Since their inception in 2003, global university rankings have gained increasing prominence within the higher education landscape. Originally designed as marketing and benchmarking tools, the rankings have transformed into influential instruments for research evaluation and policymaking.

An Intellectual Vocation In his book “The Soul of a University” (2018), Chris Brink describes the story of G.H. Hardy, a Cambridge Mathematician whose principled stance on his academic research was that it had no practical use whatsoever: “No discovery of mine” Hardy proudly wrote, “has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world”

Academic research enjoys a high level of trust among the society in Germany, not least because of its autonomy that is granted by the constitution. At the same time, the public expects research to leave its “ivory tower” and take on a more active role in addressing complex societal challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic or climate change.

Last March, the  Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) launched its call for members to propose Working Groups and National Chapters.

🔈 This is the transcript of the Open Update. Find the original audio on Anchor.fm. [00:00:00] Chris Hartgerink: Welcome to the Open Update. I'm Chris Hartgerink, your host, together with Sarahanne Field. [00:00:06] Sarahanne Field: Hello.

The question of how researchers engage in public communication or political decision-making processes has gained unprecedented attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many scientists experienced hostile attitudes when going public. Threats and science hostility are no new phenomena, but gain more importance as science is increasingly embedded in public debates.

This blog post is the last of a four part series based on the keynote presentation by Stefanie Haustein at the Swiss Year of Scientometrics lecture and workshop series at ETH Zurich on June 7, 2023. Responsible use of metrics As a last topic, I want to address a very important area that I think for a very long time has been ignored by the scientometric community—namely the use of the metrics that it

We are most grateful to the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for its commitment to sustaining the activities and developments of three SCOSS-selected infrastructures (PKP, OpenCitations and ROR) together with the Netherlands Reproducibility Network.

Vor gut neun Jahren hatte die DINI AG FIS die Idee einen Blog zu starten, um über Themen rund die Arbeit der AG zu berichten. Schnell hatte sich ein kleines Team gefunden und die ersten Beiträge wurden verfasst. Die Technik konnte schnell und unkompliziert bei der TIB beheimatet werden, die die Infrastruktur über WordPress bereitstellte. Nach ein paar Anpassungen am Design wurde dann losgelegt.

How agriculture benefits from research through extension and engagement Different sectors benefit from science in different ways. In the case of agriculture, innovations based on science often originate from providers of farmers, for example in the form of seeds or machinery. However, the diffusion or uptake of innovations is difficult, in particular for small farmers.