Scientists Who Support Research Finally Get Recognition

For 27 years, Frank Hemmings has trudged through Australia's scorching grasslands and bone-dry deserts, carefully collecting and cataloging thousands of plant specimens. His pressed leaves and documented samples have quietly fueled 93 scientific studies, yet most people will never know his name.

Hemmings works as a curator at the John T. Waterhouse Herbarium in Sydney, where he dries, identifies, and preserves plants that researchers around the world use to make discoveries. He's collected 3,782 specimens and helped identify more than 10,500, contributing to breakthroughs in pharmaceutical chemistry, climate change research, and ecology.

"I didn't realize early on how the samples I collect could lead to work for someone else years down the track," Hemmings says. He appears as a co-author on 27 papers, but his fingerprints are all over nearly 100 studies.

He's part of a massive community of research support specialists working behind the scenes at scientific institutions worldwide. These professionals rarely get formal recognition, appearing only in brief acknowledgements sections despite being essential to modern research.

Marten Schöle chose this path deliberately. As a fossil preparator at the Berlin Natural History Museum, he works on everything from tiny Cambrian worms that lived 500 million years ago to recent human remains.

He travels to Sudan's deserts, Iran, and Russia to uncover and preserve ancient fossils, then brings them back to Berlin for reconstruction. One mistake can destroy specimens that nature preserved for millennia, and he once spent four months gluing together a cave bear skull that slipped from his desk.

Philippa Broadbent represents a new generation of these essential workers. As a research software engineer at the University of Southampton, she builds programs that improve the accuracy and reproducibility of scientific studies.

"Research software engineering only appeared about 14 years ago," Broadbent says. "It's up to us to define the future of this field."

The Ripple Effect

The Hidden REF initiative launched in 2020 to celebrate these crucial roles and address the career challenges these professionals face. Simon Hettrick, who chairs the campaign, explains that lack of recognition creates real problems for finding positions and advancing careers.

Now institutions are starting to change. Universities are creating new pathways for research support roles, and journals are expanding how they credit contributors beyond traditional authorship.

Hemmings remembers a tense discussion with his university's legal department, which wanted to restrict access to specimen data. His response captured the essence of why recognition matters: "You have to understand—this goes against the very essence of science."

The invisible hands that make discoveries possible are finally being seen.