v2026.1CASRAI Dictionary 1,610 entries across 24 domains · CC-BY 4.01,610 entries · CC-BY 4.0

Dictionary termTrack AStablev2026.2

Mentee

A researcher (typically more junior) who receives career, intellectual, or professional guidance from a mentor in a defined or recognised mentoring relationship, distinct from a supervisee in that the relationship lacks formal evaluative authority.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

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Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A postdoc in a formal mentoring relationship with two named mentors (career and methods) under an institutional scheme

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A student who has occasional chats with a researcher with no agreed structure is not a mentee in the formal sense

Editorial commentary

Mentees may have multiple mentors covering different domains (research, career, work-life). The mentee’s responsibility includes setting goals, attending agreed meetings, and acting on advice (or articulating why not). Tracking of mentee outcomes is now common in narrative CVs of senior researchers.

References

Royal Society R4RI Resume for Researchers (2020 v1, 2024 mandate)
National Academies ‘The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM’ (2019)

Also known as

Protégé

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Mentee"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/mentee" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/mentee",
  "name": "Mentee",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/mentee",
  "description": "A researcher (typically more junior) who receives career, intellectual, or professional guidance from a mentor in a defined or recognised mentoring relationship, distinct from a supervisee in that the relationship lacks formal evaluative authority.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/mentorship-career-stages#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/mentee",
  "sameAs": [
    "Protégé"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:02:09",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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