About the project

The process of Science has experienced a significant amount of change in its management during the last few decades. Academic metrics of uncertain validity, short-term jobs for young researchers, short-sighted funding deadlines… came into the picture to become topics of common informal discussion within researchers’ inner circles.

Some would question whether the current peculiarities of academia discourage scientific progress. Peculiarities that arose from unsupervised historical evolution, like so many other human social structures. But how can we determine whether our current academic system needs to be revised or even changed?

We argue that we should approach this question in the same way we approach everything else in Science: through careful scientific studies published in peer-reviewed journals. That is something we have.

The field of Sociology of Science has developed analyses of the social trends within the academic world, allowing for fact-based evaluations and accurate predictions. Analyses that do not reach the scientists they speak about, remaining in their separate world.