"The crisis in the Research Enterprise
The global research enterprise is in crisis. This crisis appears in many ways: the crisis in reproducibility in the sciences 1,2; the loss of researchers’ faith in the competence and values of management (e.g. 3,4) or in management’s ability to overcome structural conditions such as the increasingly metrics-focussed audit culture and responses to it 5; fraud and corruption in the publication system from researchers, publishers and intermediaries 6,7; the increasing divide between sciences and humanities and amongst disciplines; and failure to take full advantage of new technologies for communication and collaboration.
Although these crises may appear distinct, a common core to all can be diagnosed: a crisis of culture. The ‘common culture’ of predominantly transatlantic research built on the European tradition and post-WWII expansion is failing in the face of globalisation, reduced political autonomy and the ubiquity of the web in everyday life. A shared set of narratives and values has been replaced by performance measures and differing (and ironically mutually incompatible) audit cultures in the shift from the late modern to the post-modern institution 8.
To reform and re-design our institutions we need to rebuild shared culture at the scale of the global research enterprise. We need to understand how funding mechanisms, universities, research groups, disciplines and communication media interact and how they create the environment in which knowledge is created. Tackling these questions requires more than policy research and new technologies, nor will they be answered through economics or cultural studies alone. It requires a new integrative approach."
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