The Council advocates in the research for more application orientation. Institutions should also open up the society we live in.
The new Chairman of the science Council: Dorothea Wagner, a computer scientist at KIT photo: Tanja Meißner/KIT
BERLIN taz | universities and research facilities are only for their science, but they also carry a social responsibility. This requires new forms of Opening up to civil society and economy, but certain Standards still need to be developed, says the Council of science and Humanities in a new position paper on the “application orientation in research” (PDF-file), which was presented early in February by the new presidency, Dorothea Wagner in Berlin.
In contrast to a wide range of individual recommendations – currently establishing a technical University in Nürnberg – the most important Advisory body for science policy in its 72 pages of comprehensive discussion at this time, the long-term developments of the research in the glance.
“increasingly, the expectations of the scientific system, to find answers to the major societal challenges and to contribute to social and economic innovations are”, – stated in the paper. This international Trend has led in Germany to a massive financial Expansion of the science system, which is also associated with “increased relevance of expectations”.
Background for the search of new exchanges and forms of cooperation are three social developments, the impact is always stronger on the science. With the words of the Council this is “the experience of accelerated technological, economic and social change, the increasing complexity of the global societal challenges as well as changing global competitive situation, in the new science of Nations as actors have positioned. In short: Transformation, globalization and Innovation.
science, it is recommended that your “research space, and to open processes” and “meeting rooms” a new kind of with your environment. “Cooperative research processes to initiate and intensify” is about a goal that goes far beyond previous approaches of “Citizen Science” also. “The part of the professional support structures for exchange and cooperation are missing at this point”, noted the Council. It is a “strategic deficit in German exists the higher education system with a view to the anchoring of Third-Mission-activities”, such as the exchange with the social environment is referred to.
Also new forms of communication with non-scientific target groups are proposed, which fits well to the current debate on improvements in the communication of science. Declining confidence in science could be established “only through transparency and an open culture of communication”.
