#Early-career ecologists establish a global network
- Introduction
- Building the network
- Steps to facilitate longevity of the network
- Functions of global early-career networks
Would your discipline benefit from a world-wide network of early-career scholars engaged in communicating and advancing science opportunities? Most likely yes, but where would you look for inspiration if you decided to embarque on the ambitious journey of establishing one? That questions is harder to answer, such networks are namely lacking from any of the biological sciences. This is too bad because it seems the opportunities for such a network in today’s over-connected world are little explored and potentially important.
Rob: I think it is important to keep in mind that the networks of collaborators of the most influential folks in ecol & evol are huge. It could offer as an example, perhaps trying to avoid pointing names, of the benefits of a network.
Explanations for this lack are many, ranging from: 1) the vast geographical and cultural distances that separate early-career scholars in various countries; 2) early-career scientists are busy trying to make a career and advance to the next stage ASAP; and, 3) lack of incentive structure from established institutions. All of these answers likely contribute to the fact that there are none or very few such networks. Nonetheless, none of the aformentioned possible causes justify this fact, especially not in this age of globalized online communication networks on various social media. Furthermore few will challenge the claim that the biological sciences have ever been as internationalized as they are today and very few would challenge the growth of the global early-career demographic.
Is there then room for more permanent, yet highly flexible early-career scientist networks in between the classical learned societies and the many new science initiatives being organized mainly via the web? The answer lies in the future, but simple reasoning suggests the answer is yes. Here we argue that global networks of young scholars are indeed very important and can have game-changing consequences for the trajectory of a discipline. We lay out a vision for the functions such global networks can serve, how networks can be built from the bottom up and suited with a flexible backbone to ensure their longevity.
Rob: the topic sentence below, while true, I'm afraid sounds a bit too cocky.
The International Network of Next-Generation Ecologists might be as close as the field of ecology has come in a long time to have such a global early-career network. Established by graduate students and post-docs involved in national society work INNGE was a bottom up initiative that when it was launched immediately received support from the leadership of the represented societies. Here we try to highlight some of the opportunities for global networks of early-career scientists. We use examples from INNGE and the two and a half years that have gone by since the initiative was taken.
We focus on three aspects:
- how such a global network can be established
- how the right organizational backbone can ensure both stability and flexibility
- what services a global network can provide once it is established
##Building the network
General
Maybe the deciding factor in explaining the lack of global early-career networks is the inexperience there is in experimenting with such network structures and the therefore large uncertainty and amount work tied to initiating such a project. How does one then go about building a global network of early-career scientists? The establishment ideally requires several events to align at the same point in time. While it helps if there is an expressed desire from the top of larger organizations, the step itself likely has to be taken by early-career scientists representing a broad range of stakeholders and with the desire to work for the establishment for a sustained period.
Rob: certainly, establishing collaborations and thinking global is not something that we are typically trained for in grad school, and yet the systeme expects us to do it in order to succeed.
Specific
Throughout its history, learned (rob: ??) society activities in ecology have been concentrated at the national level. A hundred years after the establishment of the first national ecological society, INNGE’s aim is to create a platform for early-career ecologists to interact on a global scale. Through our global focus on early-career scientists, we aim not to substitute for membership of learned ecological and evolutionary societies, but instead to integrate and empower young researchers engaged in a diverse array of initiatives. INNGE is an example of how a long expressed goal from the major organizations in a field came to be, not through a top-down process, but by bottom-up action and trust that students and post-docs would take responsibility and carry-out their own version of that shared vision. After nearly two years spend mostly on building an organizational backbone, the network is now at a size, diversity and that it can start to launch activities that were part of the longer term vision from the onset.
##A flexible but robust backbone to ensure longevity outline INNGE combines the reach of electronic communication tools with the organizational support of major societies, taking the best from online science initiatives and early-career initiatives of academic societies.
- Describe working group and Nodes setup (one paragraph)
- Challenges: Legitimacy, implementation of bylaws and organization democracy (couple of sentences or a paragraph)
General and specific
Once the backbone has been established the network can begin to perform the functions that were the main incentives behind the establishment. The functions can vary greatly depending on the specific of the network, but some core functions are likely to be useful to any discipline. Early-career groups often spend most of their energy on securing funds and rights for their own demographics. INNGE believes that the key to engage early-career scientists is to prioritize topics that will shape our careers in the future. Topics such as open-science, education reform, the ecological crisis and use of new technology. We call this combined focus Next-Generation Ecology.
###Knowledge-sharing to spur local initiatives General
Tenet: Many societies have the ambition of establishing student, post-doc or other early-career communities, most, however, falter due to a lack of critical mass to ensure continuity. Global networks serve as knowledge and skills hubs to empower local initiatives.
Specific
In the suggested community page, we argue that INNGE serves as an example of how early-career scientists through a global network can minimize challenges to local initiatives such as lack of experience, peer feedback and resources.
General
Blogs come and go, but a stable distributor of blogs is a service that can easily be provided by global networks once an initial critical mass of suppliers and followers has been established.
Specific
The launch of an open ecology blog aggregator (EcoBloggers) as well as a special section of our blog that features solicited thought provoking Next-Generation Point-of-View’s.
General
Through the distributed network, where groups take advantage of local communication for a, coherent surveys of the community can be achieved.
Specific
A questionnaire showing consistent dissatisfaction with mathematical skills and training between North American and European ecologists. The survey with about 1000 participants is in preparation for a peer-reviewed journal.
General
Claim: Younger generations might be the most obvious agents of change in spurring increased interdisciplinary interactions. This is because younger generations, despite more inexperienced are less locked in to career trajectories and have less to loose in terms of image by talking to people from other discipline. That said, no change will happen without leading figures encouraging, funding and guiding new interdisciplinary interactions.
Specific
We here support our claim with two concrete initiatives that INNGE recently has engaged in to promote interdisciplinary change in ecology. An emerging effort to improve the opportunities and voice of early-career ecologists in sustainability. This includes a collaboration with the International Council for Science’ (ICSU) Future Earth, and a partnership with the Institute for New Economic Thinking -Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI)
###International meetings
General
Maybe the least novel function of an early-career network is the function performed by most societies – with regular intervals to bring people together physically to interact and share the latest progress within their field.
Specific
INNGE will use the quadrennial meeting of INTECOL to organize global gatherings of early-career ecologists. The first gathering of early-career ecologists from around the world in London at INTECOL 2013.
Rob: is it worth discussing here in open public how to get economic support and what funding agencies/societies to target?