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Existing academic structures and norms perpetuate the mistreatment and marginalization of scholars resulting in a climate that is misaligned with the values of academics from marginalized groups. Therefore, we study how climates at multiple levels of the academy (i.e., research group, department, and professional field) shape marginalized scholars’ careers and career attitudes. Participants (N = 3,204) were doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and assistant professors from four science fields (biology, physics, economics, and psychology) who completed an online survey about psychological safety and intragroup conflict within their research group, climate of diversity within their department, climate of scholarly inclusion within their professional field, and their career outcomes. We conducted three general structural equation models with marginalized identity status predicting three career outcomes: turnover intentions, burnout disengagement, and burnout exhaustion. We also tested the mediation effect of climate at the levels of the research group, department, and profession on these career outcomes. Participants with a greater number of marginalized identities experienced a more negative climate at all three levels compared to those with no and fewer marginalized identities. The climate experienced at these three levels also significantly mediated all three career outcomes for marginalized scholars. Climate of scholarly inclusion at the level of the profession was especially strongly related to intent to leave and burnout. These results add to the breadth of research on multiply marginalized scholars’ negative experiences of academic climates and point to areas that may be particularly important for interventions.
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Authorship climate: A new tool for studying ethical issues in authorship
Authorship of academic publications is central to scientists’ careers, but decisions about how to include and order authors on publications are often fraught with difficult ethical issues. To better understand scholars’ experiences with authorship, we developed a novel concept, authorship climate, which assesses perceptions of the procedural, informational, and distributive justice associated with authorship decisions. We conducted a representative survey of more than 3,000 doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and assistant professors from a stratified random sample of U.S. biology, economics, physics, and psychology departments. We found that individuals who tend to have more power on science teams perceived authorship climate to be more positive than those who tend to have less power. Alphabetical approaches for assigning authorship were associated with higher perceptions of procedural justice and informational justice but lower perceptions of distributive justice. Individuals with more marginalized identities also tended to perceive authorship climate more negatively than those with no marginalized identities. These results illustrate how the concept of authorship climate can facilitate enhanced understanding of early-career scholars’ authorship experiences, and they highlight potential steps that can be taken to promote more positive authorship experiences for scholars of all identities.
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- PAR ID:
- 10431235
- Publisher / Repository:
- Taylor & Francis
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Accountability in Research
- ISSN:
- 0898-9621
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 25
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2022.2140587
