Research culture
Today's research culture has many problematic aspects and requires in-depth transformation. SCNAT is committed to a general framework that promotes creative and solid research, as well as open exchange of information. It raises awareness of the ethical responsibility of science and draws up guidelines for scientific work and its use.
Research culture is a broad term. SCNAT interprets it as the diversely influenced environment and its general framework, which guides and shapes the scientific activities and cooperation of researchers. A modern research culture is a necessary precondition for Switzerland to remain an attractive hub for research and knowledge and for science to finally assume its social responsibility.
Open and transparent science
SCNAT welcomes efforts to make scientific data, methods, results and publications freely accessible. It is committed to ensuring that research results are presented, so as to be comprehensible to the broader public. SCNAT also supports initiatives to provide the public with insights into the development of scientific results or let them participate in this process themselves.
Science evaluation
SCNAT advocates a more differentiated assessment of scientific performance that goes beyond the current quantitative metrics. It supports the introduction of supplementary qualitative and societally relevant criteria. It especially considers the commitment to the dialogue with society to be an important assessment criterion.
Engagements of SCNAT
Contact
Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT)
House of Academies
PO Box
3001 Bern
Switzerland
News
Peer Review: Evaluating the evaluation
Individual evaluations are decisive for whether an article is published in a scientific journal. In most cases, only two researchers evaluate a submitted paper. Based on the comments of these two people, a single editor of the journal then decides whether to publish or not. There are attempts to circumvent this subjectivity, for example with the help of public peer review or artificial intelligence.
"Appeals for decolonising North-South collaboration in research"
Our current global challenges require global collaboration. The colonial practices for North-South collaboration in research create dependence and invisibility, undermining the chances of finding solutions to these challenges. To combat this, collaboration and the development of knowledge through such research must be decolonised. I therefore make five proposals on how to end this situation.
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“Embracing gender diversity is good for science”
The expectation that women shall be and act like their male colleagues, especially when it comes to meet excellence criteria, is causing many women to leave science after their PhD or Postdoc. To plug this ‘leaky pipeline’ there is the need for a broader range of accepted career paths, behaviors and work models.
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Frauen in der Wissenschaft
Frauen machen die Hälfte der Masterabschlüsse an Schweizer Hochschulen. Auf Professurstufe finden sich gerade mal noch ein Viertel Frauen. Die Akademien der Wissenschaften Schweiz engagieren sich für eine bessere Gender-Balance in Bildung, Forschung und Innovation und machen mit regelmässigen Veranstaltungen auf das Thema aufmerksam.