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More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals

Publishing highly cited papers helps postdoctoral researchers to land a faculty job.

Those who stayed and landed a coveted faculty position were more likely to have had a highly cited paper, changed their research topic between their PhD and postdoc, or moved abroad after receiving their doctorate. Bedoor AlShebli, a computational social scientist at New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and her co-authors wanted to fill a gap in the research and quantify the significance of postdoctoral training to gaining a faculty position and early-career success. This measure is based on the h-index, a count of a researcher’s citations, but focuses only on papers published between two and four years after securing a faculty position.

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