Employability and keeping young scientist in science

"Young people should be at the forefront of global change and innovation. Empowered, they can be key agents for development and peace. If, however, they are left on society's margins, all of us will be impoverished. Let us ensure that all young people have every opportunity to participate fully in the lives of their societies." -- Kofi Annan –

Supporting youth brings a better future

Given that the world is changing and is changing at a great speed, the more we have to rely on the energy and perspective of youth.

More and more we are seeing that it is becoming necessary that young people need to be equipped with skills that enable them to adapt and prosper in a changing world and rapid continuous. It is becoming more and more necessary to create new systems that should be in support of young people and to empower them to shape the future they want and not let young people react to the future that others can create for them. In this way confronting the challenges of the modern world would be easier.

Governments, international organizations, institutions, and other stakeholders, should play a more active role in reaching out to young people who do not enjoy the privileges as to a quality education, as well as the participation in different networks or information and financial support. In order to make possible the involvement of young people in decision-making processes worldwide. It is time to support young people to shape the future they want for themselves, and not the future to be imposed on others and then they have to judge whether it is good and useful to them or not.

Also, the support of young people should be in giving them the platforms to express their opinions and to create communities of those individuals who are invested in a sustainable in social and economic development. Also, the creation or continued support of good, positive, and successful examples of young people to serve as a guiding but non-compelling model, I think that would have a positive impact on the orientation and engagement of young people in the right way.

Young scientist and Employability

Employing young scientists and keeping them within science is a challenge in itself. On one side, scientists should be focused on their scientific research, but on the other hand, these researches, except that require time to be implemented seek monetary costs as well.

Also, these scientists need to work somewhere and be paid to secure their livelihoods and their families and also to provide money to cover the cost of their scientific research if they are not funded by institutions, organizations, donors or other actors and stakeholders supporting them.

In my view, keeping these scientists within science and improving their employment could be based on some of the suggestions as below:

? Helping them with preparing CVs, job searches and applications

? To provide accurate and realistic information about the academic labor market

? To provide Careers service

? To provide Training in research methods beyond their own specialism

? To provide Space for offices and support facilities

? To provide Small grants for developing their researches and teaching

? To provide Information, advice, and guidance on work outside academia

? To provide a structured career development program

? Creating Doctoral Training Centers if there are none that can play leading roles in developing, training and supporting early career researchers

Mechanisms to facilitate young scientists to access funding and how to make early career-friendly funding mechanisms can be diverse and varied but I would suggest some alternatives as below:

? To provide online information

? To provide funding for conferences

? To provide funding for publication fees

? To provide smaller-scale funding through a less time-consuming

? To provide access to training

? To provide initial preparation and continuing training

? To provide networking with academic and policy communities

Apart from bibliometric parameters related to publications, I will suggest to include as well:

? The usefulness

? The positive impact on the search results in reality

? The new information that this research brings and

? How innovative is the approach that suggests the research

Excluding young people from speaking and giving opinions in decisions that will also affect them, is something very harmful to everyone because the energy, freshness of thoughts and their perspectives are essential and very important sources in the future of society.

Picture credit: Hana Voca