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Reflexive metrics is a branch of science studies which explores how the demand for accountability and performance measurement in science has shaped the research culture in recent decades. Hypercompetition and publication pressure are part…
The concept of evaluation gaps captures potential discrepancies between what researchers value about their research, in particular research quality, and what metrics measure. The existence of evaluation gaps can give rise to questions about…
Nine interviews were conducted with astronomers from Leiden University, and a document analysis was performed on relevant institutional (self-) evaluation documents, annual reports, and CVs of the interviewees. The aim was to perform a…
The extensive focus on performance indicators in research evaluation has been facing critique in science studies. Stemming from a neoliberalist paradigm, metrics allegedly objectify and create certainty about researchers' performance. This…
Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings. Such poor methods persist despite perennial calls for improvement, suggesting that they result from something more than just misunderstanding. The persistence of poor…
An academic scientist's professional success depends on publishing. Publishing norms emphasize novel, positive results. As such, disciplinary incentives encourage design, analysis, and reporting decisions that elicit positive results and…
Citations are essential for recognizing scientific contributions, yet citation behavior is shaped by more than just relevance or quality. We analyzed approximately 255,000 refereed astronomy articles published between 2000 and 2025 to…
It is not easy to rationalize how peer review, as the current grassroots of science, can work based on voluntary contributions of reviewers. There is no rationale to write impartial and thorough evaluations. Consequently, there is no risk…
Peer review is an integral component of contemporary science. While peer review focuses attention on promising and interesting science, it also encourages scientists to pursue some questions at the expense of others. Here, we use ideas from…
One of the virtues of peer review is that it provides a self-regulating selection mechanism for scientific work, papers and projects. Peer review as a selection mechanism is hard to evaluate in terms of its efficiency. Serious efforts to…
Scientific journals are an important choice of publication venue for most authors. Publishing in prestigious journal plays a decisive role for authors in hiring and promotions. In last decade, citation pressure has become intact for all…
In the era of big science, many national governments are helping to build well-funded teams of scientists to serve nationalistic ambitions, providing financial incentives for certain outcomes for purposes other than advancing science. That…
The volume of scientific manuscripts is growing faster than the capacity to evaluate them, yet the institutions that govern peer review have remained largely unchanged. The result is a widening mismatch: reviewer scarcity, noisier…
Scholarly journals rely on peer review to identify the science most worthy of publication. Yet finding willing and qualified reviewers to evaluate manuscripts has become an increasingly challenging task, possibly even threatening the…
Open Science has been a rising theme in the landscape of science policy in recent years. The goal is to make research that emerges from publicly funded science to become findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) for use by…
Scientists in some fields are concerned that many, or even most, published results are false. A high rate of false positives might arise accidentally, from shoddy research practices. Or it might be the inevitable result of institutional…
Open science is increasingly recognised worldwide, with preprint posting emerging as a key strategy. This study explores the factors influencing researchers' adoption of preprint publication, particularly the perceived effectiveness of this…
In science as elsewhere, attention is a limited resource and scientists compete with one another to produce the most exciting, novel and impactful results. We develop a game-theoretic model to explore how such competition influences the…
Scientific output varies between research fields and between disciplines within a field such as astrophysics. Even in fields where publication is the primary output, there is considerable variation in publication and hence in citation…
The phenomenon of rankings is intimately related with the government interest in fiscalizing the research outputs of universities. New forms of managerialism have been introduced into the higher education system, leading to an increasing…