Are AI-empowered early career researchers proving to be the harbingers of change?

The Harbingers longitudinal study of early career researchers and their pathfinding scholarly communication attitudes and practices is a decade old and much of its findings have been published in Learned Publishing. We are now moving on to the new generation of researchers – Gen-Z and it is fitting that we draw things to a close by summing up on whether our largely millennial researchers have proved to be the harbingers of change. We focus on the data from the last two rounds of interviewing conducted in the last two years, at the time when AI was (increasingly) propelling change. These two rounds covered over 150 ECRs from all subject fields and from China, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, UK and US. It was found that ECRs are, indeed, at the forefront of the technological adaptation in research, actively exploring the potential of AI and new communication channels. However, their ability to be truly transformative was constrained by a traditional, quantitative evaluation/reputational system. This could change with Gen-Z because, there were ECRs in their twenties included in our previous studies and they displayed higher practical integration of AI tools and appear to be more strategically adopting AI for efficiency and career advancement.