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The VSH Bulletin from August is out and a very good read!
Martina von Arx and Sophie Girardin, respectively actionuni co-president and actionuni ESKAS delegate, contributed with their own article to the new VSH BUlletin, issued in August. This publication focuses on the dialog between science and society
, now more than ever a relevant topic.
Enjoy the VSH August bulletin here
https://vsh-aeu.ch/download/317/VSH_Bulletin_August_2021_WEB.pdf
Eurodoc 2021 Virtual Conference
Send your replies to consultation@eurodoc.net
Dear All,
Our Eurodoc Conference and AGM 2021 is approaching fast and we are looking forward to seeing you all there (http://www.eurodoc.net/conference-agm-2021).
We are looking for interested and enthusiastic candidates for the seven administrative board positions:
– President = leads the organisation and represents Eurodoc legally and officially
– Vice-President = supports and takes over from the president when necessary
– Treasurer = responsible for the organisation’s finances and financial transactions
– Secretary = responsible for communication and archives and tracking activities
– 3 x General Board Member = choice of topics such as the Annual Questionnaire
We are also looking for interested and enthusiastic candidates for our secretariat for possible positions:
– Secretariat-Coordinator = coordinates activities of secretariat members and liaises with the board
– Financial Controller = critically checks the finances and financial transactions and financial reports
– Policy Officer = writing and contributing to policy statements and reports, representative in Initiative for Science Europe (ISE)
– Legal Officer(s) = responsible for reviewing contracts and agreement with Stakeholders and internal Governance; managing personal data and images
– Data Manager= responsible for internal data management and storage of data and documents
– Skills Officer = responsible for developing skills policies and liaising with our skills stakeholders
– EOSC Officer = responsible for developing EOSC and cloud policies and liaising with EOSC stakeholders
– Council of Europe officer = responsible for supporting the Eurodoc delegation at the Council of Europe
– BFUG Officer(s) = responsible for collaboraboration with Bologna Follow-up Group (BFUG)
– External Communication Coordinator = responsible for liaising with the board, coordinating the activities of the communication team, and issuing press releases
– Social Media Officer = responsible for messaging and interacting via our social media channels
– Newsletter Officer = responsible for collecting and publishing content in our monthly newsletter
– Language Officer = native English speaker responsible for checking and correcting Eurodoc texts
– Webmaster = responsible for maintaining and backing up the Eurodoc website
– Working Group Coordinator = coordinates activities in a specific working group, such as Open Science
We selected 12 working groups which will need coordinators (and members) for activities and policies of the next term:
– Democracy-Sustainability = discussing and monitoring policies on academic freedom; discussing approaches of sustainability in research and academia
– Doctoral Training = discussing and developing policies on doctoral training and skills development
– Equality = discussing and developing policies on equality with a focus on gender, ethnic and cultural diversity, and special needs
– Finance = a closed working group (i.e., Eurodoc members only) focusing on Eurodoc finances and funding
– Governance = a working group (i.e., Eurodoc members only) on Eurodoc governance and regulations
– Employment & Careers = discussing policies on employment status and conditions, and career development
– Interdisciplinarity = discussing and developing policies on improving interdisciplinary collaboration
– Mental Health = discussing and developing policies to raise awareness and improve mental health
– Mobility = policies on mobility with a focus on intersectoral and geographic mobility and brain drain
– Open Science = policies on Open Science with a focus on Open Access and -Data, and Citizen Science
– Policy Research = discussing and developing general policies for early-career researchers and Eurodoc
– Research Integrity and Assessment = discussing and developing policies on research assessment, research integrity and integrity projects
See our Eurodoc statute for more information on our organisation and legal regulations and positions:
[http://eurodoc.net/eurodoc/eurodoc-statute]
Note that all positions are voluntary: work is not financially rewarded but some costs might be covered.
How to do Better Science-a roundtable with Joel Schaad from the Better Science team
On 31 May 2021, actionuni held a roundtable on the theme of improving research culture with Joel Schaad, the project coordinator of Better Science as the main speaker. Researchers from several Swiss Higher Education Institutions participated. Delegates, board members and some guests of actionuni were invited in this roundtable. The main objective of actionuni was to promote and support the better science initiative.
Joel presented Better Science
, a Swiss-wide initiative that started in the University of Bern. It aims to raise awareness around the theme of healthy research culture in academia and to open the dialogue on how to improve it. In particular, Better Science has crafted ten calls to action, which can be found and supported on their website. The presentation was followed by a round of discussion, during which the members of the audience actively asked questions and shared their opinion on this important topic. Participants agreed that there is a need to improve research culture and appreciated the charter and direction set by Better Science. Several attendees were of the opinion that to achieve a better research culture, structural changes and concrete measures coming from the top are needed. The question of how to monitor the evolution of research culture was also raised.
Overall, the event successfully engaged researchers from different universities and led to interesting discussions, with the prospect of a follow-up workshop or event related to the topic of improving research culture.
Podcast from actionuni’s Open Science event
This podcast is a shortened and edited version of a recorded workshop on Open Science, organized by actionuni, that took place online on 29 April 2021. It is distributed with a CC-BY license. Please cite as: “Podcast Open Science event actionuni”. actionuni der Schweizer Mittelbau , 29 April 2021. Please find the podcast here
actionuni’s first Open Science Workshop held on 29 April 2021
On 29 April 2021, actionuni held a 1.5-hour workshop online on Zoom in collaboration with MVUB (Mittelbauvereinigung Universität Bern), Eurodoc (European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers) and OILS (Open Innovation in Life Sciences).
Fifteen early-career researchers from the Universities of Bern, Lucerne, Zurich, Geneva and the ETH Zürich participated in the workshop. After a welcome address by co-president Rashmi Rai-Rawat, the presenter, actionuni board member Melanie Röthlisberger, gave a broad overview of Open Science practices with a particular focus on Open Access, covering topics such as routes to Open Access, its benefits and disadvantages, and national read-and-publish contracts in Switzerland. After introducing the main policy makers in Switzerland and their requirements and strategy, the participants then had to assemble information on structural conditions around Open Science at their own institution, such as the existence of Open Science Policies, (financial) support for Open Science
, and name of the institutional repository. Despite the small number of participants, discussions were lively and in-depth political, showcasing the high interest that early-career researchers have in the impact of open science policies and the changing publishing landscape on their academic work.
Open Science: an info online lunch talk organised by actionuni
Disrupted Mobilities, Disrupted Careers: a covid19 blog series by nccr-on the move
We gladly receive this notification and encourage everyone to check this blog out here
In the authors’ words:
“The blog series assembles contributions by young social scientists, some based in Switzerland, others abroad. The contributions cover a variety of topics ranging from the practical challenges related to conducting transnational fieldwork during COVID-19 to mental health and equal opportunity concerns raised by the pandemic. In the concluding post, we synthesize these findings and compare them to studies with a broader disciplinary scope conducted by the Career Tracker Cohorts Study, the journal nature and the academic publishing house De Gruyter. We also refer to results derived from a survey conducted among the 42 doctoral and PostDoc fellows funded by the nccr – on the move”.
Extensions are justified and are due!!
Prolongations are necessary for all who have been unable to study and work as expected. Anything short of this is clearly unfair.
actionuni has teamed up with VSS-UNES and the labour union VPOD-SSP for a joint press release on the topic of extensions and prolongations for students and mid-level staff.
Please follow the link to the press release and keep an eye on our Twitter page!
Food for thought-Avuba’s 2020 postdoc snapshot
Our member from the University of Basel, avuba, has just published a comprehensive survey of UniBasel postdocs, carried out in 2020, a year we are unlikely to forget.
The data is impressive and shows how much change is needed for mid-level staff, and specifically postdoc, employment, support and promotion.
An overview of the datasets in German or in English and the survey itself and a summary of results in German and English are now publicly available. Talk of food for thought…..