Abstract
The postdoctoral research position is an essential step on the academic career track, and the biomedical research enterprise has become heavily dependent on postdoctoral scholars to conduct experimental research. Monitoring the employment trends in the postdoc population is important for crafting and evaluating policies that affect this critical population. The primary survey for understanding the trends of the biological sciences postdoc population is the Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS) administered by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. Here, we analyzed the yearly changes in the biological sciences postdoc population at institutions surveyed by the GSS. We find that institutional variability in reporting their biological sciences postdoc populations, which sometimes varies by more than 2-fold over consecutive years, masks larger trends in the employment of biological sciences postdocs. Universities indicated the most common cause for the changes was improving institutional policy and tracking of postdocs. We propose the adoption of a unified definition of a postdoc, consolidation of postdoc titles and the creation of an index to better assess biological sciences postdoc trends.
Footnotes
Abbreviations: NSF: National Science Foundation; NCSES: National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics; GSS: Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering
