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1. Changing demographics of scientific careers: The rise of the temporary workforce

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1800478115  

   Milojević, Staša; Radicchi, Filippo; Walsh, John P (December 2018, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America)

   null (Ed.)

   Contemporary science has been characterized by an exponential growth in publications and a rise of team science. At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of awarded PhD degrees, which has not been accompanied by a similar expansion in the number of academic positions. In such a competitive environment, an important measure of academic success is the ability to maintain a long active career in science. In this paper, we study workforce trends in three scientific disciplines over half a century. We find dramatic shortening of careers of scientists across all three disciplines. The time over which half of the cohort has left the field has shortened from 35 y in the 1960s to only 5 y in the 2010s. In addition, we find a rapid rise (from 25 to 60% since the 1960s) of a group of scientists who spend their entire career only as supporting authors without having led a publication. Altogether, the fraction of entering researchers who achieve full careers has diminished, while the class of temporary scientists has escalated. We provide an interpretation of our empirical results in terms of a survival model from which we infer potential factors of success in scientific career survivability. Cohort attrition can be successfully modeled by a relatively simple hazard probability function. Although we find statistically significant trends between survivability and an author’s early productivity, neither productivity nor the citation impact of early work or the level of initial collaboration can serve as a reliable predictor of ultimate survivability. 

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2. Strengthening the STEM Workforce: Outcomes from Louisiana’s Post-Baccalaureate Program in Applied Evolution

   https://doi.org/10.18061/bssb.6737  

   Salgado, Ana L; Kelly, Morgan W; Brown, Jeremy M; Mason, Nicholas A; Wilson-Kennedy, Zakiya S; Little, Kristina; Robison, Samuel B; Blackmon, Bret; Burns, Andrew R; Lagomarsino, Laura P (February 2026, Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists)

   While universities have traditionally trained undergraduate students for scientific careers, they often fail to equip them with the hard and soft skills necessary for success in STEM professions. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the ability of many students to gain research experience due to lockdowns, leading to a cohort with limited hands-on experience for their next career step. Training in evolutionary biology has the potential to enhance the workforce in STEM by equipping students with valuable, in-demand skills for a wide range of careers. The Louisiana Graduate Network in Applied Evolution (LAGNiAppE) is a one-year research training program aimed at strengthening scholars’ scientific capabilities. After a month-long bootcamp, participants work on independent projects under the guidance of a mentor, co-mentor, and near-peer mentors. At the beginning of the 2023–2024 cohort, a baseline survey was conducted on nine scholars to assess science-related skills, knowledge, attitudes, scientific thinking, confidence, understanding and expectations. A follow-up survey at the end of the program measured program-driven changes and feedback on programmatic processes. Results from these surveys indicated an improvement in scientific thinking, confidence, and understanding among scholars. Participants also reported a strong sense of belonging within the scientific community, and seven scholars expressed interest in pursuing careers in bioscience. This program effectively builds career readiness in STEM by providing research opportunities that foster positive multi-network mentorship experiences and build connections within the scientific community. 

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3. Slow convergence: Career impediments to interdisciplinary biomedical research

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2402646121  

   Berkes, Enrico; Marion, Monica; Milojević, Staša; Weinberg, Bruce A (August 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Despite the long-standing calls for increased levels of interdisciplinary research as a way to address society’s grand challenges, most science is still disciplinary. To understand the slow rate of convergence to more interdisciplinary research, we examine 154,021 researchers who received a PhD in a biomedical field between 1970 and 2013, measuring the interdisciplinarity of their articles using the disciplinary composition of references. We provide a range of evidence that interdisciplinary research is impactful, but that those who conduct it face early career impediments. The researchers who are initially the most interdisciplinary tend to stop publishing earlier in their careers—it takes about 8 y for half of the researchers in the top percentile in terms of initial interdisciplinarity to stop publishing, compared to more than 20 y for moderately interdisciplinary researchers (10th to 75th percentiles). Moreover, perhaps in response to career challenges, initially interdisciplinary researchers on average decrease their interdisciplinarity over time. These forces reduce the stock of interdisciplinary researchers who can train future cohorts. Indeed, new graduates tend to be less interdisciplinary than the stock of active researchers. We show that interdisciplinarity does increase over time despite these dampening forces because initially disciplinary researchers become more interdisciplinary as their careers progress. 

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4. A dataset of mentorship in bioscience with semantic and demographic estimations

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01578-x  

   Ke, Qing; Liang, Lizhen; Ding, Ying; David, Stephen V.; Acuna, Daniel E. (December 2022, Scientific Data)

   Abstract Mentorship in science is crucial for topic choice, career decisions, and the success of mentees and mentors. Typically, researchers who study mentorship use article co-authorship and doctoral dissertation datasets. However, available datasets of this type focus on narrow selections of fields and miss out on early career and non-publication-related interactions. Here, we describe Mentorship, a crowdsourced dataset of 743176 mentorship relationships among 738989 scientists primarily in biosciences that avoids these shortcomings. Our dataset enriches the Academic Family Tree project by adding publication data from the Microsoft Academic Graph and “semantic” representations of research using deep learning content analysis. Because gender and race have become critical dimensions when analyzing mentorship and disparities in science, we also provide estimations of these factors. We perform extensive validations of the profile–publication matching, semantic content, and demographic inferences, which mostly cover neuroscience and biomedical sciences. We anticipate this dataset will spur the study of mentorship in science and deepen our understanding of its role in scientists’ career outcomes. 

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5. BOARD # 329: Bridging the Innovation Gap: Advancing STEM Education to Meet Workforce Needs and Improve Retention (S-STEM)

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--55696  

   Schubert, Karl; Gattis, Carol; Delgado_Solorzano, Xochitl; Popp, Jennie; Cao, Chunhua; Massey, Leslie; Carter, Thomas (June 2025, ASEE Conferences)

   To enhance the United States’ competitiveness in STEM fields, the University of Arkansas created the NSF-funded program, Closing American’s Innovation Gap through Collaboration with Industry (INNOV), to equip low-income students with innovative skills and improve their retention and success in STEM disciplines. The program combines academic innovation opportunities, scholarships, and retention programming, targeting Pell Grant recipients with high potential. INNOV aims to cultivate a cohort of STEM graduates through a curriculum that integrates innovation methodologies and practical industry experience. INNOV consists of several key components. Curricular components include a credit-bearing bridge program conducted prior to their first fall semester, and a year-long sequence of innovation courses featuring industry-partnered projects, and innovation-themed field trips. The non-curricular aspect includes a residential living-learning community, peer and professional mentoring, faculty guidance, and team-building exercises, all designed to foster student success. Scholarships provide up to eight semesters of financial support, reducing economic barriers for participants. The program accepted 28 students. Currently, the first cohort are seniors, and the second cohort are juniors. Scholars enter the program with a high school GPA of 3.50 or higher and ACT composite scores between 23 and 27 (SAT 1130-1300). INNOV has achieved an 89% retention rate across two cohorts, a significant success in supporting this population in their STEM pursuits. Insights into the program’s impact on participants’ innovation training and satisfaction with the program are gained from the end of academic year anonymous response surveys. Separate analyses from the junior and sophomore year surveys are provided in the paper. Pooling the INNOV sophomore and junior survey data from May 2024, of the 20 respondents (11 sophomore, 9 junior), 90% reported feeling more comfortable expressing their ideas, and 95% felt more confident taking risks. Furthermore, 90% indicated that the innovation courses were valuable for their future educational and career goals, while 75% credited the program with enhancing their creativity and innovative thinking. Surveys also highlighted the importance of INNOV's non-academic support. Of respondents, 85% felt that the Path program, which provides mentoring and peer support, was essential in promoting their sense of belonging, and 95% felt it helped them be more academically engaged. They emphasized that Path was integral to their motivation, with 85% affirming that it helped them continue in their chosen STEM degree program. Additionally, the program’s cohort-building activities and faculty-student interaction were crucial in maintaining students’ academic focus and commitment. These findings demonstrate the program’s success in creating a supportive and inclusive environment that fosters both academic and personal growth. In conclusion, INNOV has effectively combined innovation education with comprehensive support mechanisms to prepare low-income students for success in STEM fields. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, industry engagement early in their academic careers, and a strong academic support system, INNOV has made a significant impact on retention, academic performance, and future aspirations. These results provide a roadmap for future initiatives aimed at improving retention in STEM disciplines, particularly among students from low-income backgrounds. Acknowledgment This material is based upon work supported by the National Science under Grant No. 2030297. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. 

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