“It is crucial that some of the best intellects in each generation continue to be attracted to research careers, and are given every opportunity to grow in ambition and creativity,” LERU says. To realise that potential, researchers must be immersed in a research-rich and well-equipped environment, and provided with stimulating local and international connections to other researchers, disciplines and organisations.
They also need to be given independence and responsibility at an early stage.
Given that most researchers are trained in universities, it is vitally important that these institutions provide well-designed, well-funded and well-supported jobs. These must be embedded in clear career structures where pathways from one career phase to the next are clearly signalled, whether they remain in - or venture outside - academia.
LERU draws these conclusions from an investigation of research careers among its members, an association of Europe’s leading research-intensive universities.
As we report the problems that researchers have in moving around Europe stretch beyond the environment in universities, to issues such as portability of pensions, guarantees of rights to healthcare and social security, help for partners who also need to find employment, and opaque national employment laws.
The LERU project has drawn up a four-stage career framework and a set of academic career maps in nine different countries, which graphically demonstrates the maze of researchers must to navigate in building a research career.
LERU says the maps provide information and a transparency that was previously not easily available to researchers and to institutions. It can help both of them to make better informed decisions about individual careers and about institutional strategy.
The work has also resulted in a code of practice for research employment through which LERU institutions say they are showing a shared commitment to provide research staff with optimal working conditions in a stimulating and challenging professional environment.
But as LERU notes, while universities work on these challenges as individual institutions, responsibility for research careers cannot be borne by universities and research institutions alone. “Research funders in the public and private domain, local and EU governments and policy-making bodies each share part of the responsibility,” LERU says. “They must work individually and collectively to ensure that Europe continues to train and attract talented young people into research.”
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