Abstract Although authorship is central to the career advancement of many ecologists, the processes used to assign authorship credit on papers are not always clear, ethical, or equitable. We developed the concept of authorship climate (perceptions of fairness related to procedures, communication practices, and outcomes of authorship decisions) and measured it using a survey of early‐career scientists from four fields across U.S. Ph.D.‐granting institutions. The results pointed to important differences in authorship climate perceptions across fields, career stages, and demographics. This paper provides an overview of the results, especially for the field of biology that encompasses ecology, and provides recommendations for improving authorship climate for ecologists.

Abstract The “leaky pipeline” is the oft-used metaphor to characterize the loss of STEM students in the progression from high school through college and into the labor force. This view of STEM education—which posits a unidirectional flow out of STEM fields—is both pervasive and influential in K-12, higher education, and workforce development policy. But there has been limited empirical support for this claim that “leaving STEM” is unidirectional and reduces the size of the STEM cohort. This study analyzes two cohorts in nationally representative, longitudinal surveys of four-year college students to examine freshman-to-bachelor's degree pathways. We find that although a third of STEM-intending freshmen leave STEM fields and graduate in non-STEM majors, the size of the STEM graduating class is larger than the freshmen STEM class in the two cohorts of bachelor's degree graduates. STEM graduates in both cohorts are comprised of large shares of students who did not initially declare a STEM major: just under 20% of graduates first began as non-STEM majors and were “late entrants” in STEM. Thus, rather than a leaky pipeline, STEM disciplines appear to be a two-way street, with many students attracted into STEM fields during college. The findings suggest that the dominant focus on STEM retention should be broadened to consider STEM “attraction” during college, since a large share of STEM graduates begin college as non-STEM and undeclared majors.

Asian Americans have a unique positionality in higher education because they are racially marginalized while being overrepresented in some science and technology fields. Being stereotyped as the “model minority,” Asian Americans' experiences and job outcomes differ from both the majority and other racial minority groups. However, there is limited research on their experiences in higher education, particularly regarding job attitudes. We studied the experiences of Asian American scholars to understand their job attitudes compared with scholars with different racial/ethnic identities and the impact of inclusive academic climates on those attitudes. We conducted a national survey of early-career scholars (i.e., doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and assistant professors) in four science fields (two each in the natural and social sciences). Our analysis of the sample ( N = 2866) showed that Asian American scholars had lower professional role confidence and work withdrawal than scholars in all other racial groups and also lower affective job commitment than scholars from other racial minority groups. Citizenship was significantly associated with work withdrawal, indicating its potential role in lower work withdrawal among Asian American scholars who were disproportionately foreign nationals. Doctoral students had lower commitment and professional role confidence than assistant professors but were more confident than postdocs. Inclusive departmental and professional field climates positively shaped job attitudes and helped to reduce racial differences among early career scholars. This research extends the current understanding about the experiences of Asian American scholars and highlights racial differences in job attitudes in higher education.

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.

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.

Early research on the impact of COVID-19 on academic scientists suggests that disruptions to research, teaching, and daily work life are not experienced equally. However, this work has overwhelmingly focused on experiences of women and parents, with limited attention to the disproportionate impact on academic work by race, disability status, sexual identity, first-generation status, and academic career stage. Using a stratified random survey sample of early-career academics in four science disciplines (N = 3,277), we investigated socio-demographic and career stage differences in the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic along seven work outcomes: changes in four work areas (research progress, workload, concern about career advancement, support from mentors) and work disruptions due to three COVID-19 related life challenges (physical health, mental health, and caretaking). Our analyses examined patterns across career stages as well as separately for doctoral students and for postdocs/assistant professors. Overall, our results indicate that scientists from marginalized (i.e., devalued) and minoritized (i.e., underrepresented) groups across early career stages reported more negative work outcomes as a result of COVID-19. However, there were notable patterns of differences depending on the socio-demographic identities examined. Those with a physical or mental disability were negatively impacted on all seven work outcomes. Women, primary caregivers, underrepresented racial minorities, sexual minorities, and first-generation scholars reported more negative experiences across several outcomes such as increased disruptions due to physical health symptoms and additional caretaking compared to more privileged counterparts. Doctoral students reported more work disruptions from life challenges than other early-career scholars, especially those related to health problems, while assistant professors reported more negative changes in areas such as decreased research progress and increased workload. These findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately harmed work outcomes for minoritized and marginalized early-career scholars. Institutional interventions are required to address these inequalities in an effort to retain diverse cohorts in academic science.