Search

The study investigates the attitudes and practices of early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to citation-based metrics and altmetrics, providing the findings in the light of what might be expected of the millennial generation and in the context of what we already know about researchers in today's 'culture of counting' governed scholarly world. The data were gathered by means of an international survey, informed by a preceding, 3-year qualitative study of 120 ECRs from 7 countries, which obtained 1,600 responses. The main conclusions are: (1) citation indicators play a central and multi-purpose role in scholarly communications; (2) altmetrics are not so popular or widely used, but ECRs are waking up to some of their merits, most notably, discovering the extent to which their papers obtain traction and monitoring impact; (3) there is a strong likelihood that ECRs are going to have to grapple with both citation-based metrics and altmetrics, mainly in order to demonstrate research impact; and (4) the Chinese are the most metric using nation, largely because of governmental regulations.

The article describes the targeted admission in the system of higher agricultural education in Russia as an institutional mechanism for the reproduction of the personnel potential of the country’s agro-industrial complex. The problem of reproduction of specialists in the agrarian sector has a deep contradiction and is characteristic not only for Russia or its individual regions, but at the global level. The empirical part of the study was carried out by the method of statistical analysis of data on the quality of targeted admission in the system of higher agricultural education in Russia in 2020. The article contains the characteristic of targeted admission in the system of agricultural education as an institutional mechanism for the reproduction of the personnel potential of the industry: all agricultural universities comply with the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation, carrying out the admission of applicants for targeted training; customers are local authorities, state authorities of the regions, state enterprises; employers are mainly business entities of the agro-industrial complex; for the period 2018-2020 the admission of applicants to targeted training in agricultural universities decreased by 37.4% due to the reduction in the targeted figures for general admission and low interest of applicants; for training programs for highly qualified personnel, the quotas for the study period were filled from 12.5% to 22.5%. Conclusion: the targeted method in the system of higher agricultural education of the Russian Federation as an institutional mechanism does not fulfil the assigned tasks and requires improvement.

This article reports on the findings of an international online survey of early career researchers (ECRs) with regard to their authorship and peer review, attitudes, and practices, which sought to discover how the new wave of researchers were utilizing these key aspects of the scholarly communications system. A questionnaire was developed on the back of a 3‐year longitudinal, qualitative study and was distributed through publisher lists, social media networks, university networks, and specialist ECR membership organizations. Identical English, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and French versions of the questionnaire were used. Results from 1,600 respondents demonstrated that 82.7% had co‐authored a paper, and most had performed a variety of authorship tasks. Almost half the respondents reported being subject to various authorship policies, although a quarter said they were not aware of any such policies. Almost all Chinese ECRs reported being subject to authorship policies, but only a third of UK ECRs reported the same. Three‐quarters of ECRs had experience in responding to peer review, and half had been peer reviewers. Half the respondents had a good experience of review and viewed it as a valuable way to improve their authorship skills. However, there was some criticism of some shortcoming such as lengthy peer review and superficial or uninformed comments by reviewers. Double‐blind review was the preferred methodology, and there were few suggestions for how to improve the review process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]