High Pressure to Publish

In the Berlin Science Survey Researchers Estimate Their Research Situation - Joint Press Release from Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin. In research, the pressure to publish is high. To meet the expectations, researchers devote significantly less time to other tasks such as good teaching or open science - although they also rate these goals as especially important. These are the results of the Berlin Science Survey, a recent study among researchers in the integrated research environment of Berlin - conducted by the Berlin University Alliance. 95% of the researchers in the poll stated that the goal of "methodological rigor" should have a higher significance in the academic system, 85% see this for the goal of "good teaching." "Publication output," on the other hand, ranks last: here, the majority of 72% believe it should not be an overriding goal. When it comes to the pressure of expectations that researchers feel, however, the picture is reversed: Almost 90% experience high pressure to publish, but not even one in four respondents feels that they are exposed to high expectations with regard to the goals of "open science" and "good teaching." In research practice, this leads to publication output being prioritized over other tasks, even though these goals are considered more important by researchers in principle. The researchers of the Berlin Science Survey project take a critical view of this discrepancy between the researchers' own goals and the expectations that are usually imposed by evaluation procedures.