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Explores science and social science early career researchers’ (ECRs) perceptions and experiences of peer review, seeking also to identify their views of any pandemic-associated changes that have taken place. Data are drawn from the Harbingers-2 project, which investigated the impact of the pandemic on scholarly communications. Peer review, one of the activities covered, is singled out as it proved to be the activity of greatest concern to ECRs. Findings are obtained from interviews, which covered around 167 ECRs from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Spain, UK and US, supplemented by an international survey that took the data out to a bigger and wider audience for confirmation and generalisation. Results obtained are enhanced by comparisons with pre-pandemic evidence yielded by Harbingers-1, the forerunner of the present study, and anchored in an extensive review of the literature. Main findings are: 1) most ECRs were experienced in peer review, both as reviewers and authors, but few had formal training; 2) half the ECRs had a lot or some reservations as to whether peer review vouches for the trustworthiness of research; 3) inadequate reviewers and slow processes were the main peer review associated problems; 4) there was a strong feeling that some kind of compensation, whether monetary or reputational, could help in dealing with these problems; 5) the pandemic impacted most on the speed of processing, with the majority of ECRs saying it had slowed the process; 6) nearly everyone thought that any pandemic-induced impacts would be temporary.

Around 170 early career researchers (ECRs) from 8 countries were interviewed about the whole range of their scholarly communication attitudes/behaviours during pandemic times and this paper analyses what they said about predatory journals in a wide range of scholarly communication contexts. Because of the delicacy of the topic there was just one question exclusively directed at predatory journals, which asked about policies rather than actions, which yielded nevertheless wide-ranging comments on the topic. ECRs also volunteered information on predatory journals in another half dozen questions, most notably including one on questionable research practices. The source of data was mainly the final interview of three undertaken, with some comparisons made to rounds one and two. Findings disclose the existence of a whole raft of formal and informal assessment policies/coded that direct ECRs to legitimate journals and away from predatory ones. Despite being junior, ECRs are very accultured to the criteria of what is considered as prestige and quality and believe predatory publishing is not even conceivable. They are far more concerned about low-quality research, preprints and borderline ‘grey’ journals. The pandemic has increased the level of questionable practices and low-quality research, but predatory journals were only singled out by a relatively small number of ECRs.

After two-years of talking to around 170 early career science/social science researchers from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Spain, UK and US about their work life and scholarly communications during the pandemic, the Harbingers-2 project is in possession of a mountain of verbatim data. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the kinds of comments ECRs are raising, with a focus on those that provide a particular interesting and illuminating take on ECRs’ experiences under difficult times. Comments, for instance, that might challenge the established order of things or that presage big changes down the line. The selection of comments presented here were made by the national interviewers shortly after the completion of the last of three rounds of interviews (two interviews in the case of Russia). The understandings, appreciations and suggestions thus raised by the ECRs are insightful and constructive, which is what we might have expected from this cohort who are very much at the forefront of the research enterprise and veritable research workhorses. Sixteen broad scholarly topics are represented by quotes/comments, with the main focus of the comments on a subset of these: research performance and assessment, scholarly communication transformations, networking and collaboration, social media and access to information/libraries, which suggests, perhaps, where the action, concerns and interest mainly lie.

The paper draws on evidence of predatory publishing obtained from the 4 year-long Harbingers research study of the changing scholarly communication attitudes and behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs). The project featured longitudinal interviews for its first 3 years with 116 ECRs researching science and social sciences who came from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, UK and USA. The interview data provided the building blocks for a questionnaire survey in the 4th year, which obtained 1600 responses from a global audience, which included arts and humanities ECRs and those from Russia. These studies investigated predatory publishing as part of general questioning about scholarly communications, in other words, in context. The main finding from the interview study were: 1) ECRs generally do not publish in predatory journals; 2) they only allude to them lightly and mainly in the context of open access publishing; 3) they no longer acquaint all open access publishing with predatory journals. The questionnaire found that, as in the case of the interviews, complaints that open access is low quality publishing are diminishing, however, this positivity has been partly offset by increased concerns about the dangers of predatory journals.