, refusal to sacrifice personal life and academic inadequacy) that explain these trajectories, and three ideals of “proper academic” (humanist, leader, absolute academic) that are reflected in these narratives. We conclude that the academic environment creates an academic identity paradox in which not only the loss of or obstacles to developing an academic identity but also its strength and stability can weaken academic career ambitions and contribute to attrition because of the need to perform only excellent academic work. The paradox seems to relate to the high-performance culture of neoliberal academia and to the specific gender aspects of the STEM field because it appeared to function differently in regard to discipline and gender. We show that neoliberal academia, despite the ideals of current science policies, loses academics caring for these ideals in STEM fields, especially women.

The paper develops the metaphorical concept of the \"concertina\" career to describe ways in which academic staff, across a diversifying workforce, modulate their interactions with institutional career frameworks, which tend to be unilinear and to be characterised by detailed progression criteria and milestones. In doing this, they are guided by Internal career scripts, providing an additional dimension to the dichotomy of boundaried and boundaryless careers found in the literature. Drawing on a longitudinal study between 2017 and 2020, of forty-nine mid-career academic staff across eight UK universities, consideration is given to individuals' spatial movements, for instance, between academic activities, and professional and personal commitments; and the manipulation of timescales to accelerate or decelerate career progress in relation to opportunities and constraints. The study shows ways in which the spatial parameters of a career are being stretched in order to accommodate new forms of academic work supplementing disciplinary activity, such as online learning, employability initiatives and public engagement, as well as work-life considerations. In addition, individuals are adapting timescales to accommodate professional activities such as health practice or community outreach, as well as personal commitments such as caring responsibilities. Thus, in the concertina career, individuals expand and contract activity, as well as extending and compressing timescales. As a result, it is concluded that institutional career models do not entirely reflect the reality of career-making by individuals, which is likely to involve detours (therefore a spatial dimension) and a disruption of assumed timelines (therefore a temporal dimension). (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

This paper employs the notion of a \"career script\" as a conceptual basis to examine how age-based academic career norms are internalized, strategized, and reproduced among PhD students aspiring to become academics. It draws on interviews with 70 PhD students at leading universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau that were organized and explored using narrative inquiry. The findings suggest that the tournament-like, age-based career scripts are primarily shaped by institutional policies on recruitment and funding applications and reinforced through social interactions. Doctoral students internalize the established criteria for success defined by the career scripts and stigmatize those who lag behind in the attainment of institutionally predetermined milestones, thus discouraging any attempt to rescript career norms. While enacting successful career scripts, students experience age and temporal anxiety at a fairly young age, exacerbating ageism in the academic labor market. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

BACKGROUND Within the literature, there has been limited research tracking the career trajectories of international medical graduates (IMGs) following residency training. OBJECTIVE To compare the characteristics of IMG and US medical school graduate (USMG) neurosurgeons holding academic positions in the United States and also analyze factors that influence IMG career trajectories following US-based residency training. METHODS We collected data on 243 IMGs and 2506 USMGs who graduated from Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited neurosurgery residency programs. We assessed for significant differences between cohorts, and a logistic regression model was used for the outcome of academic career trajectory. RESULTS Among the 2749 neurosurgeons in our study, IMGs were more likely to pursue academic neurosurgery careers relative to USMGs (59.7% vs 51.1%; P = .011) and were also more likely to complete a research fellowship before beginning residency (odds ratio [OR] = 9.19; P < .0001). Among current US academic neurosurgeons, USMGs had significantly higher pre-residency h-indices relative to IMGs (1.23 vs 1.01; P < .0001) with no significant differences between cohorts when comparing h-indices during (USMG = 5.02, IMG = 4.80; P = .67) or after (USMG = 14.05, IMG = 13.90; P = .72) residency. Completion of a post-residency clinical fellowship was the only factor independently associated with an academic career trajectory among IMGs (OR = 1.73, P = .046). CONCLUSION Our study suggests that while IMGs begin their US residency training with different research backgrounds and achievements relative to USMG counterparts, they attain similar levels of academic productivity following residency. Furthermore, IMGs are more likely to pursue academic careers relative to USMGs. Our work may be useful for better understanding IMG career trajectories following US-based neurosurgery residency training.

This longitudinal study explores persistence in research productivity at the individual level over academic lifetime: can highly productive scientists maintain relatively high levels of productivity. We examined academic careers of 2326 Polish full professors, including their lifetime biographical and publication histories. We studied their promotions and publications between promotions (79,027 articles) over a 40-year period across 14 science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) disciplines. We used prestige-normalized productivity in which more weight is given to articles in high-impact than in low-impact journals, recognizing the highly stratified nature of academic science. Our results show that half of the top productive assistant professors continued as top productive associate professors, and half of the top productive associate professors continued as top productive full professors (52.6% and 50.8%). Top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top transitions in productivity classes occurred only marginally. In logistic regression models, two powerful predictors of belonging to the top productivity class for full professors were being highly productive as assistant professors and as associate professors (increasing the odds, on average, by 179% and 361%). Neither gender nor age (biological or academic) emerged as statistically significant. Our findings have important implications for hiring policies: hiring high- and low-productivity scientists may have long-standing consequences for institutions and national science systems as academic scientists usually remain in the system for decades. The Observatory of Polish Science (100,000 scientists, 380,000 publications) and Scopus metadata on 935,167 Polish articles were used, showing the power of combining biographical registry data with structured Big Data in academic profession studies. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

In educational research, there has been much stricture of neoliberalism as a scourge. In the higher education sector, the neoliberal turn has been observed as eroding academic freedom and deprofessionalising academics. Early career academics are often described as victims of neoliberalism. In this paper, we take a positive perspective through a deep dive into resilience that enables self-transformation and, potentially, system change. Our paper is situated in the Chinese higher education context where the “up-or-out” system has been put in place, mirroring the neoliberal university at a global range. We — a mid-career researcher and an early career academic — analyse our collective narratives generated through WeChat text and voice message. Drawing insight from Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology, our narratives lead to four themes: capital accumulation and self-transformation, shaping the publication habitus, emancipation from symbolic violence, and resilience to symbolic domination. We conclude the paper with a call for sociology of resilience and recommendations for deneoliberalising higher education.

This paper develops a conceptual model of PhD supervisors’ abuse and exploitation of their students and the outcomes of that abuse. Based on the literature about destructive leadership and the “dark side” of supervision, we theorize about why and how PhD student abuse and exploitation may occur. We offer a novel contribution to the literature by identifying the process through which PhD students experience supervisory abuse and exploitation, the various factors influencing this process, and its outcomes. The proposed model presents the Dark Triad, perceptions of goal blockage, and perceptions of ethical culture as potential characteristics of the PhD supervisor and implies the mediation of the perceptions of power and politics in the relationship between the Dark Triad and student abuse and exploitation. Institutional policies and practices concerning doctoral students and their characteristics are proposed as moderators in such a relationship. Finally, the model suggests that student abuse and exploitation may hinder or even end students’ academic careers. The manuscript discusses the theoretical and practical contributions and managerial implications of the proposed model and recommends further exploration of the dark sides of academia.

The competitive nature of academia has led to the establishment of rigorous criteria by decision-makers for evaluating researchers’ performances. Title and tenure systems have been implemented based on these specific criteria. This study aims to examine how these criteria are fulfilled, identify which groups of researchers are required to meet these performance indicators, and assess the extent to which they do so. Data were collected from 98 academics in the field of library and information science via the Web of Science and the main academic platform of the Council of Higher Education, Turkey. A total of 1641 articles and 999 books or book chapters were subjected to analysis. The findings suggest that early-career researchers are disproportionately compelled to adhere to the “publish or perish” paradigm and are expected to meet higher performance expectations. When normalized for years of experience, the results indicate that professors exhibit the lowest publication output, while faculty members with a Ph.D. who hold the title of Associate Professor demonstrate the highest output. While this study primarily focuses on comparing the fulfillment of criteria between decision-makers and early-career researchers, future research will explore the observed inflation in book and book chapter publications within the same field.

The proliferation of questionable publishing practices has raised serious concerns in academia, prompting numerous discussions and investigations into the motivations behind researchers’ preference for such journals. In this study, we aimed to explore the impact of current academic performance evaluation systems on scholars’ questionable journal preferences in Turkey. Utilizing data from the comprehensive study conducted by Kulczycki et al. (2021) on questionable journals, we analyzed the academic careers of 398 researchers who authored 417 articles in this context. Our findings reveal a clear association between current research evaluation systems and journal selection, particularly during the process of applying for associate professorship. Notably, 96% of the articles published in questionable journals were listed in scholars’ academic profiles, indicating their use in academic promotion or incentive portfolios. While this study contributes valuable insights into the relationship between academic performance evaluation systems and questionable journal preferences, additional research is required to comprehensively understand the motivations behind scholars’ publishing choices and to devise effective strategies to combat questionable publishing practices in academia.

Despite limited opportunities for tenured academic positions, the number of PhD graduates in Social Sciences has steadily risen in countries with developed research systems. The current literature predominantly portrays PhD graduates as victims, either of the higher education system or of their own optimism in pursuing an academic career. This paper takes an alternative stance by spotlighting the agency exhibited by PhD graduates in Social Sciences as they deftly navigate their career pathways amid the constrained academic job market. Specifically, we adopt an ecological perspective of agency to explore how PhD graduates in Social Sciences exercise their agency in navigating their career from the beginning of their PhD candidature until up to 5 years after graduation. We employ a narrative approach to delve into the employment journeys of twenty-three PhD graduates. Within this cohort, we select to report four participants from four Australian universities, each possessing distinct career trajectories. Our analysis highlights agency as the link between various personal and institutional factors that shape our participants' career trajectories. Based on this finding, we offer recommendations for practice and policy changes that appreciate PhD graduates' agency. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).