Conducting surveys and designing questionnaires is common research practice, and not only for the social sciences. One might think that there is a vast array of good software tools out there. The first half is correct: when looking for software for setting up a survey, one is confronted with plenty of options. However, depending on what you want to do, it can be tricky to find a good tool that checks all the boxes.

Description What does social impact mean for the Social Sciences and the Humanities (SSH)? How can it be measured and evaluated? This was the topic of two workshop discussions between science studies scholars and representatives of SSH disciplines. This article summarizes the workshop results. Science is increasingly expected to address and help solve societal challenges.

Many German scientists are under pressure due to the restriction of the 12-year scientific period (Lang et al., 2020). One has 6 years to submit the doctoral thesis and another 6 years in the postdoctoral phase to apply for a professorial position. Similar to the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, the path of a researcher is adventurous and arduous. Unfortunately, it does not always end happily.

The digital shock as a starting point for a collaborative autoethnography The rapid and unavoidable shift towards emergency remote research, teaching and learning hit Germany at least as unexpectedly as it hit the vast majority of European Higher Education Institutions (HEI). While digitally based learning and teaching had continuously gained growing interest from policy-makers across Europe in the recent decade, the actual practical and

Instagram, TikTok, Clubhouse: Today, researchers who want to share their work with non-academic audiences can choose between a vast array of digital platforms. Some of them vanish as quickly as they appear. Others attract an audience that is looking  for something other than scientific content.

Texts on COVID-19 responses in education are plentiful: in particular, Germany’s school system and its lack of readiness for a pandemic, has been discussed frequently, also here at the institute. Our research interest and the focus of this blog post, however, lies in the tertiary part of the education system and possible answers to the challenges it faces.

*“The whole is other than the sum of its parts” *~ Aristotle~ In general, there are two styles of doctoral dissertations: monographs (thesis as a book), and cumulative thesis (thesis by publications/papers). In this article, I will share some insights with regard to cumulative dissertations based on my own experience.

Where to start from… Being embedded in an environment as well as in a system and understanding its influences and logic have always fascinated me. During my exchange year in Ireland, at Trinity College Dublin, I had a very important insight: a professor in organizational studies was discussing case studies and then turned to the students and asked: “What would you do in this situation?” After several rounds of guessing, I promptly realized

Introduction In December 2018, a University of Minnesota web librarian, Cody Hanson, participated in a workshop hosted by the Coalition for Networked Information. The topic of this, and a number of other events to date, is the drive by major scholarly publishers to more fully integrate authentication systems for accessing electronic media into their platforms.

“Researchers say that their working culture is best when it is collaborative, inclusive, supportive and creative, when researchers are given time to focus on their research priorities, when leadership is transparent and open, and when individuals have a sense of safety and security.