I recently came across a researcher who was giving up. No more academia. There were other, better things to do. She had been working as a contract researcher for a long time. It is not uncommon for contract researchers to spend a long time going from contract to contract. However, the researcher who was giving up had not had to search out work as she had been continuously employed by the same few people.  She had ongoing work which was dependent on permanently employed researchers and their capacity to win grants. While this work was good for a while, it ultimately became unfulfilling. This is also a common story.

There is a clear benefit for academics when they serially employ contract researchers. The academic gets someone whose work they know, and someone who knows how they work. The serial employee also knows the researcher’s other projects and the relevant literatures. This prior knowledge equates to lot of time saved for the academic as well as continued employment for the contract researcher.

However, there may also be down sides. For instance, when I looked at the cv of the researcher who was giving up, there was no sign in her publication list of any of the projects she had worked on. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I was curious so I looked a little further and discovered her name in the acknowledgements of a couple of publications. After a bit of questioning I found out that she had been listed on research reports written for funders, She had not however been offered the opportunity to participate in the preparation of published papers, and thus did not meet the criteria for authorship. 

Authorship of papers is important for academics: they need to show that they have “produced” in order to get promotion, more grants etc. But this is even more true for contract researchers. They are expected to publish despite their precarious employment.

Now I’ve employed a number of contract researchers in my time. I know there are very grey areas around publishing from research projects and offering authorship can be tricky and sometimes it’s not possible. The short term project for example may not result in a publication at all. Working for only a short time on a project usually means that the contract researcher isn’t around when then publishing begins. And it is pretty standard for academics to keep working on projects long after contract staff have completed work and the researchers do generally miss out on any after-project publication process.

However, in this case, even though projects were completed, the researcher who was giving up was actually still around when the after project publications were produced. Still in the building. Still working with the researchers, albeit on other projects.

Should this be a concern? Well yes. This is not just my view. There some relevant guidance around contract researchers and their employment. In the UK, for example, the 2008 Concordat for the employment of research staff includes a mention of publication:

However the revised and current Concordat is less specific.  While there is explicit recognition of the need for contract researchers to develop their research identities and career plans, and of their right to professional development time and career development support, there is nothing which explicitly addresses the ways in which contract researchers might be included on publications arising from their direct employment. Nor from their own PhDs. I guess the developers of the Concordat would argue that publication is included in these larger categories.

But if the Concordat is working, then why do I still encounter people like the researcher who is giving up, a person who worked for years for the same people and ended up with nothing on their publication list?

Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that withholding access to authoring is widespread – I don’t know, I haven’t seen a great deal of research on it. But there is some research which supports the view that the researcher who was giving up is not an isolated case. And I do see a lot of my colleagues offering publication and professional development time and opportunities to the contract researchers in their teams. So there is good practice out there. But I am sure that many academics could do better, including me.

However, I am worried by the number of times I hear about and meet contract researchers who really haven’t had anything like a fair go.

Part of me wonders if the stakes for we academics need to be raised? Should we be asked more about mentoring and supporting contract researchers when we apply for funding? Should we be required to account for what has happened for contract researchers when we report on what we’ve done with grant money? Should more weight be given in promotion applications for the work done with contract research staff?

Do you agree that “tenured academics have ethical responsibilities to provide a working environment that is fair, supports the ongoing development and wellbeing of non-tenured staff, and challenges dominant discourses of precarious academics as ‘other’.” (Smithers et al 2022) and if so, how could this happen? What do you think?