The science behind soft skills: Do’s and Don’ts for early career researchers and beyond. A review paper from the EU-CardioRNA COST Action CA17129 [version 2; peer review: 1 approved, 2 approved with reservations]

Abstract

Soft skills are the elementary management, personal, and interpersonal abilities that are vital for an individual to be efficient at workplace or in their personal life. Each work place requires different set of soft skills. Thus, in addition to scientific/technical skills that are easier to access within a short time frame, several key soft skills are essential for the success of a researcher in today’s international work environment. In this paper, the trainees and trainers of the EU-CardioRNA COST Action CA17129 training school on soft skills present basic and advanced soft skills for early career researchers. Here, we particularly emphasize on the importance of transferable and presentation skills, ethics, literature reading and reviewing, research protocol and grant writing, networking, and career opportunities for researchers. All these skills are vital but are often overlooked by some scholars. We also provide tips to ace in aforementioned skills that are crucial in a day-to-day life of early and late career researchers in academia and industry.

Keywords

• Soft skills
• early career researcher
• research ethics
• publication writing
• career opportunities
• academia
• eng