How do research careers compare across countries? New global database has some answers

From ScienceMag:

In which countries do scientists earn the most? Does having a doctorate degree provide greater job security than having a master’s degree? What sectors and jobs do Ph.D.-holders in different parts of the world end up in?

These questions and more are now easier to answer, thanks to a new database that provides a one-stop shop for detailed information covering 53 countries across the world. The publicly available interactive platform, launched earlier this month by the Research and Innovation Careers Observatory (ReICO), aims to guide policymakers’ decisions to improve training and working conditions for researchers—and help scientists make informed career choices.  

Having a single go-to source for reliable careers data across countries is “incredibly useful,” says Nicola Dengo, vice president of the grassroots early-career researcher organization Eurodoc. But unless each country fully embraces the initiative, he warns, “the observatory is not going to grow to its full potential.”

As the number of researchers has risen across the world in recent decades, so have concerns about the working conditions and sustainability of research careers—but national data remained patchy and inconsistent. “Without robust and comparable data, countries cannot benchmark their systems, identify structural challenges, or assess the effectiveness of policy reforms,” says Neda Bebiroglu, who coordinates an effort from the French-speaking community of Belgium to collect career data about researchers there and contributed national data to the new project. “And for individual researchers, these blind spots can limit progress toward more sustainable and inclusive research careers.”

ReICO is a response to these issues. Cofunded by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission, the project has so far been able to gather data from 53 countries, spanning Europe, Asia, Oceania, South Africa, and the Americas. In addition to collecting data that were already publicly available, ReICO has created a network of 45 countries that pledged to participate, with 31 of them providing so-far unpublished data.

Visitors to the ReICO website can use interactive dashboards to explore this data in detail. For example, the platform reveals that across the 19 countries that supplied comparable income information, Ph.D.-holders in the United States are compensated best, adjusting for purchasing power (approximately $126,300 annually), closely followed by those in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Norway. When it comes to the gender pay gap, Colombia leads the way with near pay equality, whereas employed women Ph.D.-holders in Italy earn just 62% of what their male colleagues make. Luxembourg shows the greatest apparent brain gain, with a net increase of 4.62% of researchers in 2023, according to an analysis of the affiliations noted in scientists’ publications; South Africa experienced the largest brain drain, with a net 1.88% of research authors leaving the country.

Having begun development of the observatory just 1 year ago, both the OECD and the European Commission stress that this is a work in progress. The platform is still in its beta version, and users are encouraged to experiment with the platform and provide feedback. The observatory plans to release updated data annually; in the future, it hopes to include data on the roles and skills in demand in industry, where researchers are increasingly employed.

To paint a clearer picture of the global research landscape, individual countries will need to invest more into providing transparent and high-quality data, says Verity Elston, co-director of the Graduate Campus at the University of Lausanne. That could prove challenging in certain areas: for instance, little is currently known about postdocs, she says. Bebiroglu agrees that information about postdocs is critical. “We often lack even basic data—like the average length of their contracts. This makes it difficult to assess the scale of the problem or to design effective policy responses.”

The shape and terminology of research careers also vary considerably across countries, so figuring out some sort of standardization is key to allowing meaningful analysis. “If countries collect data, but … the underlying definitions are inconsistent, that data becomes difficult—or even misleading—to compare,” Bebiroglu says. Now that ReICO has set up a sound methodological process for international data collection, the next big challenge for the observatory will be to go further into establishing a “common language.”

Despite the limitations, Dengo sees ReICO as a step in the right direction. “We really need something like this to work,” he says. “It’s fundamental to solv[ing] the issues of research careers.”

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