Dat heeft te maken met de voortschrijdende inzichten over het erkennen en waarderen van de kwaliteiten van onderzoekers.

De Guiding principles van de Young Academies gaan volgens De Jonge Akademie nog te veel uit van het idee dat een academicus op alle fronten excellent moet zijn. Zelf pleit ze, in het verlengde van het van de week verschenen Ruimte voor ieders talent (overigens geïnitieerd door oud-DJA-voorzitter Rianne Letschert) voor een systeem waarin een wetenschapper kan excelleren in bijvoorbeeld of onderwijs of academisch leiderschap of maatschappelijke impact. 

Reactie De Jonge Akademie

De reactie van De Jonge Akademie aan haar zusteracademies:

'The Dutch Young Academy is excited about the publication of the Declaration on the Guiding Principles of Young Academies published on the 20 November 2019. We strongly endorse the spirit that is reflected in the Declaration on Impact, Diversity & Inclusivity, Responsibility, Knowledge-based Evidence, Independence & Transparency, and Integrity. The members of the Dutch Young Academy have, however, decided not to ratify the Declaration, as it does not comply with our philosophy on the recognition and evaluation of academic excellence. 

We are calling for a system of recognition and rewards of scientists that acknowledges diverse career paths and qualities of individuals. The evaluation of excellence should, in our view, not rely on a one-sided emphasis on research performance, but should include the frequently undervalued yet key areas such as education, impact, leadership and (for university medical centres) patient care. We also hope to move away from a model in which individual academics are only deemed excellent if they score high on all dimensions of excellence. Instead we aim towards an approach where Young Academies are built upon the idea that each of their members represent different dimensions of excellence, so that collectively Young Academy members offer diverse forms of excellence. In this context, we would like to refer to the position paper Room for everyone's talent, which was published on 15 November 2019 by a coalition of the Dutch public knowledge institutions and funders of research. 

We see the Declaration on the Guiding Principles of Young Academies as a very good starting point to elaborate on the discussion of academic excellence. We hope to see that the movement towards diversification in recognition and rewarding of academic excellence (be it in research, education or outreach/valorization) finds its way into the global Declaration on the Guiding Principles of Young Academies in the coming years.'