image: 1 March 2024 – "Good science needs good working conditions – perspectives from Open Science and good research practice" featuring Rima-Maria Rahal, Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Germany
Credit: Global Young Academy
Save the date and join us on 1 March 2024 at 12:00 UTC for “Good science needs good working conditions – perspectives from Open Science and good research practice” featuring Rima Maria Rahal, Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Germany.
The lack of permanent positions and large proportion of (temporary, third-party funded) fixed-term positions in academia leads to high turnover rates, especially affecting early- and mid-career researchers. At the same time, selection procedures for allocating those rare permanent employment contracts are problematic, often incentivizing the quantity (not quality) of individual researchers’ output. These conditions have created an academic environment in which research quality may suffer.
Rima Maria Rahal will argue that academic systems prioritizing non-permanent employment to foster innovation and continuous attraction of new talent create a precarious employment structure that also has detrimental effects for good research practice, for the robustness of the generated findings, and ultimately for gaining knowledge and advancing scientific discovery. She will also discuss five ways in which a higher proportion of permanent positions can contribute to putting research quality and robustness back at the center of research endeavors.
This discussion is part of the GYA’s Open Science working group Open Science First Fridays – a series of discussions on current topics impacting Open Science, ranging from ChatGPT to Open Science policies on every first Friday of the month at 12:00 UTC.
Open Science First Fridays is open to the public, and free to attend – do join us! Link to register here: https://ufz-de.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5wscO-upjsuG9yG9hjjJpW8Nrp3GG2vYpvc#/registration
If you have a suggestion for a future topic or speaker, contact Open Science co-leads Stephanie Jurburg (German Centre for Environmental Research, Germany) or Natasha Gownaris (Gettysburg College, United States).
About the Global Young Academy
The vision of the GYA is science for all; science for the future, and its mission is to give a voice to young scientists and researchers around the world. The GYA, founded in 2010, is an independent science academy of 200 outstanding early- to mid-career researchers from six continents who are selected from across disciplines based on their academic excellence and commitment to engage with society. GYA members serve five-year terms, and the GYA presently counts members and alumni from 101 countries. The GYA administrative Office is publicly funded and hosted at the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Contact person for the media: James Curtiss, Senior Communications Officer: James.Curtiss@globalyoungacademy.net