The authors, Noémie Aubert Bonn and Wim Pinxten, conducted interviews and focus groups with a variety of Flemish biomedical stakeholders in order to survey and define success, integrity, and responsibilities in science. The stakeholders interviewed included policy makers, funders, institutional leaders, research integrity officers, editors, publishers, and researchers. In this paper, which is the first of a two-paper series, the authors focused on what defines and determines success in science. Interview results suggest essential elements for success and identified disparities in current research assessment practices, where output metrics are overvalued and the essential elements (e.g., research quality and human input into the scientific process) are largely undervalued. The authors conclude that open and explicit inter-actor dialogue is necessary to facilitate understanding of the goals of research assessments and develop strategies for how those goals can be achieved.
Bonn NA, Pinxten W (2020). Rethinking success, integrity and culture in research (part 1) A multi-actor qualitative study on problems of science. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.12.945733