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While the studies of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) have contributed politically important insights into factors hindering ECRs, they have not yet achieved a theoretical understanding of the causal mechanisms that are at work in the transition from dependent to independent research. This paper positions the early career phase in a theoretical framework that combines approaches from the sociology of science and organisational sociology and emphasises the transitional process. In this framework, the early career phase is considered as containing a status passage from the apprentice to the colleague state of their career in their scientific communities. In order to capture the mechanisms underlying this transition, it is important to analyse the interactions of these careers as they unfold over time. The usefulness of this approach is demonstrated with a pilot study of Australian ECRs. We show (a) that misalignments of the three careers stretch the transition phase; (b) that the two major factors affecting the transition are a successful PhD and a research-intensive phase prior to normal academic employment; and (c) that the most important condition hindering the transition is the lack of time for research. It can be concluded that as a result of a 'market failure' of the university system, the transition from dependent to independent research is currently being relocated to a phase between the PhD and the first academic position.

FundingThe art of getting funded: how scientists adapt to their funding conditions Grit Laudel Shrinking university budgets make university researchers more and more dependent on external funds. As a response, they develop specific strategies for selecting external funds and for adapting their research. In a comparative interview-based study of experimental physicists working at Australian and German universities, connections between their funding conditions and adaptation strategies were analysed. Strategies differ between scientists in the two countries because of different funding conditions; and they differ between top scientists and others. The adaptation affects the content of research, for instance, its quality and innovativeness. The findings can be generalised to resource-intensive fields that underwent a shift from recurrent to external funding.Grit Laudel is at .This article has benefited from discussions with Jochen Gläser and comments by Renate Mayntz, Uwe Schimank, Peter Weingart, and several unknown reviewers. As one important result of these discussions, the author hopes to have strengthened her arguments sufficiently to convince readers that the outlined causal relationships do indeed exist, and are not merely her rationalisation of scientists' common complaints.

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