Inviting researchers to participate in global survey on mental health in academia

Cactus Communications, a global scholarly, medical communication, and technology solutions company, has launched a large-scale survey that aims to shed light on joy and stress triggers and overall mental health in academia. Researchers are at the forefront of creating knowledge that can benefit society, often working in a hypercompetitive environment and dealing with higher levels of anxiety and stress than professionals in other walks of life. Mental health in academia has been a widely discussed topic in the past few years, both in academic journals as well as personal blogs. However, research on this topic at a global scale is starkly lacking.

This survey, being conducted in multiple languages in collaboration with active researchers who are also mental health advocates, is designed to highlight the highs and lows of life as a researcher, including what aspects of their professional life bring them joy and fulfilment versus what aspects cause them stress and anxiety. The survey also explores what kind of support researchers receive or would like to receive from their universities and institutions.

Speaking about the survey launch, Abhishek Goel, Cofounder & CEO, CACTUS, says, “During our efforts to help researchers in their publication endeavors over the past 17 years, we have witnessed first-hand the high levels of anxiety they experience even in just the publication process. On our researcher community platform Editage Insights, we have researchers sharing their personal stories, and we are surprised at how strongly issues like isolation, depression, and anxiety emerge as recurrent themes. We are aware that these issues are not spoken about enough and definitely not with the same intensity at a global level. Through this survey we aim to give researchers a voice and allow them to share aspects of their professional life that their institutional administrators, grant and tenure committees, publishers, and even family may not be well tuned to. We hope that the results of this survey can amplify discussions around mental health in academia and help in the creation of a more supportive and nurturing environment that allows researchers to flourish professionally and truly lead global development forward.”

CACTUS is inviting universities, research institutions, and all types of organizations that interact with academic researchers to sign up as survey partners to show that they care for and are committed to the cause of researcher wellbeing. Partnering organizations will receive priority access to the survey results.

This global researcher survey is one of the flagship, large-scale initiatives of CACTUS Foundation, an initiative aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in order to help researchers grow and create societal impact through their research.

Click here to take the survey. 

Click here to sign-up as an institutional partner.

About Cactus Foundation

Cactus Foundation, an initiative aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, helps researchers grow into leaders and create global impact with their work.​ It supports their professional development by providing education, grants, and business support and aims to build an equitable, sustainable, and inclusive future through research. Cactus Foundation is part of Cactus Communications, a global scientific communications company that collaborates with researchers across academic disciplines, universities, publishers, societies, and life sciences organizations to accelerate research impact. CACTUS’ portfolio of products and services meet a wide spectrum of research needs: Editage provides editorial, translation, education, and training solutions for researchers; Cactus Life Sciences offers strategic and tactical scientific content solutions to global life sciences organizations; PubSURE is the first AI-powered scholarly publishing platform connecting journals and researchers; and Impact Science ensures wider research impact via dissemination solutions and research engagement with peers, public, and policy makers. Powering all CACTUS businesses with latest technologies is its innovation and R&D cell Cactus Labs. CACTUS also incubates seed and early stage start-ups that share its mission to solve global problems with science and technology solutions.

CACTUS is an international enterprise with offices in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, London, Princeton, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Singapore; a global workforce of over 3,000 experts; and customers from over 173 countries. CACTUS has been consistently ranked as a Great Place to Work, with its best annual ranking of #1 in 2017 (Great Places to Work survey)