The Early Career Researcher's Toolbox Insights into Mentors, Peer Review, and Landing a Faculty Job

This book probes professional development issues crucial to early career researchers, beginning with advice on selecting mentors and optimizing mentoring relationships. From this foundation, the book describes how to navigate the peer-review process, particularly when publishing in academic journals, as well as build connections between the different pieces of academic work published during the early career years. It details strategies to leverage the tools of storytelling to build a research program coupled with concrete guidance on delivering job talks during academic job interviews. In addition, the book includes a feature, Anonymous Accounts, which provides real-life examples of how early career researchers experienced many aspects of their training and illustrates how to overcome obstacles on the path to success in the academic job market.

Key topics featured include:

• Selecting and working with mentors.
• Navigating peer review when publishing in academic journals.
• Building a research program.
• Delivering academic job talks.

The Early Career Researcher’s Toolbox is a must-have resource for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and aspiring undergraduate students as well as all early career and other professionals in search of a resource designed to help them succeed in the academic job market.

Chapter 1. Early Career Researchers Must Tell Stories About Their Work.- Part I. Mentoring and the Early Career Researcher’s Academic Work.- Chapter 2. Tailoring Professional Development Tools to Fit Your Needs.- Chapter 3. How the Research Programs of Mentors Connect to One Another.- Chapter 4. A Conceptual Framework for Mentoring in Graduate Programs.- Chapter 5. Selecting a Mentor in a Graduate Program.- Chapter 6. How to Optimize Mentoring Relationships in Graduate Programs.- Part II. Publishing Academic Work as an Early Career Researcher.- Chapter 7. The Peer Review Process and Publishing Academic Work.- Chapter 8. Tools for Publishing Peer-Reviewed Academic Work: Part 1.- Chapter 9. Tools for Publishing Peer-Reviewed Academic Work: Part 2.- Part III. Building a Research Program as an Early Career Researcher.- Chapter 10. Delivering Academic Job Talks as an Early Career Researcher.- Chapter 11. Selecting the Work to Discuss in an Academic Job Talk.- Chapter 11. A Conceptual Framework for Academic Job Talks.- Chapter 13 Your Academic Job Talk Must Engage the Audience.- Chapter 14. Your Academic Job Talk Must Create Tension.- Chapter 15. Your Academic Job Talk Must Include a Resolution.- Chapter 16. Your Academic Job Talk Must Include an Epilogue.- Chapter 17. Research Programs Exist in a Shared Universe of Stories.

Andres De Los Reyes, Ph.D., received his doctorate in 2008 from Yale University. He began his career as an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. Within 10 years, he was promoted up the ranks to Full Professor with tenure. He serves as Director of the Comprehensive Assessment and Intervention Program, where he has provided research training to hundreds of early career researchers. Dr. De Los Reyes has over 150 publications in the form of books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journal articles. His articles traverse journals in psychology, education, neuroscience, human development, family science, and medicine. These include Psychological Bulletin, Psychological Review, Review of General Psychology, Clinical Psychological Science, Clinical Psychology Review, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Exceptional Children, Journal ofSchool Psychology, Nature Neuroscience, Trends in Cognitive Science, Child Development Perspectives, Development and Psychopathology, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Journal of Psychiatric Research. He has received more than US$1.5 million in research funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, National Science Foundation, and National Institutes of Health. His service record reveals his passion for education and professional development. In 2019, Dr. De Los Reyes served as Chair of the Board of Educational Affairs of the American Psychological Association (APA), Psychology’s largest organization with 100,000+ members. He serves as Editor for the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (2017-2026), a top-tier journal with subscriptions at institutions in more than 30 countries. For the last 15 years, Dr. De Los Reyes has delivered innovative, high-quality professional development training to early career researchers internationally. He also founded and serves as Program Chair for the Future Directions Forum. Tailored to early career researchers, this annual event delivers professional development workshops and small-group and one-on-one consultations on all aspects of scholarly work. Dr. De Los Reyes has received many accolades for his work. These honors include the APA’s Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology and the Early Career Psychologist Champion Award, the Society for Research in Child Development's Early Career Research Contributions Award, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies' President's New Researcher Award, the Anastasi Early Career Award from Division 5 (Quantitative and Qualitative Methods) of the APA, and the Early Career Award  from Division 29 (Psychotherapy) of the APA. He is also a Fellow of both the APA and Association for Psychological Science. During the 2021-2022 academic year, he served as the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Mental Health at the University of Regina.