If you want to make a career in science, you have to publish a lot. It is not for nothing that the phrase "publish or perish" has become established in the scientific community. But does this still apply? What are the overall parameters for research assessment? Elke Roesner talks about this with Dr Jasmin Schmitz, head of publication consultancy at ZB MED.

As before, parameters such as the number of publications, the citation rate and the acquisition of third-party funding are enormously important for building the reputation of young researchers - all parameters that can be easily counted. However, this is exactly what is problematic, because such key figures do not always say something about the quality of research, and can also, under certain circumstances, lead to behaviour that is not in line with good scientific practice. In its position paper on scientific publishing and the field of science evaluation published in May 2022, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) speaks in this context of misdirected incentives generated by indicators and an unfavourable direction in which publishing is developing in many places due to the interaction with evaluation systems.

In this video, we go into the background and interrelationships between assessment systems for science and their challenges. Another focus is the cultural change in science towards more openess, more open science, more transparency - elementary aspects of good scientific practice. These points are also becoming more and more important in scientific reputation building, and awareness of the traditional research evaluation based on key figures is growing in the scientific community.

To the video (in German with English subtitles)