Response to Petersen on ‘staying or going?’ Australian early career researchers’ narratives

We write in response to Eva Bendix Petersen's commentary on 'Australian early career researchers' narratives of academic work, exit options and coping strategies', published in Australian Universities' Review (AUR) 53(2). While the professoriate is, perhaps, unable to directly tackle the malaise that Petersen ascribes to what she sees as an unsustainable staffing condition in the universities, we argue that the professoriate has a duty of care to early career academics, a duty of care that can be articulated through active mentoring. Acknowledging the growing group of academics recruited from the professions and/or specifically for teaching, but now increasingly required to meet scholarly research performance targets, we describe an approach to guided and mentored team-based, multi-authored research. By aligning experienced and inexperienced researchers into small project teams, often with a scholarship of teaching and learning focus, we demonstrate how early career academics can be better inducted into the world of academe, start to be research-productive, and thus be acknowledged, validated and rewarded.