Over the past two decades, there has been a flurry of government papers and policy reports worldwide calling for increased number and diversity of doctoral researchers and a broadening of the curriculum to meet the developing needs of respective national 'knowledge-driven' economies. This has been followed by position papers and best practice examples of employability skills development in boundary-crossing doctoral programmes, especially in response to these initiatives. However, there is a disassociation between this ample literature expounding the new doctorate with its broader remit, inclusivity and production of 'industry-ready' graduates, and the comparatively sparse literature on the doctoral candidates' experiences of their programmes and career readiness. Within this review, we briefly outline international government initiatives and examples of the responses by Life Science and Biomedical doctoral programmes to address these various challenges. Further, we explore the recent literature on the lived experience of doctoral researchers by examining their perception of the recent changes to the research context to make recommendations for universities and supervisors on how to better support an ever more diverse doctoral population for a wide range of career opportunities. Examples of how doctoral researchers themselves can make the best of currently available opportunities are also provided.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 March 2018.
All research outputs
#9,148,834
of 27,788,362 outputs
Outputs from FEMS Microbiology Letters
#1,819
of 5,995 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#123,991
of 331,082 outputs
Outputs of similar age from FEMS Microbiology Letters
#14
of 46 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,788,362 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 66th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 5,995 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 4.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 69% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 331,082 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 62% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 46 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 69% of its contemporaries.
