How satisfied are scholars and scientists with the way they do research? Do researchers want more or less collalboration? These and other questions will be asked as part of the Berlin Science Survey, an online survey of researchers at institutions making up the Berlin University Alliance. It covers such topics as research integrity, collaborative work, the transfer of knowledge, and open science as well as framework conditions.

The survey is to be repeated annually in order to collect the experiences and opinions of scholars and scientists in the Berlin research area and to make changes and trends in research practices, discourses, and attitudes of the researchers more visible over time. The aim is to allow researchers to actively participate in further developing the Berlin research hub. Their perspectives, experiences, and assessments as well as the sometimes very different conditions in different subject areas are to be included in a critical reflection of intended and unintended effects of research policy control.

The Berlin Science Survey is the core of the Berliner Forschungslandschaft project, which is being conducted at the Robert K. Merton Center for Science Studies. It is headed by Dr. Jens Ambrasat and Prof. Dr. Martin Reinhart.  The Berlin University Alliance is funding the survey as part of its Objective 3: Advancing Research Quality and Value.

The results of the study will serve, on the one hand, to observe changes in the Berlin research hub and, on the other hand, to critically reflect on research policy and organizational measures initiated by the Berlin University Alliance as well as to introduce them into the discourse on research policy. In order to empirically substantiate future (governance) decisions, the project includes indicators that, together with other data sources, will flow into more comprehensive monitoring of changes in the Berlin research hub.

The survey takes about 15 to 20 minutes. It is open to all researchers (doctoral and postdoctoral researchers and professors) working at the institutions making up the Berlin University Alliance. The survey will start on November 23, 2021, at first at Freie Universität Berlin and Technische Universität Berlin. Invitations to the online survey were sent by email. For more information about the survey and to participate in the survey, see www.berlinsciencesurvey.de.