Abstract
BackgroundSuccess shapes the lives and careers of scientists. But success in science is difficult to define, let alone to translate in indicators that can be used for assessment. In the past few years, several groups expressed their dissatisfaction with the indicators currently used for assessing researchers. But given the lack of agreement on what should constitute success in science, most propositions remain unanswered. This paper aims to complement our understanding of success in science and to document areas of tension and conflict in research assessments.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with policy makers, funders, institution leaders, editors or publishers, research integrity office members, research integrity community members, laboratory technicians, researchers, research students, and former-researchers who changed career to inquire on the topics of success, integrity, and responsibilities in science. We used the Flemish biomedical landscape as a baseline to be able to grasp the views of interacting and complementary actors in a system setting.ResultsGiven the breadth of our results, we divided our findings in a two-paper series, with the current paper focusing on what defines and determines success in science. Respondents depicted success as a multi-factorial, context-dependent, and mutable construct. Success appeared to be an interaction between characteristics from the researcher (Who), research outputs (What), processes (How), and luck. Interviewees noted that current research assessments overvalued outputs but largely ignored the processes deemed essential for research quality and integrity. Interviewees suggested that science needs a diversity of indicators that are transparent, robust, and valid, and that also allow a balanced and diverse view of success; that assessment of scientists should not blindly depend on metrics but also value human input; and that quality should be valued over quantity.ConclusionsThe objective of research assessments may be to encourage good researchers, to benefit society, or simply to advance science. Yet we show that current assessments fall short on each of these objectives. Open and transparent inter-actor dialogue is needed to understand what research assessments aim for and how they can best achieve their objective.Study Registrationosf.io/33v3m.
Highlights
Success shapes the lives and careers of scientists
Short summary of results Our investigation of the perspectives of success in science, among which 56 participants spread in eleven different actor groups took part, revealed that the way in which we currently define science and the way in which we assess scientific excellence generates conflicting perspectives within and between actors
When involving all different research actors, we were able to build a representation of success which was nuanced and multifactorial
Summary
Success in science is difficult to define, let alone to translate in indicators that can be used for assessment. This paper aims to complement our understanding of success in science and to document areas of tension and conflict in research assessments. Apart from the fact that excellence is hard to define, it is complicated to translate it into concrete criteria for evaluating whether researchers are successful or not in their pursuit of scientific excellence. When researchers are being assessed, it is important that the criteria used for determining success are compatible with our concepts of scientific excellence. With poorly defined concepts of excellence [1, 2] and assessment criteria that raise considerable controversy, there is no guarantee that this is the case
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