Searching and exploring the motives of continuing in the profession may be an important objective of efforts undertaken by researchers and people directly responsible for the organization and quality of work. Identifying the needs and expectations of the employee is an important element of her/his adaptation in the work environment. Because the age of life is one of the factors affecting the perception of the world and work, in this article motives of continuing professional activity in group of special educators are described in the age of life context.

This paper examines highly paid academics – or “top earners” – employed across universities in ten European countries based on a large-scale international survey data of the academic profession. It examines the relationships between salaries and academic behaviors and productivity, as well as the predictors of being an academic top earner. While in the Anglo-Saxon countries the university research mission traditionally pays off at an individual level, in Continental Europe it pays off only in combination with administrative and related duties. Seeking future financial rewards through research does not seem to be a viable strategy in Europe – but seeking satisfaction in research through solving research puzzles is also getting difficult, with the growing emphasis on “relevance” and “applicability” of research. Thus both the traditional “investment motivation” and “consumption motivation” for research are ever-harder to be followed, with policy implications. The primary data come from 8,466 usable cases. This paper examines change processes in Western Europe and in Poland (in a European context) and its main reference point is American higher education scholarship; it is, on the theoretical plane, the founder of the conceptual frameworks to study academic salaries, and, in practical terms, the US science systems heavily draws on European scientific talents.

After an introduction (§1), all the Ugaritic terms for occupations, professions and social classes are set out in a classified list together with their cognates in other Semitic languages and their equivalents in Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European and other language groups (§2). There are also sections on composite expressions (§3) proper nouns (§§4–5) and both syllabic Ugaritic and Ugaritian Akkadian terms in these categories (§6). A table sets out the results (§7), with statistics for distribution (§8) and language (§9) and finally there are some conclusions (§10).

Science at the state level consists of two distinct and heterogeneous systems: the global science system and national science systems. National science systems are deeply embedded in global science, and states seek to use global knowledge for domestic economic needs. However, harnessing the wealth of global knowledge can only be done through scientists. Consequently, the scientific strength of states in practice depends on the scientific strength of individual scientists. Their ability to collaborate internationally and to tap into the global scientific network is crucial. By remaining outside it and working within local research programs, the academic community risks being marginalized, losing the interest of national research funding patrons, and losing the ability to influence the development of science.

In this text, we analyze the limitations of using academic age as a proxy for biological age in the whole national science system, for which we consider both biological age and academic age of all researchers from all Polish universities, holding at least a PhD degree and participating in global academic science through international publications (N = 20 569). An approximation of a researcher's functioning in global science is having at least one publication indexed in the Scopus database in the analyzed decade 2009–2018. Thus, using the example of comprehensive data from the entire national system of science, we estimate the extent of limitations of using academic age as a proxy for biological age depending on selected independent variables and analyze both the practical and methodological implications of using academic age in academic career research, which is one of the most important components of quantitative studies of science.