About

Academia is getting more competitive every day. The group most negatively affected by this competitive order/system is early-career researchers. They face many challenges: frequently changed promotion criteria, scarcity of tenure-track jobs, the publish or perish system and the huge mass of publications it brings, the disadvantages of researchers not included in large research networks, the Matthew Effect in science, the Mathilda Effect in science, geographical inequalities, vertical hierarchy, etc. All of this demotivates early-career researchers trying to do their job well and lowers the quality of scientific research.

We, Zehra Taşkın and Güleda Doğan, know the challenges faced by early-career researchers in the current academic and economic conditions and want to provide a platform/network for them. We created this network to respond to the needs of early-career researchers. We selected a diverse and accomplished advisory board, with members from countries with experience working in a variety of higher education systems. The general structure of our network is presented below (see Fig 1).

Fig 1. Aims of Scholarly Communication Network

Our logo was designed by Zehra Taşkın. It represents the power of the smallest node of the network. The smallest node does not need to stick to a small network, but it needs to be encouraged and supported. That is our aim. We would like to encourage and support early-career researchers. There is no title in our network. We value all members of our network, regardless of their title, age, or position

The structure of our network is twofold:

  • We provide a network to early-career researchers working on scholarly communication and related subjects. They can discuss their research ideas with the group. We will organize brainstorming meetings for new ideas and discussions.
  • The members of our research network share their knowledge on scholarly communication with all early-career researchers in science. We believe that it is the way of developing scientific research. We have worked on changing the current systems for years, and it is time to share it with the whole scientific community, especially with early-career researchers.

We are thankful to all advisory board members for their support.

… and dear reader, thanks for visiting our website.