TY - JOUR
KW - Careers
KW - Developing world
KW - Education
KW - Scientific community
AU - Phillip J. Haubrock
AU - Antonín Kouba
AU - Ismael Soto
AU - Neil Angelo S. Abreo
AU - Lorenzo Vilizzi
AU - Dagmara Błońska
AU - Ali Serhan Tarkan
AU - Vanessa De Santis
AU - Ronaldo Sousa
AU - António Barbosa Nogueira
AU - Senne Heeren
AU - Joana Garrido Nogueira
AU - Carlos Cano-Barbacil
AU - Bruno Cremella
AU - Diederik Strubbe
AU - Janine Pereira da Silva
AU - Riccardo Poloni
AU - Pablo Deschepper
AU - Eli S. J. Thoré
AU - Benjamin Misteli
AU - Jingrui Sun
AU - Martina Panisi
AU - David Dudgeon
AU - Valentini Stamatiadou
AU - Shams M. Galib
AU - Chelly Maes
AU - Nompumelelo C. Baso
AU - Wouter Beukema
AU - Barbora Števove
AU - Eva Záhorská
AU - Irmak Kurtul
AU - Davinder Kaur
AU - Augusto Frederico Huber
AU - Dariusz Halabowski
AU - Janeide de Assis Guilherme Padilha
AU - Paride Balzani
AU - Cüneyt Kaya
AU - Esra Bayçelebi
AU - Michele Mugnai
AU - Danish A. Ahmed
AU - Gülşah Saç
AU - Sadi Aksu
AU - Burak Malik Kaya
AU - Mulkibar Ciftcioglu
AU - Xiaoming Jiang
AU - Marta Rodríguez-Rey
AU - Irene Martín-Forés
AU - Suzana Gonçalves Leles
AU - Lucian Pârvulescu
AU - Jan Pergl
AU - Federica Rossetto
AU - Hui Wei
AU - Natalia I. Kirichenko
AU - Elizabeta Briski
AU - Luca Gallitelli
AU - J. Robert Britton
AU - Teun Everts
AB - We argue that contemporary scientific systems progressively constrain high-risk and conceptually innovative research while being increasingly structured around short funding cycles, productivity-based evaluation criteria and risk-averse frameworks that favour predictable and non-transformative research outputs. Drawing on recent empirical literature, we show how such systems can place disproportionate pressure on early-career researchers by incentivizing safe, tractable and easily evaluated outputs. Structural academic mechanisms such as peer review and funding, escalating publication costs and institutional inequalities interact with precarious employment and hierarchical dependencies. In this environment, we contend that strategic conformity becomes a rational career path. This risks suppressing creativity and critical thinking precisely at the stage when scientific independence could otherwise emerge. Consequently, the probability of substantive contributions by early-career researchers is declining, while talent may increasingly abandon academia or cluster within a limited number of well-resourced institutions and national systems. By adopting a systems-level perspective, we argue that scientific creativity is not merely an individual trait but an emerging property of a supportive academic landscape and that maintaining or restoring it may require substantial structural reforms. These include promoting stable research pathways, decentralized decision-making and evaluation frameworks that better recognize collaboration, originality, persistence and nonlinear career trajectories. Without systemic change, we risk stifling the potential of early-career researchers to go beyond the confines of existing methods and approaches and deliver transformative advances. This would limit their capacity to meaningfully change our understanding of the world or benefit society, with impacts that fall short of their potential.
BT - Nature Human Behaviour
DA - 2026-09-03
DO - 10.1038/s41562-026-02575-5
LA - en
N2 - We argue that contemporary scientific systems progressively constrain high-risk and conceptually innovative research while being increasingly structured around short funding cycles, productivity-based evaluation criteria and risk-averse frameworks that favour predictable and non-transformative research outputs. Drawing on recent empirical literature, we show how such systems can place disproportionate pressure on early-career researchers by incentivizing safe, tractable and easily evaluated outputs. Structural academic mechanisms such as peer review and funding, escalating publication costs and institutional inequalities interact with precarious employment and hierarchical dependencies. In this environment, we contend that strategic conformity becomes a rational career path. This risks suppressing creativity and critical thinking precisely at the stage when scientific independence could otherwise emerge. Consequently, the probability of substantive contributions by early-career researchers is declining, while talent may increasingly abandon academia or cluster within a limited number of well-resourced institutions and national systems. By adopting a systems-level perspective, we argue that scientific creativity is not merely an individual trait but an emerging property of a supportive academic landscape and that maintaining or restoring it may require substantial structural reforms. These include promoting stable research pathways, decentralized decision-making and evaluation frameworks that better recognize collaboration, originality, persistence and nonlinear career trajectories. Without systemic change, we risk stifling the potential of early-career researchers to go beyond the confines of existing methods and approaches and deliver transformative advances. This would limit their capacity to meaningfully change our understanding of the world or benefit society, with impacts that fall short of their potential.
PY - 2026
SP - 1
EP - 11
T2 - Nature Human Behaviour
TI - How contemporary academic structures constrain scientific creativity and hold back early-career researchers
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02575-5
Y2 - 2026-09-04
SN - 2397-3374
ER -