Switching institutions or research groups can delay tenure.
Scientists who move between countries or research groups as postdocs take up to nine months longer to achieve tenure at Spanish universities than those who stay put, finds a study (L. Sanz-Menéndez et al. PLoS ONE 8, e77028; 2013). The authors surveyed about 1,260 academic scientists and engineers who had earned tenure between 1997 and 2001 at public universities in Spain. Corresponding author Luis Sanz-Menéndez, director of the National Research Council Institute of Public Goods and Policies in Madrid, says that to earn tenure in fewer than five years, the study's average, early-career researchers in Spain should remain at their PhD-granting universities. “There are disincentives for people who are highly mobile,” he says, although he notes that moves explicitly directed by a mentor had no negative effects.
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Mobility disincentive. Nature 502, 713 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7473-713b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7473-713b