To study the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the scholarly communication practices of early career researchers around the world

In early 2020, Carol Tenopir (University of Tennessee) and Dave Nicholas (CIBER) completed a four-year longitudinal study of early career researcher (ECR) practices across the natural and social sciences. Drawing on more than 350 hours of interviews with 100 early career researchers in China, France, Poland, Malaysia, Spain, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S., the findings ranged from the expected to the surprising: for instance, young researchers were nearly universally indifferent to using altmetrics to measure scholarly impact, and they showed little interest in publishing in Open Access journals, despite widespread dissatisfaction with existing academic regimes of publication and promotion. Funds from this grant will support the extension of Tenopir and Nicholas's work, with an emphasis on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the research and communications practices of young researchers around the globe.