Eti Herman

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Consultant at CIBER Research

This paper, part of the third stage of the Harbingers project studying early career researchers (ECRs), focuses on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on scholarly communications. It concentrates on research integrity and misconduct, a ‘hot’ topic among the publishing community, in no small part due to the rise of AI. The interview‐based stu...

Early career researchers (ECRs) are in an ideal position to soothsay. Yet, much of what we know about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) comes from vested interest groups, such as publishers, tech companies and industry leaders, which are strong on hyperbole, are superficial and, at best, narrow surveys. This paper seeks to redress this by...

Reports on findings from a study of the impact of AI on early career researchers' communications on their attitudes to and use of pre-prints. A convenience sample of 69 science and social science ECRs based mainly in five countries-China, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal and Spain, with initial observations from UK and US complementing the picture. Inter...

The Harbingers study of early career researchers (ECRs) and their work life and scholarly communications began by studying generational—Millennial—change (H‐1), then moved to pandemic change (H‐2) and is now investigating another change agent—artificial intelligence (AI). This paper from the study constitutes a deep dive into the peer review attitu...

Presents the results of a study of the impact of artificial intelligence on early career researchers (ECRs). An important group to study because their millennial mindset may render them especially open to AI. We provide empirical data and a validity check of the numerous publications providing forecasts and prognostications. This interview‐based st...

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...

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 (...

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 on...

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, th...

In this, the second iteration of our continuing ‘Harbingers of Change’ project, over 160 early career researchers (ECRs) from eight countries were questioned about their scholarly communications. Three repeat in‐depth interviews were conducted over 2 years of the pandemic to chart changes in attitude and behaviour. This paper provides interview fin...

The Harbingers project, which studied the working lives and scholarly communication behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs) over 6 years, found evidence of changing attitudes to questionable (grey) publishing. Thus, whilst predatory publishers have come to be treated with equanimity, as a problem easily dealt with, there was growing concern w...

Investigates whether junior researchers believe that the scholarly communication system is changing in a significant way, whether they have contributed to the changes they envisaged, whether the pandemic has fast‐forwarded change and what they thought a transformed system might look like. The data are drawn from the Harbingers‐2 project, which inve...

Explores science and social science early career researchers' (ECRs) perceptions and experiences of peer review, seeking also to identify their views of any pandemic-associated changes that have taken place. Data are drawn from the Har-bingers-2 project, which investigated the impact of the pandemic on scholarly communications. Peer review, one of...

After two‐years of repeat interviewing early career sciences/social sciences researchers from around the world about their work life and scholarly communications in pandemic‐times, the Harbingers‐2 project is in a position to release quantitative data on the pandemic's overall impact. The data comes from around 50 questions asked in the third and f...

Key points 170 early career researchers interviewed three times over 2 years, have uniquely contributed towards a stress test of scholarly communications and cracks have been identified. The perfect storm created by the convergence of millennial values and the pandemic appears to have fast‐forwarded the cracking process, perhaps, for the good. The...

Introduction As part of the Harbnger-2 project, this study aimed to discover the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on junior researchers’ work-life, career prospects, research and publishing practices and networking. Methods An online international survey of 800 early career researchers (ECRs) was conducted in 2022. A questionnaire was developed bas...

Presents findings from a study into the attitudes and practices of pandemic‐era early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to obtaining access to the formally published scholarly literature, which focused on alternative providers, notably ResearchGate and Sci‐Hub. The study is a part of the Harbingers project that has been exploring the work lives a...

Around 170 early career researchers (ECRs) from 8 countries were interviewed about the whole range of their scholarly communication attitudes/behaviours during pandemic times and this paper analyses what they said about predatory journals in a wide range of scholarly communication contexts. Because of the delicacy of the topic there was just one qu...

Changing business models in scholarly publishing means that researchers have increased choices as to where to submit their articles. Choices are made on the basis of perceived quality of the journal, the speed of publishing, and how close a match there is between the journal scope and the article topic. Additionally, there is an increasing concern...

After two-years of talking to around 170 early career science/social science researchers from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Spain, UK and US about their work life and scholarly communications during the pandemic, the Harbingers-2 project is in possession of a mountain of verbatim data. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the kinds...

After two-years of repeat interviewing around 170 early career science/social science researchers from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Spain, UK and US about their work life and scholarly communications in pandemic-times, the Harbingers project is now in possession of a mountain of data on what constitutes a very important academic topic....

Early career researchers have both been the most directly effected by the COVID-19 pandemic and responsible for some of the most innovative responses to it. Reporting on findings from the Harbingers-2 study, Discusses how the international cohort followed by the study has adapted to an emerging ‘new scholarly normality’

Presents early data from an investigation of the work lives and scholarly communication practices of 177 early career researchers (ECRs) from eight countries. Utilizing mainly coded and textual data from interviews, the paper reports on the findings that pertain to publishing papers in peer reviewed journals. We examine which factors are taken into...

In a blogpost from this time last year, we introduced Harbingers-2, a longitudinal qualitative research project, which seeks to understand the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the early career researcher (ECR) community. One year on, halfway into the project, it seems appropriate to revisit the oft-heard 'horror' scenario: the predi...

The study presents comparative qualitative findings from a longitudinal exploration of the impact of the pandemic on early career researchers (ECRs) from the sciences and social sciences. Using qualitative methodologies, it focuses on the increasing demands of remote teaching made on ECRs and the potentially negative effects these had on their rese...

The study presents comparative qualitative findings from a longitudinal exploration of the impact of the pandemic on early career researchers (ECRs) from the sciences and social sciences. Using qualitative methodologies, it focuses on the increasing demands of remote teaching made on ECRs and the potentially negative effects these had on their rese...

The paper draws on evidence of predatory publishing obtained from the 4 year-long Harbingers research study of the changing scholarly communication attitudes and behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs). The project featured longitudinal interviews for its first 3 years with 116 ECRs researching science and social sciences who came from China,...

In order to take account of the impact of the pandemic on the already changing scholarly communications and work-life of early career researchers (ECRs), the 4-year long Harbingers study was extended for another two years. As a precursor to the study (featuring interviews and a questionnaire survey), currently underway, an analytic review of the pe...

Discusses the challenges facing early career researchers as a result of the pandemic and outlines how a new longitudinal, qualitative study involving 160 Early Career Researchers (ECRs) from 8 countries will seek to understand how they fare over the next two years.

This study explores early career researchers’ (ECRs) appreciation and utilisation of open access (OA) publishing. The evidence reported here results from a questionnaire-based international survey with 1600 participants, which forms the second leg and final year of a four year long, mixed methods, longitudinal study that sought to discover whether...

This study explores early career researchers’ (ECRs) appreciation and utilisation of open access (OA) publishing. The evidence reported here results from a questionnaire-based international survey with 1600 participants, which forms the second leg and final year of a four year long, mixed methods, longitudinal study that sought to discover whether...

The paper draws on evidence of predatory publishing obtained from the 4 year-long Harbingers research study of the changing scholarly communication attitudes and behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs). The project featured longitudinal interviews for the first 3 years with 116 international ECRs researching science and social sciences who cam...

The paper compares the scholarly communication attitudes and practices of early career researchers (ECRs) in eight countries concerning discovery, reading, publishing, authorship, open access, and social media. The data are taken from the most recent investigation in the 4‐year‐long Harbingers project. A survey was undertaken to establish whether t...

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. T...

This article presents an up‐to‐date portrayal of the greatly changed landscape of scholarly journal publishing and identifies the emerging trends characterizing it. We consider the attributes, novelty, and disruptive potential of different models, which range from improvements to the extant model to attempts at reconfiguration and transformation. W...

This article describes an international study informed by a 3‐year‐long qualitative longitudinal project, which sought to discover the scholarly communication attitudes and behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs). Using a combination of small‐scale interviews and a larger‐scale survey, ECRs were questioned on their searching and reading behavi...

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 ba...

A study from the Harbingers research project provides a comprehensive assessment of the main features of the scholarly communications system as viewed by early career researchers (ECRs) in the final year of the study (2018). Aspects covered are: discovery and access, authorship practices, peer review, publishing strategies, open access publishing,...

This paper examines changes in attitudes and behaviours of the new wave of researchers (early career researchers) regarding the academic library and its functions in seven countries around the world. It documents trends and establishes the direction in which things are heading. Data were collected from over 100 researchers from the sciences and soc...

Reports on the findings on the open science attitudes and behaviours of early career researchers (ECRs) from the Harbingers research project, which sought to determine whether they are the agents of change when it comes to scholarly communications. Nearly 120 science and social science researchers from 7 countries were questioned, longitudinally ov...

Three years ago, the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) commissioned a highly ambitious, international study, the like of which has not been seen in the scholarly communications field. More than a hundred science and social science early career researchers (ECRs) from seven countries were depth-interviewed annually for three-years (2016-2018) in...

This article provides the final results of a 3‐year study that sought to discover whether early career researchers (ECRs) were the harbingers of change with respect to scholarly communications. Over a hundred science and social science ECRs from seven countries, spanning three continents, were depth‐interviewed annually for 3 years (2016–2018) abou...

How do early career researchers (ECRs) use Sci-Hub and why? In this post David Nicholas assesses early career researcher attitudes towards the journal pirating site, finding a strong preference for Sci-Hub amongst French ECRs. He raises the question, will Sci-Hub prove the ultimate disruptor and bring down the existing status quo in scholarly commu...

Seeking to understand how today’s scholars may, indeed should go about building, maintaining and showcasing their professional reputation, the literature review presented here explores the reputational opportunities available to them in the increasingly open-values based, digital and networked environment of Science 2.0. Using a conceptual framewor...

The paper presents the early findings from the first two years of the Harbingers research project , a 3-year-long study of early career researchers (ECRs), the new wave of researchers, which sought to ascertain their current and changing habits with regard to scholarly communications. The study recruited a convenience sample of 116 researchers from...

A three year research study of early career researchers (Harbingers study) recently completed provides solid evidence that commentators are right to think that ECRs could be disadvantaged by Plan S.

Three years ago, the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) commissioned a highly ambitious, international study, the like of which has not been seen in the scholarly communications field. More than a hundred science and social science early career researchers (ECRs) from seven countries were depth-interviewed annually for three-years (2016-2018) in...

The Harbinger project was a 3‐year‐long international study of the changing attitudes and behaviours of early career researchers (ECRs). One of the aims of the project was to discover if ECRs were adopting disrupting platforms that, legitimately or illegitimately, promote openness and sharing. It has been alleged that such an adoption appeals to th...

Breaking research findings from the final year of the Harbinger project

The aim of this literature review on scholarly reputation is: (1) to clarify the concept of scholarly reputation; and (2) to identify the opportunities for scholars (and especially the early career ones among them) to build, maintain and showcase their reputation in today's increasingly open-values based, digital and networked environment. Thus, an...

Early-career researchers—that is, those without tenure and typically in their 20s and 30s—make up the largest group of researchers in most countries and universities. They are the fuel that powers the world’s research projects. They are tomorrow’s Nobel prizewinners. They were born digital, and bring with them the millennials’ belief in openness, s...

The purpose of this article is twofold: a) to describe and compare methods of early career researcher (ECR) assessment/appraisal; b) to explain how ECRs build, showcase, and monitor their reputation in an era of novel developments in scholarly communications. In all, 116 ECRs from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, the UK, and the US were ques...

The younger generation sees a collaborative system as key to discovery and advancement, a three-year tracking project reveals. See https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/early-career-researchers-herald-change

Early career researchers and whether they will be the harbingers of change in respect to scholarly communication behaviour.

Key points • Early career researchers (ECRs) consider journals the central form of communication – but are concerned about pressure to publish. • ECRs want to share but currently accept the closed publishing system because of the need to build a traditional reputation. • ECRs know – and appear to care – little about publishers but trust them as pu...

Partial results of first and second year of the research project: Early Career Researchers: the Harbingers of Change? Head of project: David Nicholas, CIBER Ltd.

Changing face of scholarly communication behaviour as exhibited by early career researchers. Year 2 results from a three-year longitudinal study

For scholarly publishers, the social networking platform ResearchGate is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, when researchers post papers on the site journals’ brands are promoted and articles are used more widely. On the other hand, there is a potential loss in revenue and subscriptions if that sharing goes on outside publishers’ walls. As if t...

This paper presents selected findings from the first year of a 3-year longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs), which sought to ascertain current and changing habits in scholarly communication. Specifically, the aims of the paper are to show: (1) how much experience and knowledge ECRs had of peer review – both as authors and as reviewe...

Pierwsze (z zaplanowanych trzech) doniesienie z badań wśród 116 młodych (do 35 lat) naukowców z 7 krajów: Stanów Zjednoczonych, Wielkiej Brytanii, Francji, Hiszpanii, Malezji, Chin i Polski.

This study presents findings from the first year of the Harbingers research project, a 3-year longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs), which sought to ascertain current and changing habits in scholarly communication. The study recruited 116 science and social science ECRs from seven countries who were subject to in-depth interviews, a...

Early career researchers (ECRs) are of great interest because they are the new (and biggest) wave of researchers. They merit long and detailed investigation, and towards this end, this overarching paper provides a summary of the first-year findings of a 3-year, longitudinal study of 116 science and social science ECRs who have published nearly 1,20...

This article presents findings from the first year of the Harbingers research project started in 2015. The project is a 3-year longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs) to ascertain their current and changing habits with regard to information searching, use, sharing, and publication. The study recruited 116 researchers from seven countr...

Employing a newly developed conceptual framework of the tasks and activities that comprise today’s digital scholarly undertaking and their potentially reputation building, maintaining and enhancing components, the efforts of ResearchGate in supporting scholars’ reputation building endeavours were put under the microscope. Not unexpectedly, RG perfo...

Early-career researchers constitute a vast pool of talent. They are the largest group of researchers and their numbers are growing fast. They are essential for enabling research to meet the needs of knowledge economies and, as the League of European Research Universities wrote in 2010, universities’ research crucially rests on their access “to the...

Early career researchers are of great interest not just because they are the new wave, but because they are also the biggest wave – they are by far the largest group of researchers (Jones, 2014). Therefore, they merit long, detailed and continuous investigation. Towards this end this report provides the first year findings (the foundation stone) fo...

ResearchGate (RG) is a scholarly social network that possesses an impressive array of reputational metrics and has the potential to supplant publishers as the prime deliverer of scholarly reputation. It possesses 10 reputational mechanisms, and these are the subject of an evaluation employing desk research, expert evaluation, and an analysis of 400...

l survey of over 3600 academic researchers examined how trustworthiness is determined when making decisions on scholarly reading, citing, and publishing in the digital age and whether social media and open access publications are having an impact on judgements. In general, the study found that traditional scholarly methods and criteria remain impor...

The paper reports on some of the results of a research project into how changes in digital behaviour and services impacts on concepts of trust and authority held by researchers in the sciences and social sciences in the UK and the USA. Interviews were used in conjunction with a group of focus groups to establish the form and topic of questions put...

An international survey of over 3,600 researchers examined how trustworthiness and quality are determined for making decisions on scholarly reading, citing, and publishing and how scholars perceive changes in trust with new forms of scholarly communication. Although differences in determining trustworthiness and authority of scholarly resources exi...

Introduction. This paper reports on an interview­based citation behaviour study, part of a wider study of trust in information resources, investigating why researchers chose to cite particular references in one of their publications. Their motivations are explored, with an emphasis on whether they regarded the reference as an authoritative and trus...

The article reports on a study of the views and actions of nearly a hundred scholars – mostly academic researchers from four European countries and four disciplines – in regard to scholarly reputation in the Science 2.0 age. It specifically looks at the role that 'emerging' reputational mechanisms and platforms are playing in building, maintaining,...

he article reports on a study of the views and actions of nearly a hundred scholars – mostly academic researchers from four European countries and four disciplines – in regard to scholarly reputation in the Science 2.0 age. It specifically looks at the role that ‘emerging’ reputational mechanisms and platforms are playing in building, maintain...

This report covers the outcomes of two studies that explored the emerging drivers for Open Science 2.0. In general, Open Science 2.0 thrives from themes such as open access to scientific outputs, open data, citizen science and open peer evaluation systems. Our studies focused on less explored themes, namely on alternative funding mechanisms for sci...

This interim report is part of the JRC-IPTS commissioned study "Analysis of emerging reputation mechanisms for scholars". It aims at laying the conceptual framework for the analysis of the data gathered in the subsequent empirical, case-study phases of the investigation. The first part of the report offers an exhaustive literature review for the th...

The article presents one of the main findings of an international study of 4,000 academic researchers that examined how trustworthiness is determined in the digital environment when it comes to scholarly reading, citing, and publishing. The study shows that peer review is still the most trustworthy characteristic of all. There is, though, a common...

This report covers the outcomes of two studies funded by JRC IPTS to explore emerging drivers for Open Science 2.0. In general, Open Science 2.0 is associated with themes such as open access to scientific outputs, open data, citizen science and open peer evaluation systems. This study, however, focused on less explored themes, namely on alternative...

Structural changes to the scholarly environment are taking place as a result of the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies, which have given rise to Open Science 2.0 initiatives, such as open access publishing, open data, citizen science, and open peer evaluation systems. In turn, this is leading to new ways of building, showcasing, and measuring sch...

Information Science is concerned with the theoretical and practical aspects of effective information provision and consumption. In particular, information scientists explore the theoretical underpinnings and practical competencies involved in the generation, collection, organization, processing, management, storage, retrieval, distribution, communi...

The paper provides the results of the fi rst phase of the research project Trust and Authority in Scholarly Communications in the Light of the Digital Transition. It provides for an examination of the behaviours and attitudes of academic researchers as producers and consumers of scholarly information resources in the digital era in respect to how t...

Purpose – Aiming to ensure that everyone obtains the rich rewards available in today's information‐centred society, this paper sets out to explore how the curious problem of “information malnutrition” in an era of plenty might be overcome to bring about the true information enfranchisement of today's enthusiastic digital consumer. Design/methodolo...

This book constitutes a small step towards avoiding the disaster looming on our horizons in result of this behaviour. It does this in two ways. Firstly, by providing information professionals and information service providers with a framework for information needs analysis, which, based as it is on the insights gained from research projects involvi...

The second part of a two-part paper reports the preliminary conclusions derived from the pathfinder phase of a study devoted to a reassessment of the information needs of academic researchers. Proceeding from the notion that long-established research information needs may not have remained wholly unaffected by the changing realities of the knowledg...

Reports the preliminary conclusions derived from the initial, pathfinder phase of a study devoted to a re-assessment of the information needs of academic researchers. This exploration of researchers’ current information requirements and information seeking practices has been undertaken with a special emphasis on examining the validity of anything a...