Utrecht’s open science fellows to drive staff assessment reform | Times Higher Education (THE)

A Dutch university is to embed open science fellows within every faculty and formally recognise “team spirit” in its promotion criteria as part of ambitious efforts to change how academics are assessed.

In what has been hailed as one of the boldest institutional plans to encourage collaborative science, Utrecht University is installing what it calls “reward and recognition fellows” in each faculty to encourage deans to experiment with new initiatives that promote team spirit, public engagement and responsible open research practices.

The scheme follows an institutional recognition that open science practices can create an “additional burden [on researchers] without direct rewards” unless evaluation processes are changed to “emphasise transparency, reproducibility and public engagement.”

“We want young people to get involved with this scheme, not just the usual suspects, and deans have committed themselves to cooperate and implement proposed policies,” said Paul Boselie, head of the Utrecht School of Governance and a project leader for the Recognition and Reward scheme. 

Previous recognition and reward initiatives include the creation of new promotion policies within certain faculties to recognise an individual’s contribution to fostering team spirit and a PhD student-led policy saw the creation of new annual appraisal for doctoral candidates.

The university’s new framework goes further by asking all faculties to introduce their own system of rewards and recognition based around open science by early 2022. Under the proposed TRIPLE model, six components will be assessed in the end-of-year talks and in promotion committees: team spirit, research, impact, professional performance, leadership and education, with Utrecht stating explicitly that there is “no place for journal impact factors” in recognition and reward policies.

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