The formal definition of a new investigator varies with the funding agency. For example, for the United States
National Institutes of Health, a new investigator is one that does not have a story of previous funding. Other organizations, such as the
Alzheimer's Association, consider a new investigator someone that is less than 10 years past their
PhD degree. The
Canadian Institutes of Health Research require a maximum of 60 months holding a full-time research appointment, and the
Leukemia Research Foundation consider them to be within seven years of their first independent position. The
Medical Research Council (UK) simply considers postdoctoral researchers in their first academic post. The equivalent term
Early Researcher (or Early Career Researcher) is also used in different ways, where for example, for the
Australian Research Council it means someone that received a PhD or equivalent research doctorate within five years, or for the Ontario
Ministry of Research and Innovation must be an independent researcher within the first five years of the start of their independent academic research career. Many journals have recognized the essential contributions and achievements of early researchers and highlighted their profiles in different formats. For instance the Nature research group journal
Communications Biology has launched a series for early career scientists, reporting some of the rising stars in all fields of biology throughout the year. ==References==