TL;DR
Today’s PhD path often feels narrow, fixated solely on the thesis and its constitutive publications. This undervalues crucial contributions – teaching, societal engagement, building tools, and so on – stifling the very researchers hailed as academia’s future. The Recognition & Rewards programme argues for a necessary shift. We need a broader vision: a PhD journey appreciating the entire research process, diverse talents, and real-world impact, moving beyond mere paper counts towards quality and connection. Achieving this requires more than just talk; it demands genuine cultural change from supervisors and peers, reinforced by structural reforms from institutions and funders to create a supportive ecosystem, not just an individualistic climb. Let’s value the whole contribution.
“R&R is about building an inclusive and diverse academic culture” stated Barbara Braams, associate professor at the VU and moderator of the day as she opened the session–a statement that only grew more imperative with every talk. PhD candidates, and other early-career researchers such as postdocs and assistant professors are hailed as the future of science and academia. However, this group is also the most vulnerable in an academy where inclusive professional development, and broad-ranging collective contributions are often overlooked in favour of rigid bibliographic criteria for promotion and assessment. To therefore stimulate a discussion focusing on early-career researchers, the national Recognition & Rewards program brought together policy makers and various stakeholders in Utrecht on the 28th of March. PNN, together with De Jonge Academie (DJA) and het Nationaal Expertise Centrum Wetenschap en Samenleving (NEWS) presented their vision for a ‘PhD trajectory of the future’ and led a workshop to brainstorm how the supervisor-PhD relationship can be improved to broaden a PhD trajectory and recognise and reward PhD candidates for their diverse contributions.
A PhD should be more than a thesis
The programme invited participants to share their perspectives on early-career researchers, what they currently experience and want to see improved in the future. Mayukha Bathini from PNN, in collaboration with Max van Duijn from De Jonge Academie and Sicco de Knecht from NEWS, opened the discussion with a shared vision of a ‘PhD Trajectory of the Future’. Citing results from PNN’s PhD survey, Mayukha highlighted the problem with the current system of assessing a PhD trajectory–the idea that a PhD candidate should become an independent researcher is often interpreted in a much too narrow breadth. In the present academic climate, a PhD has become solely defined by a thesis, which in turn is meant to be a collection of scholarly publications. Other responsibilities and contributions of PhD candidates, those that do not in the strictest sense fit under the umbrella of ‘research activities’, such as (co-)representation, management, teaching and developing learning materials or patient care go under-recognised (if at all) for their promotion. Even activities that are part of the research process such as developing and setting up research lines, building software, code repositories and databases do not end up being in the dissertation unless they could result in a research article. When PhD candidates account for 40% of all research FTEs in Dutch academia, the main goals of the R&R program cannot be fulfilled if a PhD trajectory needs to culminate in a rigid dissertation.
To segway into a ‘PhD trajectory of the Future’, shift away from publications and bridge science, academia and society, PNN emphasised the need to recognise and reward the research process as a whole. To truly encourage early-career researchers to dip their toes into the waters of open science and non-scholarly research outputs, we need to weigh quality over quantity. Max van Duijn then presented the vision of what a PhD trajectory could look like if researchers think about connecting science and society at every step of the research process. “PhD regulations offer quite some space [for change]”, Max concludes as he closes with some examples that already reflect how a PhD project can have a more lasting imprint on society: the Living Lab, A Telling Story, and a societal defense.
The academy as an ecosystem
The necessity of diversifying career paths was a theme carried forward throughout the morning. Laura Swart from PostdocNL stressed that postdocs have no safety nets in case their project does not deliver and that there are currently no regulations on what a postdoc is. Constant Swinkels from the ComeniusNetwerk shone a spotlight on the stories of three early-career researchers and teacher-innovators, underscoring the need for a better defined ‘teaching profile’ for PhD candidates. Finally, while summarising the current status of R&R implementation for assistant professors on behalf of APNet, “the opportunities for diversification are limited; people believe they need to excel in all domains [research, teaching and impact]”, stated Tessa Sinnige.
“Everyone in academia cannot end up in the top 1%”. Tessa shared with the room that the participants of APNet’s survey were mainly concerned with their promotion to associate and full professor, and that recognition and rewards meant a change in criteria that were until now familiar to them. As the floor was opened for discussion, one striking point that came up was how academia cannot be sustainable if it remains focused on how individuals can climb the academic ladder. Hilde Verbeek, professor at Maastricht University, suggests taking an ecosystem approach where there is give-and-take between the academy and society and where individuals are primarily trained to work outside academia with a strong scientific skillset.
Culture over structure from the top-down and bottom-up
After an engaging discussion, it was time for some action! “ECRs need clarity, perspective and involvement” shared Paul Boselie, Chief Open Science at UU as he opened the workshop round with an update on the ‘Room for Every PhD’s Talents’ initiative. The project held focus groups with PhD candidates to hear their views, one of the main takeaways being the need to “talk with us instead of about us”. PhD candidates want to be involved in their own professional development and share responsibility for it with their supervisors. Paul finds that a lot is already possible, a point that was previously put forth by Max as well. It was clear that in this case a shift in the “culture rather than than the structure” is more impertinent.
On that note, PNN, along with Max van Duijn wanted to dig deeper into what would motivate PIs to rethink their beliefs about a PhD trajectory. When asked to imagine that we are 10 years down the line and R&R for PhD candidates is at its epitome, the participants overwhelmingly said that they envisioned a PhD trajectory where diverse outputs are encouraged, recognised and rewarded, and papers are not the focus, more so within faculties and departments. To explore how these visions can be further translated into reality, we explored whether a bottom-up approach would help in an angels vs devils setup. While the devils pointed out that a PI’s career is linked to papers published by their PhDs and that they have obligations to their funders, the angels suggested that with new changes such as narrative CVs, teaching and impact profiles, papers are becoming less essential for promotion. However it quickly became quite clear during the discussion that for the angels to truly win, top-down change needs to occur complementary to bottom-up initiatives, and that researchers need to cast the net wider than simply the next rung of the academic ladder.
Stretching the definition of research through Team Science
A shift in the culture and structure of the academy, especially how the system views, acknowledges and rewards research that strays from the traditional path can be slow to trickle down from the top. To catalyse this change, the group discussed that decisions about promotion and assessment of PIs could involve experts from different profiles, maybe even non-academics such as educators and societal stakeholders. The same could apply to PhD supervisory committees, where tapping into expertise from outside the academy could help build a stronger link between science and society and support researchers in taking their work outside the lab. Good science is Team Science where research and impact move hand-in-hand; one PhD candidate or one supervisor should not be ‘five-legged sheep’. Maybe it is time PhD supervisory committees reflect diverse possibilities.
A top-down approach to encourage R&R for PhD candidates was also discussed in a parallel workshop organised by Sicco de Knecht with a goal to “write a letter to the funders”. This group identified that, for funding purposes, a research project is often equated with a PhD project despite that not being explicitly required, leading to strict deliverables that leave little room for diverse activities and alternative outputs. While knowledge exchange is the goal of funding agencies, funding currently operates within a narrow categorisation of what constitutes ‘research activities’. In principle, R&R for PhDs could benefit from stretching the definition to include alternative forms of knowledge dissemination, something that could be made viable through Team Science.
Once all the participants moved back to the main room, the message was clear: change is slow but steady. At a time when the value of the academic community is under interrogation, we need to move from the ‘individual’ to the ‘collective’.
