Any conversation about research evaluation in the Netherlands has the risk of developing along this line. The Dutch way of evaluating academic research might not be unique, but it is certainly not common, nor fully understood. As a member of the working group for the monitoring and further development of the evaluation protocol – and as an employee of CWTS – let me provide insight and context.

Institute projects at CWTS are projects that are acquired through different funding sources, such as Horizon2020, tenders set out by the European Commission, but also national funding, such as NWO in the Netherlands. Usually, we work on the institute projects within a consortium of multiple organisations, such as universities, public institutions, or sometimes companies.

Increasing numbers of doctoral graduates work outside academia. However, a PhD degree has been often regarded as the gateway to an academic career, which is also considered as the ‘default’ career for PhD graduates. In the same vein, careers outside academia are seen as ‘alternative careers’. Still, in many countries, more PhD graduates work outside academia than within academia.

With the advent of online publishing in the 2000s, the cost structure of scientific publishing changed drastically. Now, printing and distribution costs have become very low. This has not only lowered the entry cost of new publishers, but it also lifted the natural restriction on the number of papers per issue which provided a strong rationale for gate-keeping by legacy journals.

On the last Friday before Christmas of this ridiculous year 2020, I thought it would be a good idea to deliver the Christmas box personally to all CWTS staff living in the Utrecht area.

Why is it important that Elsevier is going to open its citations? Both DORA and the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) have called on publishers to make the reference lists of their articles openly available. In response to this, almost all large and medium-sized publishers have made their citations openly available in Crossref. Elsevier was one of the very few major publishers that have not yet opened their citations.

Science thrives on an open exchange of arguments and a plurality of perspectives. Scientific discussions should be open, frank and blind: only arguments should matter, not who presents them. Different viewpoints strengthen the scientific debate, and the inclusion of women and minorities in science will only contribute to this. Understanding the role of gender in science is crucial for improving the representation of women.

RRI & OS: two co-existing sets of ambitions Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Open Science (OS) are two co-existing sets of ambitions concerning systemic change in the research and innovation (R&I) system. Initially, RRI and OS may appear to align well.

‘Convergence’ as knowledge integration for grappling with societal challenges Last October the US National Academies held a workshop (available here) to gather views on how to better measure and assess the implications of interdisciplinarity, or convergence, for research and innovation.

Interdisciplinary research for addressing societal problems In this blog I will share some thoughts developed for and during a fantastic workshop (available here) held last October by the US National Academies to help the National Science Foundation (NSF) set an agenda on how to better measure and assess the implications of interdisciplinarity (or convergence) for research and innovation.

When Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, a researcher at Leiden University’s Centre for Science and Technology Studies, stumbled upon the Twitter feed STS Title Bot, he was immediately struck by its creativity and effortless verisimilitude. Despite being generated by an automated algorithm that has apparently been fed with data obtained through text mining, many titles could easily pass for actual publications in major STS journals.