Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article is an attempt to analyse the social capital associated with careers during and after COVID. The abstract lacks a clearly outlined aim of the study and an indication of the method used. The body of the article lacks a distinct method section; the authors do mention the literature review used, but do not state how it was done.

In the references not every year of publication is in bold.

Author Response

Please find a nicely formatted version attached.

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Reviewer 1

Thank you for reviewing our manuscript. Your comment suggests to us that we have failed to communicate the type of paper clearly enough. We will indicate what we have changed in the manuscript to make this clearer to the reader, but first also lay out it here in the response.

The article is a conceptual paper and, therefore, requires no methods section. This is in line with the journal; in fact, the majority of papers currently online seem to be of that type (e.g., https://www.mdpi.com/2673-8104/1/1/4/htm or https://www.mdpi.com/2673-8104/1/1/5/htm).

We have stated that in the original manuscript, but we have now placed it more prominently (and more often) so that the reader will not miss this important information. We include it in the abstract:

In this conceptual paper, we investigate how the changed social environment created gaps in our understanding of academic career development and the role social capital plays in it.

We also specify the method of literature review and the goal more precisely in the abstract:

Our narrative review of the literature arrives at three major gaps: Two are related to the nature, antecedents, and outcomes of (career-related) social capital, and one is related to the methodological backdrop of how knowledge is being generated in this domain. Based on the identified gaps, we specify avenues for further (and much needed) research.

We iterate the goal in the introduction section…

In this conceptual paper, we call for the exploration of the new nature of social capital and revisit concepts and theories of social capital for their applicability in an in-COVID and post-COVID world.

… and also the process:

In the following, we will outline three major gaps in our current understanding based on a narrative literature review and use these gaps as a basis for developing avenues for further research about in-COVID and likely post-COVID career-related social resources.

We again make this clear in the initial paragraph of the discussion section:

In this conceptual paper, we have outlined gaps in the literature about career-related social capital research. We have done so based on a narrative literature review and an assessment of how the previous research studies can integrate a highly changed environment, the in-COVID/post-COVID condition.

In the references not every year of publication is in bold.

Thank you for having a look at this. The journal allows free format submissions and references in any style/format (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/merits/instructions), this point will be resolved at a later stage.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review report for “Career networks in shock: An agenda for in-COVID/post-2 COVID career-related social capital”

This paper studies career networks in the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors provided a conceptual review of literature on how the changing social environment by the pandemic created gaps in our understanding of academic career development. They proposed three major gaps and specified avenues for further research.

In my view, this paper is interesting, and it covers a group of populations that contribute the most to the research frontier, says, researchers and scientists. In the following, I would like to provide some comments and suggestions, which may be helpful for the authors to further improve their paper.

In the abstract section, there may be a typo, “sustainably”  “substantially”. The authors should double-check. The authors also need to correct the following sentence: “Our review of the literature arrives at three major gaps, two related to the nature, antecedents, and outcomes of (career-related) social capital, one related to the methodological backdrop of how knowledge is being generated in this domain”, as it seems to have grammatical issues. Moreover, “draft exemplary research questions” is not typical English scientific writing.

In the introduction section, the authors are suggested to not start a sentence with “And” very often. Also, when citing papers, it would be better to put them at the end of a. sentence, for example, on page 2, “social capital [2] exists, it is xx”.

As pointed out by the authors “Specifically, we will use early and mid-career researchers as an example for the rest of this paper”, it would be better to cover some papers that explored the unequal effects of the pandemic on scientists. This line of literature is currently missing from the authors’ current literature review. Here I only list some of them, and the authors are encouraged to cover more. [Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists. Nature human behaviour, 4(9), 880-883, 2020], [Gender equity considerations for tenure and promotion during COVID‐19. Canadian review of sociology, 2020], [Potentially long-lasting effects of the pandemic on scientists. Nature Communications, 12(1), 6188, 2021], [Covid-19 disruptions disproportionately affect female academics. In AEA Papers and Proceedings (Vol. 111, pp. 164-68), 2021], and many others. The authors are encouraged to cover more papers.

On page 2, the authors presented “social learning behaviors AUTHORS (2017)” and “favorable career outcomes [AUTHORS 2014a, 2014b;19]”. These should be fixed in the next round or final submission. The authors mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic and the nature of social capital. Along the line of pandemics, there should also be some policy to help early and mid-career researchers. For example, [The unequal impact of parenthood in academia. Science Advances, 7(9), eabd1996, 2021], [Coevolution of policy and science during the pandemic. Science, 371(6525), 128-130, 2021], and [Social Capital in the Response to COVID-19. American Journal of Health Promotion, 34(8), 942-944, 2020]. The authors are encouraged to cover more papers.

The authors are encouraged to cover more papers from interdisciplinary journals other than from management science journals as the authors did. This will not only balance the literature but also give credit to other researchers who also care about these issues and made their contributions.

Author Response

Please find a nicely formatted reply attached.

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Reviewer 2

Thank you!

In the abstract section, there may be a typo, “sustainably” à “substantially”. The authors should double-check.

We did mean sustainably, in terms of the rules for career development may have been changed in lasting ways. But we do understand that this may create confusion due to the closeness to the word “substantially”, which makes sense, too. We now use “lastingly” instead of “sustainably” to aid communication.

…it may have lastingly changed the rules for career development.

The authors also need to correct the following sentence: “Our review of the literature arrives at three major gaps, two related to the nature, antecedents, and outcomes of (career-related) social capital, one related to the methodological backdrop of how knowledge is being generated in this domain”, as it seems to have grammatical issues.

Thank you for your thorough reading. The sentence seems syntactically correct, but rather difficult to read; we have changed the punctuation to enhance clarity:

Our review of the literature arrives at three major gaps: Two are related to the nature, antecedents, and outcomes of (career-related) social capital, and one is related to the methodological backdrop of how knowledge is being generated in this domain.

Moreover, “draft exemplary research questions” is not typical English scientific writing.

This part was also relatively redundant; we have removed it:

Based on the identified gaps, we specify avenues for further (and much needed) research.

In the introduction section, the authors are suggested to not start a sentence with “And” very often. Also, when citing papers, it would be better to put them at the end of a. sentence, for example, on page 2, “social capital [2] exists, it is xx”.

Again, thank you for the thoughtful recommendation to make the ease the reading process!

Ad “And”: The full manuscript only included two such instances, one in the abstract and one in the introduction section. We have revised both:

Due to the (digital) transformation it has caused in the social domain, it may have lastingly changed the rules for career development.

Ad References: We have revised the whole manuscript and relocated references to the end of their respective sentence or the end of the respective part of the sentence (e.g., references 2, 16, 48, 49, 50 of the original manuscript), e.g.:

While a plethora of research about social capital exists [2], it is highly questionable in how far this pre-COVID research can inform an in-COVID or post-COVID world.

[…]

Thus, in order to focus on understanding not only structures but also the meaning behind them and the role of individual agency, qualitative methods of social network analysis need to be considered, too [49,50].

An additional punctuation error with reference 61 was fixed.

Therefore, just adding incremental, more qualitative or mixed-methods based evidence to the discussion might not make much of a difference in a stable setting [cf. path dependencies in research, 61].

As pointed out by the authors “Specifically, we will use early and mid-career researchers as an example for the rest of this paper”, it would be better to cover some papers that explored the unequal effects of the pandemic on scientists. This line of literature is currently missing from the authors’ current literature review. Here I only list some of them, and the authors are encouraged to cover more. [Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists. Nature human behaviour, 4(9), 880-883, 2020], [Gender equity considerations for tenure and promotion during COVID‐19. Canadian review of sociology, 2020], [Potentially long-lasting effects of the pandemic on scientists. Nature Communications, 12(1), 6188, 2021], [Covid-19 disruptions disproportionately affect female academics. In AEA Papers and Proceedings (Vol. 111, pp. 164-68), 2021], and many others. The authors are encouraged to cover more papers.

Thank you for these recommendations, we have widened the scope of the literature. That said, we have added those references not directly the part that you quoted, but later in the same paragraph. Now the paragraph is structured in a way that first there are a variety of statements that do not warrant specific references, which are then supported by the second part that includes many references to empirical studies and COVID-19 related commentaries. This includes the references mentioned by you and several others.

This is an interesting population, as careers of researchers have been affected quite directly by COVID through travel restrictions and social distancing standards, impaired opportunities for field work (and subsequently delayed or cancelled research projects), cancelled academic conferences that represented venues for academic social exchange, learning, and socialization [4]. Collaboration even among immediate colleagues has been hampered [5], while at the same time opportunities opened up for collaborations irrespective of geographical considerations. Fry et al. [6] studied international collaboration patterns in early COVID-research and indeed found a change in the pattern of research teams: they became smaller and international collaboration (between more elite institutions) was intensified. At the same time, the precariousness and uncertainty often associated with the positions of early and mid-career researchers [7–10] is of interest, as “individuals […] who lack resources are more vulnerable to resource loss and less capable of resource gain” [11]. This is echoed by current research that has shown that COVID tends to exacerbate the situation for people already in precarious work situations, making them even more vulnerable [e.g., 12–14]. The pandemic had unequal effects depending on, for example, researchers’ field of study [15], their gender [16–19], parenthood [20–22], or their mental and physical health status [23]. Importantly, these consequences may be long-lasting, as Gao et al. [24] concluded based on the observation that the number of new research project has gone down (and stayed down so far).

On page 2, the authors presented “social learning behaviors AUTHORS (2017)” and “favorable career outcomes [AUTHORS 2014a, 2014b;19]”. These should be fixed in the next round or final submission.

In agreement with the submission guidelines, clear names will only be used when submitting the final version.

The authors mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic and the nature of social capital. Along the line of pandemics, there should also be some policy to help early and mid-career researchers. For example, [The unequal impact of parenthood in academia. Science Advances, 7(9), eabd1996, 2021], [Coevolution of policy and science during the pandemic. Science, 371(6525), 128-130, 2021], and [Social Capital in the Response to COVID-19. American Journal of Health Promotion, 34(8), 942-944, 2020]. The authors are encouraged to cover more papers.

The authors are encouraged to cover more papers from interdisciplinary journals other than from management science journals as the authors did. This will not only balance the literature but also give credit to other researchers who also care about these issues and made their contributions.

We have considered the papers you have mentioned and added them as well as several others with multi- and interdisciplinary backgrounds to the text. It was not always clear to us, to which section you were referring; but maybe you did mean this in a more general sense (directed at the manuscript as a whole).

We have added new references/text throughout the manuscript; most notably in the introduction section…

While COVID may have transformed the social landscape significantly, there is no reason to believe that it did diminish the overall importance of social contact—which makes this knowledge gap especially worrisome. Social capital interventions have also been proposed to fend of the pandemic in the first place [3].

[…]

Collaboration even among immediate colleagues has been hampered [5], while at the same time opportunities opened up for collaborations irrespective of geographical considerations. Fry et al. [6] studied international collaboration patterns in early COVID-research and indeed found a change in the pattern of research teams: they became smaller and international collaboration (between more elite institutions) was intensified.

[…]

The question that arises here is how academic careers can be successfully managed, despite these changes and the current state of uncertainty. This question is of relevance not only to individual researchers, but also for society, as it puts future academic leadership at risk (which is even more problematic in so far that COVID-related research has also shown that policy has become more strongly linked to scientific knowledge creation during COVID [29]).

… and in the discussion section:

This also means that certain aspects of life and careers in COVID will not revert to their pre-COVID status. Gibson et al. [69] also proposed using the momentum created by COVID to “reset science”, that is, rebuilding how the academic systems works so that it becomes friendlier towards early career researchers. Interestingly, many of the interventions or changes the authors provide in their commentary contain aspects of social capital (either at the system level in terms of improved collaboration between science, funding, and public or the individual level, for example, through increased mentoring opportunities).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to thank the authors for considering my comments and suggestions. I am largely satisfied with the response. In this round, I have no further comments. I would encourage the authors to polish this paper. Good luck with the publication.

Review Reports

Reviewer 1

Reviewer 2