Abstract

This conceptual article addresses researcher independence (RI), i.e. academics’ capacity to establish themselves within their community, claim intellectual ownership, and align research with personal values – as a relational and regulated construct. Drawing on institutional governance, we apprehend RI as shaped by organisational arrangements and normative expectations that structure institutions and researchers’ behaviour and agency. Using an integrative literature review and a situational analysis, we map the individual and collective actors, institutional instruments, incentive structures and the symbolic and social structuring forces that together constitute the landscape in which RI is negotiated. Then, we identify career stage-specific configurations of RI: scaffolded emergence during the doctorate, constrained in precarious post-PhD roles, and prescribed at an established career stage. The resulting analytical framework supports analysis of the evolving support structures, constraints, and normative expectations shaping RI, which emerges as a contextually embedded and negotiated process rather than a linear progression.