Postdoctoral researchers in the first years of their scholarly career (‘Early Career Researchers’ / ECRs: levels R2 and R3) play an important role in science and research worldwide. They significantly promote advancement in disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies, thus providing a basis for sustaining knowledge and for responding to the demanding issues and challenges of our time: early career researchers are the driving force of the future of research and innovation!

At the same time, ECRs, being already fully educated and highly ambitious, have to develop research independence and strive for individual success by finding their ways into different research communities. They often have not yet reached permanent positions within a highly competitive research arena. They need to experience personal and scholarly mobility at the same time as being in a challenging, crucial and increasingly precarious phase of building up their lives and careers. European and global research institutions as well as the European Commission have recognized the urgent need to strengthen early career research development. They have taken action in support of early career scholars in order to ensure the future of excellent research on different levels.1

Institutes for Advanced Studies (IAS) are integral parts of the European and global research constellation. They provide intellectual freedom and an open space for intellectual discourse; they offer research time, exchange and support for a community of world-class scholars from a diversity of disciplines, countries and affiliations. Fixed-term stays as fellows at IAS aim at enabling and strengthening curiosity-driven, innovative, top-level research in all disciplines, and beyond disciplinary boundaries. Additionally, they help to build long-lasting scholarly networks, allow insights into novel research paths and provide international mobility, opportunities for interdisciplinary cooperation and for career development within and beyond academia.

The European Network of Institutes for Advanced Studies (NetIAS) unites 25 such IAS from all over Europe. Early Career Researchers make up a high proportion of fellows in NetIAS. Every year, the NetIAS member institutes host almost 250 of them from various disciplines and from Europe and around the world, providing around 2000 person-months of annual funding. Thus, fellowships at NetIAS institutes contribute significantly to postdoctoral funding schemes in Europe,2 be it through the IAS’ own or through third-party funding, fostering mobility, career development, and research innovation.

In awareness of:

• the common responsibility to advance early career research development as an indispensable factor of the advancement of science and research, the necessity to strengthen scholars in the early stages of their career in recognition of their particular needs and innovative potential,
• the particular role and strengths of IAS for the freedom of research,
• the need for permanent improvement of and debate upon the roles of IAS and
• the diversity of research opportunities and potentials the high number of European IAS provides within the European research area,

NetIAS has agreed the following principles for the advancement of early career research in their member Institutes. These suggestions are offered as a tool, a perspective or a horizon for creating, carrying out and improving early career programmes in IAS and beyond.