Publications

Heterogeneous reporting requirements and increasing expectations of strategic capacity building have prompted German research institutions to implement advanced database and information systems in order to improve their management of metadata on research activities, processes and outcomes (research information). Implementation and use of these systems in research reporting require specific expertise, opening up new task areas which have so far not been sufficiently studied. Based on a national survey among personnel responsible for IT-based research reporting in German Higher Education and research institutions, the contribution assesses whether research information management constitutes a new specialization in research management.

The state of the research on grant application behaviour is that female academics submit fewer proposals than men. This study points out that it is methodologically challenging to draw this conclusion. We know a lot about applicants, but little about the pool of potential applicants as the underlying population. We use a random sample of academics as potential applicants to investigate the grant application activity of male and female researchers. The results show that when an appropriate benchmark is applied (in this case, controlling for academic status and research area), no significant gender differences in grant applications can be found.

Researchers are increasingly expected to engage in knowledge transfer (KT), but often the specific expectations remain unclear. To approach the research object of KT, to map existing engagement and to identify barriers to KT, it is essential to include field-specific, discipline-based, and epistemic practice perspectives. Drawing on data from the 2019/2020 Science Survey, we demonstrate the necessity of these perspectives while incorporating the 'productive interaction' approach.