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Science as collaborative knowledge generation

The COVID‐19 pandemic points to the need for scientists to pool their efforts in order to understand this disease and respond to the ensuing crisis. Other global challenges also require such scientific cooperation. Yet in academic institutions, reward structures and incentives are based on systems t...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Ellemers, Naomi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7839471/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33616965
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12430
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author Ellemers, Naomi
author_facet Ellemers, Naomi
author_sort Ellemers, Naomi
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description The COVID‐19 pandemic points to the need for scientists to pool their efforts in order to understand this disease and respond to the ensuing crisis. Other global challenges also require such scientific cooperation. Yet in academic institutions, reward structures and incentives are based on systems that primarily fuel the competition between (groups of) scientific researchers. Competition between individual researchers, research groups, research approaches, and scientific disciplines is seen as an important selection mechanism and driver of academic excellence. These expected benefits of competition have come to define the organizational culture in academia. There are clear indications that the overreliance on competitive models undermines cooperative exchanges that might lead to higher quality insights. This damages the well‐being and productivity of individual researchers and impedes efforts towards collaborative knowledge generation. Insights from social and organizational psychology on the side effects of relying on performance targets, prioritizing the achievement of success over the avoidance of failure, and emphasizing self‐interest and efficiency, clarify implicit mechanisms that may spoil valid attempts at transformation. The analysis presented here elucidates that a broader change in the academic culture is needed to truly benefit from current attempts to create more open and collaborative practices for cumulative knowledge generation.
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spelling pubmed-78394712021-02-01 Science as collaborative knowledge generation Ellemers, Naomi Br J Soc Psychol Landmark Article The COVID‐19 pandemic points to the need for scientists to pool their efforts in order to understand this disease and respond to the ensuing crisis. Other global challenges also require such scientific cooperation. Yet in academic institutions, reward structures and incentives are based on systems that primarily fuel the competition between (groups of) scientific researchers. Competition between individual researchers, research groups, research approaches, and scientific disciplines is seen as an important selection mechanism and driver of academic excellence. These expected benefits of competition have come to define the organizational culture in academia. There are clear indications that the overreliance on competitive models undermines cooperative exchanges that might lead to higher quality insights. This damages the well‐being and productivity of individual researchers and impedes efforts towards collaborative knowledge generation. Insights from social and organizational psychology on the side effects of relying on performance targets, prioritizing the achievement of success over the avoidance of failure, and emphasizing self‐interest and efficiency, clarify implicit mechanisms that may spoil valid attempts at transformation. The analysis presented here elucidates that a broader change in the academic culture is needed to truly benefit from current attempts to create more open and collaborative practices for cumulative knowledge generation. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-12-07 2021-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7839471/ /pubmed/33616965 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12430 Text en © 2020 The Authors. British Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
spellingShingle Landmark Article
Ellemers, Naomi
Science as collaborative knowledge generation
title Science as collaborative knowledge generation
title_full Science as collaborative knowledge generation
title_fullStr Science as collaborative knowledge generation
title_full_unstemmed Science as collaborative knowledge generation
title_short Science as collaborative knowledge generation
title_sort science as collaborative knowledge generation
topic Landmark Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7839471/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33616965
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12430
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