The Recognition & Rewards festival: a different view on scientific excellence

Rewards&Recognition Festival Utrecht

One takes a sunny (somewhat cold) springday, a beautiful Utrecht church, many enthusiastic people and highly-ranked Dutch science executives – and you have yourself a scientific festival. The topic: how can we best justify the diversity of skills that scientists can acquire to be successful? As we often encounter these aspects in the preparation of personal CVs and the description of consortia, E+M advisors Marlieke and Edine travelled to the Recognition & Rewards (R&R) festival in Utrecht last week.

Room for everyone’s talent 

The R&R movement – consisting of Dutch universities and science organisations – published a position paper (“Room for everyone’s talent”) in 2019 that argued for a broader quality system for scientists.   At the time, a scientist was mainly judged on the infamous h-index and obtained grants, without recognition of important achievements in, for example, education, science communication or leadership. R&R found a lot of praise and has grown enormously in a short time, with the result that important science funders (e.g,  NWO and ZonMw) and most Dutch universities expanded their criteria for scientific excellence.

Marlieke van Kesteren en Edine PapeKnowledge sharing

The festival started with a plenary session in which elements such as career development, work-life balance, and the value of a permanent contract were discussed.

The icing on the cake was a surprise visit by Minister of Education, Culture and Science Robbert Dijkgraaf who discussed their career wishes with young scientists.

Then there was a wide variety of interactive workshops on, among other things, open science, the possibilities of different assessment possibilities, and the advantages and disadvantages of the evidence-based CVs that NWO now uses. With of course enough time for participants to network between the workshops.

VU Amsterdam rector magnificus Jeroen Geurts, one of the initiators of the R&R movement, closed the festival by emphasizing that in the last 5 years there has certainly been a breath of fresh air in the Dutch academic landscape, but that there are still important steps to take.

Just like us, other attendees were very optimistic about the developments presented. We therefore expect that these changes will soon be reflected in grant programmes.

 

 

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