Science is a Marathon Not a Sprint: Creating a Positive Culture for Early Career Researchers

SRNT has a responsibility to support all members of the organization, but those of our members who are early in their careers are particularly valuable to the future of the field, and deserve our particular focus (see https://academic.oup.com/ntr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ntr/nty041/4924610 for a recent discussion of challenges faced by early career researchers). As President of SRNT and Editor-in-Chief of the Society’s journal, we are grateful for the many contributions by our trainees and junior faculty to the functioning of the organization. Your participation—as presenters, authors, Operations Coordinators, members of Networks, and reviewers of abstracts and manuscripts—is essential to the success of our most important activities. One major focus of SRNT this year is to explore how we can get junior colleagues even more involved in the Society, and recognize their efforts in more visible ways.

This recognition can take many forms. For example, it is critical that the research done by early career researchers is fully acknowledged in presentations at the Annual Meeting, both in oral and poster presentations, and in submitted abstracts. Indeed, we encourage mentors to have their younger colleagues take the lead and give oral presentations of their research in symposia at the annual meeting. Perhaps most importantly, we would urge our senior colleagues to support our early career researchers fully, by encouraging them to participate in the activities of SRNT-U and other Networks, and contribute as co-authors of consensus papers. If SRNT, and our community as a whole, can support the career development and recognition of early career researchers, it will assure that the field of nicotine and tobacco research remains healthy and vibrant.