Publication teaser

Quality research needs good working conditions: About the role of working conditions for quality research.

When we speak of Open Science, the main argument for practicing Open Science often is “It makes the quality of your research so much better!”. This is true, of course, but FAIR data isn’t the only piece of the puzzle for quality research.

Rahal et al. (2023)1 discuss in their comment published in Nature Human Behavior how employment and working conditions play a role for producing quality research, as well. The authors describe the employment conditions in research as a “systemic problem” and associate it with a lack of dedicated research funding. The authors further draw attention to the different priorities of funding use between the “Global North” and the “Global South”. Rahal et al. (2023) give an overview of the employment strategies in research and explore the sides of these strategies that might counteract with good quality research.

Rahal et al. (2023) further propose potential changes for the academic system in order to stabilize academic careers (see figure below; reused from Rahal et al. (2023), p. 166).

Rahal.png

  1. Rahal, R. M., Fiedler, S., Adetula, A., Berntsson, R. P., Dirnagl, U., Feld, G. B., Fiebach, C. J., Himi, S. A., Horner, A. J., Lonsdorf, T. B., Schönbrodt, F., Silan, M. A. A., Wenzler, M., & Azevedo, F. (2023). Quality research needs good working conditions. Nature human behaviour, 7(2), 164–167. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01508-2 ↩