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“We need to talk.”
A discussion for the new generation of communication scholars about current
issues and future prospects in academia
Anika Batenburg
Annemarie van Oosten
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
Noelle Aarts
Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap,
Wageningen, February 3, 2014
Why should we talk?
Last year @ Etmaal: ‘sloppy science’ panel discussion … what happened since?
“We need to talk.”
Criticism
• From the media
• From young scholars
• From senior scholars
4 main issues we should focus on:
• knowledge valorization
• open science
• replication of previous findings
• dealing with publication pressure & resisting verification bias (quality vs quantity)
New initiatives
New initiatives
• Open Science Framework (open data storage)
New initiatives
• Figshare (doi’s for all research output; publish presentations, infographics, negative data etc)
New initiatives
Open Access MegaJournals
• Online-only open access journal
• No restrictions on subject areas or topics
• Selects content based only on scientific and methodological soundness
• ‘significance’, ‘impact’, or ‘degree of advance’ do not affect the decision to publish
New initiatives
• Altmetrics, Impact Story (Online citations)
New initiatives
• Science Exchange (marketplace: “order experiments from the world's best labs”)
New initiatives
• Crowd-funding
New initiatives
• Communities
Let’s create Scientist 3.0
kno
wled
ge valo
rization
Discussion statements
“Sure, I would like to do more replication studies, and I would like to do more innovative and risky research, but…
.. If I start doing this right now I won’t get published and will damage my career.”
Discussion statements
“We should not focus as much on the impact factor, and instead look for different quality indicators (e.g., Altmetrics) and societal impact”
Discussion statements
“A focus on other (or additional) quality indicators than the number of scientific publications will only increase the already high pressure because we would have to excel in even more areas (e.g., writing blogs, Twitter, social media, connections to society) .”
Discussion statements
“Science is business, and being a scientist is just a job. And all jobs have high pressures and competition. We should just deal with it.”
Discussion statements
“Data sharing, pre-registration of research ideas.
It all sounds very nice, but how do I know someone else is not going to steal my hard-
earned research ideas and data?”
Discussion statements
“Experts say….
… but (what) should we (young scholars) DO?”
