What is the difference between a postdoctoral research associate, and a postdoctoral fellowship?

It's that time of year when many recent PhDs and ECRs are thinking about their next career move. I am currently fielding a number of enquiries about this, from people interested in working with us in the NEMCAS lab, and it made me realise yet one more thing that is not always made clear to people early on in their academic careers. The word postdoc is used to generally to describe roles that a researcher undertakes after their PhD, but it's a broad label that actually conceals important distinctions. The biggest distinction is between a postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) employed on someone else's grant, and an independent research fellow holding their own funding. Both have PhDs, both are researchers. Both may publish papers, supervise students, and contribute to major discoveries, but the relationship they have to the research itself is fundamentally different.

A PDRA is employed to work on a project that has been conceived, designed, and funded under the leadership of a Principal Investigator (PI). The PI developed the research questions, wrote the grant proposal, secured the funding, and is ultimately responsible for delivering the project to the funder. The PDRA is therefore part of a project team, and is employed to help deliver the research objectives that have already been agreed. This can sometimes be a difficult reality to navigate because academia trains us to be independent thinkers. Throughout a PhD, students are encouraged to develop their own ideas, take ownership of their work, and establish an intellectual identity. Then, after graduation, many find themselves in a role that is much closer to conventional employment. They are not leading the project, they are contributing to it. They may have considerable intellectual freedom, and they may make substantial contributions to methodology, interpretation, and publication, but ultimately they are working within the framework of someone else's funded research programme.

This can occasionally generate tensions around ownership, authorship, and decision-making, as PDRAs can understandably develop a strong sense of ownership, especially if it's a project that is close to their own research interests. But it is important to remember that you are working for the PI, and the ownership and decision making rest with them. This lack of clarity over research roles can also lead to misunderstandings about what the PI is actually being funded to do. A common complaint is that the PDRA is the person 'doing all the work' while the PI takes the credit. This usually stems from the observation that the postdoc is often the individual generating the data. They are in the laboratory, conducting fieldwork, running analyses, processing samples, collecting data. Meanwhile, the PI may appear to spend much of their time in meetings, reviewing documents, responding to emails, managing budgets, and preparing further grant applications.

Generating data is only one component of a successful research project. Someone has to identify the research problem in the first place, to develop a compelling intellectual vision that obtains the funding, assemble the team, manage the budget, ensure ethical and legal compliance, oversee project delivery, report to funders, build collaborations, provide strategic direction, troubleshoot when problems arise, support team members, and take responsibility when things go wrong. These responsibilities sit with the PI. In many ways, the relationship is similar to that found in other professional environments. The fact that a senior engineer is not physically assembling every component does not mean they are not contributing. The fact that a lead architect is not laying every brick does not mean they are not responsible for the building. A cinematographer may generate much of the footage for a film, but the project still belongs to the director who conceived it, secured the funding, assembled the team, and is ultimately responsible for the finished product. Different members of a team perform different functions. 

Indeed, one of the defining features of academic career progression is that researchers gradually spend less time personally generating data and more time creating the conditions that allow research to happen. Many successful academics (myself included!) find themselves missing the days when they could spend entire weeks in the field, in the laboratory, or at the microscope, but the demands of leadership necessarily shift their role elsewhere.

Of course, this dynamic only works when PIs recognise their responsibility to support the development of the researchers they employ. A good PI will invest as much in supporting and developing their team, as on the research itself. The best research groups provide opportunities for leadership, first-author publications, grant writing experience, student supervision, networking, and intellectual contribution. The goal should be to help postdoctoral researchers build the skills and reputation needed to become independent researchers in their own right.

Conversely, in an independent research fellowship, the fellow is effectively the PI. They developed the idea, wrote the proposal, secured the funding, and lead the project. They may have a senior academic mentor who offers advice and support, but the project belongs to the fellow. The research agenda is theirs. The intellectual direction is theirs. The responsibility for success or failure is theirs. This is why securing a fellowship is often viewed as such a significant career transition. It represents a shift from contributing to someone else's vision to leading your own. Many researchers who have moved from PDRA roles into fellowships gain a new appreciation for just how much invisible work goes into making research happen before a single sample is analysed.

An important thing to recognise is that neither role is inherently superior, they are simply different. The confusion arises when we blur distinct roles together under the single label of postdoc. Doing so obscures important differences in responsibility, ownership, and expectations. Understanding those differences helps explain why some researchers are leading projects while others are contributing to them, and why generating data is only one part of research.