ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Work, Employment and Organizations
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1655903
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Impact of Intelligent Technologies on the Future of Work: Challenges and Opportunities for Individuals, Organizations, and SocietyView all 5 articles
Skills and Epistemic Cultures in Artificial Intelligence Research: Evidence from Job Postings
Provisionally accepted
- 1National Scientific Research Institute for Labor and Social Protection (INCSMPS), Bucharest, Romania
- 2Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania
- 3Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
- 4Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications and National Institute of Innovations in Cybersecurity “CYBERCOR”, Technical University of Moldova, Chișinău, Moldova
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Artificial Iintelligence (AI) has begun to transform the labor market, allowing technologies to perform some of the tasks previously performed only by humans. Previous studies have shown that artificial intelligence technologies have reshaped workplaces and tasks structures, generating new skill demands in the labor market. However, there is limited research on how the required skills and underlying epistemic orientations of AI researchAI-related academic jobs are communicated during the hiring process. The present study explores this discursive construction of the AI researcher role by analyzing the skills and competencies prioritized in AI-related academic job postingsHowever, there is limited research on the skills needed for AI research and their epistemic culture. The present study aims to explore the skills requirements among artificial intelligence researchers. To achieve the study's goals, we used data on job descriptions from around 800 jobs posted on the EURAXESS platform until January 2024 using descriptive text mining methods and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling. The findings revealed a strong demand for research and digital skills, as well as career development, communication, mobility, and enterprise skills. The results also reveal seven distinct thematic clusters, which we interpret as representations of different epistemic cultures being signaled to prospective candidates.The results also reveal seven distinct thematic clusters representing epistemic cultures. The results can be valuable for policymakers, research institutions, and universities.
Keywords: text mining, Skills, artificial intelligence, researchers, Epistemic cultures, Skills needs
Received: 28 Jun 2025; Accepted: 22 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nastasa, Maer Matei, Rughiniș and Țurcanu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Anamaria Nastasa, anamaria.nastasa@incsmps.ro
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