Towards a Democratic University: A call for Reflexive Evaluation and a Participative Culture

TL;DR

This paper advocates for transforming research culture towards a participative, diverse, and reflexively evaluated environment, emphasizing open knowledge sharing and quality over quantity to enhance scientific integrity and researcher well-being.

Contribution

It provides a qualitative analysis of astronomers' reimagining of research culture, proposing alternative outputs and evaluation methods to foster a more participative scientific community.

Findings

Astronomers envision diverse research outputs and evaluation criteria.

A participative, reflexive evaluation system can improve research quality.

Open knowledge management infrastructure supports collaborative research.

Abstract

The extensive focus on performance indicators in research evaluation has been facing critique in science studies. Stemming from a neoliberalist paradigm, metrics allegedly objectify and create certainty about researchers' performance. This has created a publish-or-perish culture where deviant behaviour, such as research misconduct, may have become the rule of the game. Not only does this culture foster a decrease of scientists' well-being, but also a decrease in research quality. In recent years, calls for a culture change have accumulated, from discussing detrimental cultural aspects under IchbinHannah to studies that demonstrate the connection between research culture and research integrity. This study is a qualitative analysis of how astronomers reimagine their research culture. This includes alternative output formats, alternative evaluation criteria and how they aspire to do research differently. In summary, we find that the time is ripe for a transformation in research culture towards a more participative and diverse work environment. This may include the use of an open knowledge management infrastructure, where all sorts of research output of various stages can be stored and shared. Moreover, through a more reflexive evaluation, which is continuously adapted to the needs of the researchers, scientific quality may be encouraged, rather than producing more and more publications. This study sets the basis for future action research with the aim of transforming academic cultures towards more participative ones, where scientists can let their creative minds thrive and collaborate beyond disciplinary boundaries.