Discussion on scientific and professional promotion criteria

Nowadays huge competition exists in science. This competition involves all institutions that are performing scientific research: from research performing organizations working exclusively on the scientific research to higher education institutions in which scientific research should be combined with teaching responsibilities. Employees of these institutions need constantly prove themselves being excellent in their job. Competition to obtain national or European funding that allows researchers to pursue their scientific career is very high, while rate of success is low. According to statistics, only one out of ten applications is successful. Researchers are not working only on preparation and submission of proposals, at the same time they are also conducting research, performing daily work and ongoing projects obligations, as well writing scientific articles. Number of published articles and obtained national or international projects are taken into account in the process of evaluation of scientific excellence. Being productive in preparation of scientific articles and obtaining projects requires a lot of additional, invisible work: from networking and communication to large quantities of administrative tasks and knowledge of various legal acts and regulations.

Representatives from various Slovenian research performing organizations and higher education institutions have been invited to participate in the workshop, where the discussion on existing scientific and professional promotion criteria took place. Participants of the workshop discussed what are positive sides of existing promotion system and what must be improved or even changed.

Workshop was organised by two projects funded by EU framework programme H2020 funding scheme - CHANGE (https://www.change-h2020.eu) and ACT (https://act-on-gender.eu).