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The Harbingers study of early career researchers (ECRs), their work life and scholarly communications, began by studying generational—Millennial—change (c.2016), then moved to pandemic change (c.2020) and is now investigating another potential agent of change: artificial intelligence (2024–). We report here on a substantial scoping pilot study that looks at the impact of AI on the scholarly communications of international ECRs and, extends this to the arts and humanities. It aims to fill the knowledge gap concerning ECRs whose millennial mindset may render them especially open to change and, as the research workhorses they are, very much in the frontline. The data was collected via in‐depth interviews in China, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Spain and (selectively) the United Kingdom/United States. The data show ECRs to be thinking, probing and, in some cases, experimenting with AI. There was a general acceptance that AI will be responsible for the growth of low‐quality scientific papers, which could lead to a decline in the quality of research. Scholarly integrity and ethics were a big concern with issues of authenticity, plagiarism, copyright and poor citation practices raised. The most widespread belief was AI would prove to be a transformative force and would exacerbate existing scholarly disparities and inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID pandemic, some commentators thought that early career researchers (ECRs) would become a 'lost generation'. Yet the Harbingers (H‐2) longitudinal study, which followed ECRs for 2 years during the pandemic found that ECRs took things in their stride. More than 2 years on, we returned, as part of the AI stage of the Harbingers study (H‐3), to see what has transpired and interviewed nearly 70 ECRs from six countries as part of an exploratory study. We found that: (1) only one in six ECRS thought they were suffering from the residual impacts of the pandemic, with increased workload creating the greatest stress; (2) working remotely, digitally and more flexibly was thought by many to be the biggest dividend delivered, making the job more desirable and competitive; (3) an apparent growth in jobs and promotions (tenures) confirmed the bounce‐back. Given the modest size of the study, analysis by country has to be undertaken with caution, but China, where political and economic factors have stifled any bounce‐back, stands out for special attention in a future full‐blown study. Finally, the study yielded informed and considered views that the long‐term impact of the pandemic appears to be beneficial rather than disadvantageous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This extensive literature review is not a stand‐alone paper, as it was conducted to help set the scene for the third and current stage of the Harbinger of Change project (H‐3), which is focusing on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on early career researchers (ECRs). Its purpose is to inform the design, scope and question‐forming of the ongoing interview project (2024–). The overarching aim of the review is to establish what we know of the already extant and/or predicted opportunities and challenges that AI‐driven technologies present to researchers, in general, and the cohort of junior researchers among them, in particular. It was found that very little empirical evidence exists of what is happening to ECRs on the ground, and that tends to be drowned in a sea of forecasts and prognostications. However, down the road there are clear benefits accruing to ECRs and, arguably, the most appealing for novice researchers must be the benefits of enhancing their productivity, the key to all scholarly rewards, inclusive of career advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comes from the third stage (H‐3) of the long‐running Harbingers of Change project (2015), which has investigated the scholarly communication beliefs and practices of early career researchers (ECRs) for a decade. The first stage (H‐1) focussed on generational (Millennial) change; the second (H‐2) on the impact of COVID; and, currently, the third stage (H‐3) on AI and its impact. While each stage has a particular focus all stages also asked questions about wider scholarly communications. This paper re‐examines an important finding found in H‐1 and backed by H‐2, which was that ECRs thought article processing charges were a major barrier to publishing open access (OA). Since then, OA has become more complex with more models available and a huge body of OA journals to navigate, so it is time to return to the topic. Data were obtained from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal and Spain about national guidelines and practices with 62 ECRs interviewed in‐depth. The findings indicate that ECRs are encountering challenges, or dilemmas in OA publishing. More precisely, they struggle with issues surrounding cost perceptions and understanding within the intricate academic publishing environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.