The new, Swiss-based Better Science initiative calls for a “rethinking in academia towards more sustainability, diversity and equal opportunities.”
The initiative, which has been endorsed by nearly 150 Swiss academics, is oriented around ten calls to action concerning research, teaching, and administration:
- Highlight extra-academic work
- Take your time to think
- Put quality before quantity
- Prioritize thoughtfully
- Careful communication
- Enable a healthy academic culture
- Evaluate comprehensively
- Appreciate the team
- Distribute tasks fairly
- Be a role model
These calls to action spring from the ‘slow scholarship’ movement, which emphasizes a slower, more critical approach to academia. They seek to help academics to rethink “the current paradigm of quantifiable scientific and scholarly work”, which is “characterized by sustainability, diversity, and equal opportunities”.
A formal launch of the initiative’s new website will be held at the University of Bern on October 12th, 2o20 at 12:15
Learn more at https://betterscience.ch/
