The alignment with the Bologna process and the subsequent creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) framework, principles, and guidelines have significantly changed Spanish doctoral education. In this article, we identify the critical drivers for that change in Spain and address their implications for doctoral education summarised…

Developing an authorial voice along with co-authorship practices can be an important pathway towards building one's professional identity and career. However, challenges may arise when contributors have different expectations about co-authorship conventions and are accountable to different stakeholders. This article aims to explore co-authorship…

Interest plays a major role in the doctoral experience. However, previous research has not considered how the national context might influence interest. This study focused on exploring cross-national variation in doctoral students' experiences by comparing Finnish, UK and Spanish doctoral students' research interests. Participants (n = 2.426)…

Supervision has been shown to have a high impact on doctoral students' development. However, little is known about how students perceive not only negative but also positive doctoral experiences, as well as their strategies for dealing with perceived problematic situations. The aim of this study is to analyse and relate doctoral students'…

Despite the growing number of studies exploring PhD students' experiences and their social relationships with other researchers, there is a lack of research on the interaction between the type of experiences and the social agents involved, especially in relation to not only problems and challenges, but also to positive emotions and experiences. In…

In the current context of doctoral education students are required to develop a range of complex academic literacy skills to accomplish optimal performance in their academic communities of practice. This has led to increase the interest in research on doctoral writing. However, research on how supervisors contribute to doctoral writing has not…

Introduction: In the Spanish context, very little is known about what research means for researchers in training. The goal of this study is twofold: to analyze the research conceptions held by doctoral students in the Social Sciences, and to evaluate how those conceptions relate to several relevant variables in the process of researcher training.…

Despite the increasing popularity of doctoral education, many students do not complete their studies, and very little information is available about them. Understanding why some students consider that they do not want to, or cannot, continue with their studies is essential to reduce dropout rates and to improve the overall quality of doctoral…

EARLI SIG 24, Researcher Education and Careers (SIG-REaC), was founded because increasing interest has emerged within the EARLI community into understanding different aspects of doctoral and post-PhD researcher educational and career development. This special issue brings together the outcome of our first scholarly discussion at the SIG-REaC…