Survey on the Research Culture in Astronomy
Julia Heuritsch
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
A survey is being conducted with the cooperation of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to study the research culture in astronomy. This includes aspirations in research, experience of the publication culture, and perceptions of others' research behavior, including scientific misconduct.
Your experiences are vital to better understand the factors that enable or constrain your research.
By taking this survey, you will help improve working conditions in research: the results of this survey will lead to recommendations for policy makers on the practical structural initiatives needed to support astronomers conduct research in the best conditions.
This survey will take you approximately 20-30 minutes, depending on your answers. For optimal functionality please use a laptop/PC rather than a smartphone or tablet.
Since it’s important that astronomers of all career stages are represented, I encourage you to forward this email to early career researchers, who are underrepresented in the IAU. These could be PhD candidates whom you supervise or teach, for example.
This survey is completely anonymous. In particular, it will not be possible to infer identity from the results, which will be published in a scientific journal. If you want to be informed about the results, you may add your email address in the comment section on the last page of the survey or send me an email message.
The data collection is in compliance with the European data protection regulation (GDPR) and my university’s data protection policy.
Since this survey is also completely voluntary, you may withdraw from it at any time. However, for the sake of this study we hope that you will complete the survey.
Julia Heuritsch is a PhD candidate in the Department of Science Studies, Faculty of Social Science, and is a member of the junior research group “Reflexive Metrics” at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Reflexive metrics is a relatively new field in science studies, which combines two strands — the sociology of quantification and the sociology of evaluation — in order to study what effects indicator use in research evaluation (e.g., publication and citation rates) has on research and researchers themselves. It is important to question the use of quantitative measurements in evaluation processes as an established practice in order to inform policy makers what effects their policies have on science and what they need to consider to encourage quality research and motivated researchers.