Supplementary information: How contemporary academic structures constrain scientific creativity and hold back Early Career Researchers

P.J.H. was supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01 (Project DIRECT; Grant No. 101203662) within the European Union’s Horizon 2024 research and innovation programme. C.C.B. benefited from a postdoctoral contract (ref. JDC2023-052358-I), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities (MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033) and the FSE+. J.S. was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 42301064). I.K. was supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship under the Horizon Europe program HORIZONMSCA-2023-PF-01 (UKRI Grant Ref: EP/ Z003237/1), funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). J. A. G. P. was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the Scientific Employment Stimulus program (CEECIND), under contract number 2023.07078.CEECIND/CP2841/CT0002. M.R-R was funded by Maria Zambrano fellowship by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Next Generation EU. J.P. acknowledges the support from long-term research development project RVO 67985939 (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic). N.I.K. was partially supported by the Federal assignment of the Sukachev Institute of Forest, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (no. FWES-2024-0029). T.E. was supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe HORIZON-CL6-2024-BIODIV-01 project ‘GuardIAS - Guarding European Waters from IAS’, under grant agreement no. 101181413. S.H. acknowledges support from KU Leuven’s Internal Funds (PDMt1/25/007). IS was supported by the "Excelencia Severo Ochoa" grant (CEX2024-001498-S) funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible.