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Image: kevint3141 [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

The Recognition and Rewards programme is promoting qualitative research assessment—but is Dutch academia ready?

How can a nation produce excellent science when researchers are not given the time to research? Earlier this year, the Rathenau Institute, a science policy think tank, found that PhD students in the Netherlands spent about 70 per cent of their time on research, while the figure for professors was only 17 per cent.

These time pressures compete with authoring publications—an academic’s main determinant of getting research funds. To fix the issue of time, researchers should be able to include their non-research activities in research assessment, a coalition of Dutch knowledge institutions and funders concluded in 2019.

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