Unsustainable Growth, Hyper-Competition, and Worth in Life Science Research: Narrowing Evaluative Repertoires in Doctoral and Postdoctoral Scientists’ Work and Lives

Abstract

There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsustainable growth and “hyper-competition.” Quantitative metrics in evaluating researchers are seen as replacing deeper considerations of the quality and novelty of work, as well as substantive care for the societal implications of research. Junior researchers are frequently mentioned as those most strongly affected by these dynamics. However, their own perceptions of these issues are much less frequently considered. This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the interplay between how research is valued and how young researchers learn to live, work and produce knowledge within academia. We thus analyze how PhD students and postdocs in the Austrian life sciences ascribe worth to people, objects and practices as they talk about their own present and future lives in research. We draw on literature from the field of valuation studies and its interest in how actors refer to different forms of valuation to account for their actions. We explore how young researchers are socialized into different valuation practices in different stages of their growing into science. Introducing the concept of “regimes of valuation” we show that PhD students relate to a wider evaluative repertoire while postdocs base their decisions on one dominant regime of valuing research. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for the epistemic and social development of the life sciences, and for other scientific fields.

Under the Shadow of Time: Where Indicators and Academic Values Meet

“…As a mentor, I often debate with young scholars how essential it has become to understand the indicator game and to partially play it while never forgetting that it is a game-a game that should not be able to define who they are as intellectuals. Yet, from our research, I also know that the indicator game creates shifts, for example in choices about co-authorship and, more generally, it also contributes to the narrowing of the valuation repertoires of young researchers (Müller 2012, Fochler, Felt, andMüller 2016).…”

Portfolios of Worth: Capitalizing on Basic and Clinical Problems in Biomedical Research Groups

“…To do so, we draw on and develop the argument that basic research and clinical research problems relate to separate yet interacting "regimes of worth": what our informants categorized as excellence and patient relevance, respectively. Regimes of worth are evaluative principles and associated forms of valuation that become stabilized in institutional settings to the point where they constitute an obligatory frame that individuals and groups accommodate in their research (Fochler, Felt, and Müller 2016). For Fochler (2016), forms of worth become regimes of worth when they are underpinned by durable forms of capital.…”

<b>Implicated in the Indicator Game? An Experimental Debate</b>

“…Recent contributions have argued that this pushes junior researchers to strongly focus on individual productivity, and that this changes their perception of cooperation in research and of the places and groups in which they work. Particularly in competitive fields, young researchers may be structurally discouraged from engaging in types of work they cannot directly validate for their own track record (Fochler, Felt, andMüller 2016, Müller 2014).…”

“…Sigl (2015) has argued that in junior scientists' biographies in the contemporary academic life sciences epistemic risk is inextricably linked to career risk, as even temporary experimental failure and the resulting gap in productivity is likely to endanger a person's career. This may lead postdocs to choose less risky and more conservative research questions than PhD students, who are yet less fully exposed to the logics of contemporary academic careers, of which the indicator game is part and parcel (Fochler, Felt, and Müller 2016). In a similar vein, Felt, Igelsböck, et al (2013) describe how PhD students in trans-disciplinary sustainability research struggle to align the wider agenda of their research with disciplinary career structures and the accountability regimes they are connected to.…”