The German Junge Akademie held its 2019 spring meeting at the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in March 2019. Junge Akademie members usually meet three times a year to work on current projects, develop new activities and to vote on how to use the young academy’s funding.
This time around, the meeting was opened by Leopoldina Secretary-General Professor Jutta Schnitzer-Ungefug, who gave a brief overview of the Leopoldina’s history. Leopoldina President Professor Jörg Hacker later provided insights into the Leopoldina’s science advice activities which have formed a significant part of the Academy’s tasks since it was appointed to be Germany’s national science academy in 2008.
In their plenary discussions, Junge Akademie members then discussed ideas for future projects, with a creative competition on PhD rituals, an audio archive on the topic of child trauma treatment, and a climate lecture series scheduled to be the focus of the Academy’s activities in the coming months.
On the second day of the meeting, the President of the German Research Foundation, Professor Peter Strohschneider, attended the meeting and actively participated in a plenary discussion on “Incentives within the science system”. This exchange provided valuable insights for the members from the Academy’s project group on Incentives in Science in particular.
The third meeting day saw discussions about Open Access. Individual members presented brief inputs on the development of Open Access publications since 2001 to open the discussion. The following plenary discussion then focussed on how researchers and universities could become less dependent on publishers, and on the opportunity offered by some publishers to release pre- or post-print versions of articles. This once again highlighted significant differences between the humanities and natural sciences when it comes to publication formats and conditions, as well as journal costs and the availability of Open Access models.
The Leopoldina is one of two administrative host academies for the German Junge Akademie; the other being the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The Leopoldina will also be the host venue for the GYA’s 2019 Annual General Meeting from 29 April – 3 May 2019.
