[Between habilitation and junior professorship: alternatives to general practice and clinical medicine]

The junior professorship is a new model in Germany to overcome problems of the so-called "habilitation", which has up to the present been the typical career path for future scientists. The junior professor career promotes own research but hampers young scientists in their clinical activity and education. Here, we plead for a research doctorate in clinical medicine and general practice finally leading to a PhD degree for the following four reasons: (1) Having lower thresholds and increasing the motivation for applicants, the entry into a PhD model is less formalised than for a habilitation procedure. (2) Compared to the junior professorship, it allows for a combination of, and exchange between, clinical and scientific requirements more easily. (3) The applicants' scientific creativity and research can be reliably assessed. (4) It protects applicants from a strong personal dependence on the head of department without neglecting the development of significant clinical excellence.