Developing Independence as Young Academics at LTH

Abstract

In this particular study, the independence of postdoctoral researchers at LTH has been inves-tigated using the time elapsed from the Ph.D. graduation until the first publication in which neither the Ph.D. supervisor nor co-supervisor are co-authors. The method used in this case is an e-mail survey sent to 99 researchers at Electrical and Information Technology, Computer Science, Measurement Technology and Industrial Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engi-neering, Automatic Control and Solid Mechanics, Mathematics and Mathematical Physics, Atomic Physics, Solid State Physics, Combustion Physics, and Physics. 37% of the respond-ents replied to the questionnaire and the gathered information was evaluated using survival analysis. The questionnaire also contained open-ended questions with respect to perceived independence, giving the opportunity to also draw qualitative conclusions from the study.
From the performed survey, a few conclusions may be drawn. First of all, it is not necessarily so that researcher publishes papers without their main Ph.D. supervisor, even at a significant time after graduation. This can be due to several reasons, one being the dependence of fund-ing related to the supervisor and another reason being the inclusion of the department or re-search group head in all publications. Interestingly, this is underlined by the fact that some respondents considered themselves independent from their supervisor, even without publish-ing anything on their own.
The qualitative analysis showed that, even if this could not be statistically proven, a higher degree of independence (at least as experienced by the respondents) was achieved by switch-ing research group or university. It is also quite clear that the lack of independence is not nec-essarily considered as a negative thing in the eyes of the respondents. The time after gradua-tion is also an important factor in the experience of independence, with a longer time leading to a higher degree of perceived independence.