Three researchers and a career coach discuss if there as much scope to negotiate salaries in academia as there is in industry.

In either setting, they say, negotiation should not be a battleground. Hiring managers should not take advantage of a beloved future colleague who may have zero experience of negotiating anything, says David Perlmutter, a communications researcher at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, who writes about hiring and salary negotiations.

Nor is it like a car sale, adds Jen Heemstra, a chemistry researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, after which the two sides part company forever. “In an academic negotiation if there’s a winner and a loser, then you’ve really both lost,” she says.

Perlmutter advises early career researchers to build confidence by practicing salary negotiation with a colleague before doing it for real. “No matter what’s going on, try to be respectful, friendly and positive,” he says.

Margot Smit, a plant molecular biologist at Tübingen University, Germany, and Lauren Celano, a careers coach who co-founded Propel Careers, based in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2009, lists non-pay elements to work into a negotiation.

This is the fourth episode in a six-part podcast series about hiring in science.

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Julie Gould compares hiring practices across industry and academia by seeking perspectives from Tina Persson, an organic chemist-turned-careers coach based in Malmö, Sweden, and Lauren Celano, a recruitment consultant who founded Propel Careers, based in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2009.

Persson, whose coaching business is called passage2pro, tells Gould why it typically takes longer to hire scientists in academia. Margot Smit, a plant molecular biologist who now recruits scientists for her lab at Tübingen University in Germany, reflects on her own experiences as an academic jobseeker in 2022. It involved panel interviews, lab tours, team dinners, and, in one case, a symposium where all candidates gave a talk. Now, as someone who recruits scientists to her lab, she involves junior colleagues in hiring decisions.

Jen Heemstra tells a similar tale. Her search for a department chair position in 2022 meant moving not only herself but also her entire chemistry research group to Washington University in St. Louis. She explains how she updated her colleagues and addressed their questions and concerns about the impending move.

Finally, Rachel Howard describes how she hopes to make the process quicker and easier for hiring managers at the Francis Crick Institute in London, where she is head of talent acquisition.

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Academia’s focus on individual achievement can be a breeding ground for poor mental health, says astrophysicist Kelly Korreck.

Korreck, who experienced pandemic-related burnout while working on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, describes a competitive and ultimately damaging ‘lone wolf’ culture. She is joined by psychologist Desiree Dickerson to discuss how a stronger focus on group success can better protect researchers.

Dickerson also calls for improved onboarding processes for early career researchers. They should involve clear conversations about looming challenges, including first person accounts from people who faced work-related stress, anger, anxiety and depression, she argues.

“If we only value papers and funding, then of course, we protect those who have great papers and bring in lots of funding. We don’t look after the well-being of the people who actually need to be looked after,” she says.

Social and clinical psychologist Ciro De Vincenzo reflects on the positive emotions he felt and witnessed during a fieldwork project as part of his research into migration patterns in the European Union.

In contract, his experience of academic life at the University of Padua, Italy, was often less positive, pervaded by a strong sense of imposter syndrome and professional isolation. But being elected to the university senate enabled him to explore the systemic changes needed to improve researcher mental health, he says.

And finally, Tammy Steeves, a conservation genomicist at the University of Canterbury in Chistchurch, New Zealand, describes her involvement in the Kindness in Science initiative, a movement to counter many of the perverse incentives that pervade academia, and its achievements to date.

This is the final episode of this eight-part podcast series Mind matters: academia’s mental health crisis.

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Three researchers with personal experience of anxiety and depression triggered by studying the environmental destruction caused by a changing climate describe the steps they take to protect their mental health.

Ruth Cerezo-Mota, a climate scientist based at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, found herself grieving for the state of the

planet through her work for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Experiencing a panic attack at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a fear of checking emails and a sense of disengagement from work, led to her seeking professional help. “I was in a really dark place,” she tells Adam Levy. Retreating to a “happy place” that combines home, books, yoga, running, cats and wine is a key copying strategy when things get tough, she says.

Similar experiences are recounted by Dave Reay, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh UK, and Daniel Gilford, a meteorologist who works at Climate Central, a science-led non-profit based in Princeton, New Jersey, that researches and reports the facts about climate change and its effects on peoples lives.

Talking to other climate researchers and focusing on positive developments around climate change also helps, says Reay. Gilford, who is based in Orlando, Florida, likens climate change to being in the path of an approaching train: “I can see it coming with all of its weight and heaviness, and I’m screaming ‘Stop. Stop the train. Stop the train.’

“By screaming, by saying what is happening, by naming the problem and telling people about it, I think that that can become a solution as well,” he says.

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Kelly Korreck tells Adam Levy how a once-loved career in science gradually left her feeling exhausted, upset, and chronically stressed, with accompanying feelings of imposter syndrome.

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic deprived Korreck, an astrophysicist then working on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, of the favourite parts of her job. These included face-to-face mentoring, public engagement and conference travel. ”It really took a toll,” she says. ”There was none of the joy that I experienced previously. I thought it was my fault, that I was an imposter. I had gotten to this level, and I just wasn’t good enough.”

Desiree Dickerson, a clinical psychologist based in Valencia, Spain, outlines the different stages of burnout, and how the academic culture often encourages researchers to present a ”shiny façade” to the world.

Dickerson, who works with academic institutions to develop healthier and more sustainable approaches to research, outlines three different stages of burnout, and how and when to seek help.

This episode is the fourth in Mind Matters, an eight-part series on mental health and wellbeing in academia.

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