Review and modify financial reward structures in academia

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Participants

Yarrow Axford
Carlos Brandão
Jaclyn Brown
Subhash Chandra
Kathy Daniel
Leo Elshof
Thea Hayes
Nida Helou
Bob Henson
Benjamin Hill
Peter Jipp
Marty Krasney
Clayt Lauter
Stephen Nodvin
Elizabeth Riley
Bill Shore
Frederick Stoss
Larry Toole

Objectives

• Exert pressure to change incentive structures. These incentives have a profound influence on constraining interdisciplinary research as well as public outreach by scientists. While it is generally accepted that it is difficult to change academic institutions, the significance of the stakes makes high-level entreaties to accomplish changes worthwhile.
• Enlist university presidents. Attempts should therefore be made to enlist university presidents, perhaps through their associations and journals, and other informal peer-to-peer dialogues, to conduct significant re-evaluations of how their institutions discourage outreach at present, and how this could be changed. Some also look to foundations and other funders to expand the nascent outreach components required for research grants.
• Leverage foundation support. Foundations and other philanthropic organizations are widely recognized as vital funders of the university enterprise. As such, they could exercise considerable influence in driving changes in incentive structures, both directly by reaching out to key university officials and by attaching requirements to their grants requiring, for example, significant public communication and outreach work by the grantees. They could similarly put a greater priority on funding the kind of interdisciplinary research that is so critical to climate change science.
• Reduce risks to faculty. Identify ways to reduce or eliminate career penalties and risks to university faculty and other researchers from communicating their work.
  • Protect them from overt intimidation by those who would prefer that they refrain from informing contentious debates with research findings.
  • Also seek to counter the “gotcha” risk that breeds norms of excessive caution in scientific academia; some feel that the risks of being caught in a small mistake are typically exaggerated in relation to the importance of getting the general principles right.

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