Scientific Excellence

In December 2023, group member Luciana Balboa was elected to the CoARA Steering Board. During 2023, former group co-lead Yensi Flores Bueso had been a board member. As a mid-career researcher working in Argentina and a member of the GYA, Luciana is devoted to promoting open science and improving the incentive systems, and especially to raising awareness of their impact on the careers of young researchers. She sees CoARA as a powerful platform to drive necessary change.

At the end of 2023, the GYA signed a United2Act Consensus Statement on the problem of paper mills. The statement outlines five key areas of action against the impact of paper mills on the integrity of academic research and publishing. GYA Alumna Plus and member of the working group Stefania Mondello (University of Messina, Italy) was part of the group of authors.

In May 2023, the GYA-IAP-ISC synthesis paper on the Future of Research Evaluation was published, to which group co-leads and members had contributed at various stages. Co-lead Carlo D’Ippoliti and alumna Shaheen Motala-Timol had served on the Scoping Group with IAP and ISC representatives to produce the report.

In May 2023, group member Stefania Mondello (University of Messina, Italy) spoke at the UNITED2ACT Summit meeting on the collective challenge of paper mills in scholarly publishing, which was supported by COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics, and STM, the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers. Stefania spoke on the issue of paper mills from an Italian academic perspective and how they negatively affect the career selection process, and destroy trust in science. As a way forward, Stefania urged national and international entities, funding agencies, and institutions to take responsibility and create relevant monitoring bodies, and for scientists to develop a sense of research consciousness and resilience.

In January 2023, group co-lead Yensi Flores Bueso attended the first in-person meeting of the CoARA steering board in Brussels, Belgium. During the meeting, several decisions about CoARA’s short, medium and long-term goals were made, and the group’s way of organising its work were defined. Furthermore, the internationalisation strategy of CoARA was discussed, and Yensi will be part of a subgroup for the internationalisation strategy going forward.

At the recent CoARA launch, GYA member and co-lead of the Scientific Excellence Working Group, Yensi Flores Bueso (University College Cork, Ireland)was selected to the Steering Committee of CoARA, as a GYA nominee. Read more about CoARA and the GYA here.

In November, group members Stefania Mondello and Pradeep Kumar contributed to the second joint event by the GYA with ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and STM Publishers. The online webinar on ‘IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility) in scholarly peer-review’ examineed ways to expand Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility in scholarly peer review. A report can be found here.

In November 2022, group members organised an interactive panel session at The Trielennial Conference of the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) and the Worldwide Meeting of Young Academies (video link forthcoming).

In September, group co-leads Carlo D’Ippoliti and Yensi Flores Bueso as well as group member Pradeep Kumar presented the activities of the Scientific Excellence group at the GYA online event “Young and Global – A perspective on today’s challenges in science” at the Science Summit of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA77). In their presentation, they considered how to reinterpret “Scientific Excellence” and how to gear research evaluation towards meeting the goals of a more inclusive, impactful, and open science research culture. Group member Robert Robert Lepenies explained the concept of the Sasha Kagansky Interdisciplinary Grant. Read more about the session and watch the full presentation here.

The InterAcademy Partnership, the GYA, and the International Science Council have created a scoping group on research assessment, to look into possible initiatives to be conducted together. The scoping group produced a menu of alternatives and are deciding on which activities to start.

Furthermore, the group provided feedback to the European Comission as part of their stakeholder consultation on problems with research evaluation and its conflicts with open science. These contributed to their scoping report, which proposes an alliance within the research community, based on an MoU.

In December, group member Boon Han Lim (Malaysia) presented the interim results of the “A Global View of Institutional Promotion Criteria for Professorship” project at the Young Korean Academy of Science and Technology event on “Measures to improve university faculty evaluation system”.

In November, group members participated in a joint online workshop with ALLEA, on “Research Assessment“. A brief workshop report can be read here.

In October 2018, the report from the 2016 workshop on “Publishing models, assessment, and open science” was published, detailing the results of the workshop, which include a framework of questions and a set of concrete recommendations.

In May 2018, group members Laura Fierce (USA) and Koen Vermeir (France) presented the results of a survey on the “Study on Reproducibility and Replicability in Science and Engineering”  in Washington, DC, by invitation of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. A report which provides a set of comments and recommendations on replicability, based on GYA members’ input and on their personal expertise, entitled “Young Scientist Perspectives on Replicability and Reproducibility in Science and Engineering” was forthcoming.

Throughout 2017 and 2018, the group was working on a project on “Incorporating Intangible Information for Assessment Optimisation”. The idea arose from discussions at the 2017 GYA Annual General Meeting within the working group and was preliminary implemented in 2018. The aim of the activity was to initiate a new project for identifying novel factors which reflect the implicit personal qualities of a person which are yet vital professionally. Read more here.

Participation in “Policy impact of knowledge and knowledge organisations: From understanding impact towards measuring it”, June 2017 (Koen Vermeir)

On a request by ALLEA (ALL European Academies) we gave expert feedback on “The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity – Revised Edition”, published in 2017. For the factsheet by the European Commission on this document, see: Factsheet on the new European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. (Martin Dominik, Robert Lepenies, Koen Vermeir)

In 2016, the Working Group submitted a well-received expert opinion for the Open Science Policy Platform of the European Commission report on “Next-generation metrics: Responsible metrics and evaluation for open science”, published in 2017.

Group member Koen Vermeir participated  in “Open access and research evaluation: towards a new ecosystem”, Toulouse, in October.

In May 2016, group members organised a workshop on “Publishing models, assessment, and open science” in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, as a side event to the GYA Annual General Meeting. A brief workshop report was published in October 2018.

In 2015, the group was invited to present the perspective of young scientists around the world on “Rewards, careers, and integrity” in a panel discussion “Research assessment and quality in science: Perspectives from international science and policy organisations” convened by ICSU as part of the “4th World Conference on Research Integrity”, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 31 May to 3 June 2015. As a result of a critical analysis by the WG, concrete recommendations for implementation both in the short and long term were brought forward, embracing the link between integrity, transparency, openness, and reproducibility, while warning about pressures that young scientists are facing, and pointing to the effect of reward systems on brain drain.

Martin Dominik participated in “The Future of Scholarly Scientific Communication”, The Royal Society, London, in April.

• Participation in “Beyond Bibliometrics – Identifying the Best“, 8^th Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Nov 2014 (Catherine Beaudry)
• “What is the role of a scientist and what environment is required to fulfill it?”, session organised as part of the careers programme at the 2014 Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) in Copenhagen, Denmark (Martin Dominik, Catherine Beaudry). As young scientists face a multitude of challenges in their research environments, there is increasing pressure to perform, to conform. Sometimes, diversifying beyond traditional niches is the only way forward. Early-career scientists possess an immense drive to engage, but this potential is not always met by opportunities, and they feel that their wings are clipped. Looking towards solutions for overcoming this dilemma, the session engaged the participants in an interactive debate on the role of a scientist and on the environment required to fulfill it. The dialogue between the two GYA members, Liudvika Leisyte (TU Dortmund) and Alaa Ibrahim (American University in Cairo), as well as the participants of the session touched on issues regarding the size of research grants, mobility, collaboration, gender issues, promotion criteria, peer review, to name a few.

• “Perceptions of Research Excellence in Thailand and Japan”, STI Policy Review 4, 113, 2013 (Orakanoke Phanraksa, Mitsunobu Kano, Shoji Komai, Wibool Piyawattanametha, Martin Dominik, Rob Jenkins). This publication is the result of the Working Group’s first project, started in 2012. We conducted a survey on the perceptions of research excellence at one leading research institute in Thailand. The findings were used as a basis for improvements in the institutional policy of that institute as well as to further compliment the GloSYS precursor study. In the publication, we assessed the research environment, the promotion of opportunities, and the structures that ensue from assessment criteria.

Editorial in “Future of Medical Education Journal” on “Science, Education, and the World’s Future” by Bruce Alberts (FMEJ 2, 2, 2012), soliciting views on “How could young scientists unleash curiosity and creativity to support excellence in science education?“ (Reza Afshari, Marc Creus, Rob Jenkins)

The group also produced a video on “Unleashing Creativity”; see here.