The social media landscape is so different today from when I started participating around 2011. Things change, and that is okay — when the old dies, it becomes the compost for something new. For me, something new sprouted from Twitter's compost beyond just joining Mastodon: I am taking over as the admin for the Mastodon server akademienl.social.
Recently, I left the Upstream editorial team as a result of changing priorities. I figured it would be a good idea to reflect before I forget.
Yesterday was the first of four listening sessions by the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. These are specifically geared towards Early-Career Researchers (ECRs), which I guess I technically would still be had I stayed in academia. I had the opportunity to briefly participate and share some prepared remarks. Sharing those here to document my own thoughts and make them more accessible.
I admittedly love it when pet peeves show themselves. That's when I know something is tickling my brain repeatedly and it wants to come out.
Over the past decade, the increased attention for questionable research practices (QRPs) and their origins led to the (Dutch) narrative on Recognition & Rewards (R&R). Very bluntly put: Incentives pressure researchers to do things that don't benefit research, so we need to change the academic incentive system. [1] It is a good thing the incentive system is changing.
💡 This is an idea I've toyed around with for a few years, but never wrote down. I would love to hear your feedback! Competitive research processes lead to many perverse incentives - incentives that put the researcher and the research process at odds. For example, because of selective publication pressures researchers primarily end up publishing those research processes that end up in significant or novel results.
In my decade working on the openness of research I touched upon content accessibility only a few times, in part because it was and is a less discussed topic in my circles. But that does not make it less important.