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This article's purpose is to report the findings and implications of a study that explored factors promoting and hindering international doctoral students' academic engagement.

An empirical study sought data through a questionnaire from international students registered for doctoral study at the University of Helsinki. Open‐ended and Likert‐scale survey data were qualitatively and quantitatively analysed.

The students commented most frequently (41 per cent) on the scholarly community as a factor in promoting their studies. Departmental issues had the largest proportion of hindering factors overall (34 per cent). Promoting factors related to the supervision they received and private domain factors were positively related to students' satisfaction with their studies. Considering dropping out was significantly associated with hindering factors related to their supervision and to departmental issues. Also, peers and colleagues were not significantly associated with students' satisfaction with their studies or with their contemplating dropping out.

The article addresses key issues that will be of interest and benefit to universities who wish to retain and attract overseas research students. In particular, it discusses the importance of wider scholarly communities in providing international doctoral students with a favourable study experience which may be enhanced by performing departmental tasks as an important part of enculturation within supportive scholarly communities.

This paper offers a novel way of understanding early career researcher development, as illustrated by doctoral students' academic experiences. It also taps into the under‐ examined area of international doctoral students' study experiences.

This study investigates lecturers’ challenges in guiding students’ final scientific work online during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the impact of lecturers’ digital technology proficiency on the students’ ability to compile their thoughts and produce scientific work independently.

The study involved 45 lecturers and 140 students. Data was collected through online surveys using the Google Forms application and focus group discussions. The data were analysed qualitatively and interpretively based on the surveys and interviews.

The findings reveal three modes of mentoring: online, mixed, and offline. Many lecturers’ reluctance to use digital technology for mentoring stems from their lack of proficiency, resulting in mixed mentoring methods. This digital inadequacy affects students’ ability to write scientific work independently, as they are not accustomed to self-directed learning. The pandemic has necessitated more independent work from students, with limited physical guidance from lecturers, leading to a decline in the quality of scientific writing.

This paper contains the latest information related to students' scientific writing activities. Student scientific writing activities are disrupted because supervisors do not have the skills to use technology in the remote student mentoring process. Lecturers are not skilled at using technology in carrying out online tutoring assignments.