Recalibrating excellence
On Thursday October 13th 2016, the Rathenau Institute and CWTS jointly organize an interactive event for early career researchers: Recalibrating excellence. This event is part of a joint project aimed at drawing lessons from 25 years of excellence policies and excellence funding. In the last 25 years science policies and funding schemes have increasingly focused on fostering ‘excellent’ research . Many researchers experience this label of excellence as too narrow an interpretation of good science. The funding schemes are often perceived as overly competitive. On October 13th we aim to recalibrate excellence. Can we think of more differentiated notions of excellence in science? Should science strive for excellence at all, or is good, good enough? Should science be about publications in the most prestigious journals only? Join us, learn from experts, discuss your experiences with other early career researchers and put your ideas on the table.
People
Read more about the backgrounds of the people that join us at Recalibrating excellence.
People
Beyond excellence, towards excellences
No scientific career or tenure without a prestigious grant like a VENI and a list of publications in highly cited journals. Or so it seems. We invite early career researchers who care about science, and feel concerned about the emphasis on excellence, to explore the issue of research excellence.
Should research policy and the basis for science funding be tweaked, reinvented or even redesigned? And if so, what is important, other than the traditional notion of excellence? Is it possible to think of research excellences, plural? Is it desirable to completely abandon the concept of excellence? If so, what is the alternative? And what do we lose?
Recalibrating excellence is an opportunity to explore different ways to value research and alternative ways to organize science. We invite you to look at unusual forms of collaboration between science and art and wonder, can we open-up excellence and move towards excellences?
The event aims at young researchers (PhD students, post-docs, assistant professors) from all scientific and scholarly fields. The afternoon is highly interactive in nature. Part of the program will be spent in a world café form, where participants have the opportunity to discuss science, science policies and the future of excellence with each other. We will challenge the output-driven notion of excellence and ask: how can we do science and science policy in benefit of more than the top 5 percent?
