Welcome to our tour of the science factory. Above the entrance, you see our century-old motto: ‘publish or perish’. It reminds our knowledge workers to produce a steady stream of least publishable units to meet our key performance indicators. We’ve doubled the competition for funding and halved the success rates. So, we now destroy research time much more efficiently due to heaps of applications to be reviewed, high levels of bureaucracy, and stellar amounts of e-mail for spamferences. There is only one floor, but we installed an elevator for our researchers to practice their pitches. Now, all they talk about is ‘big science’, ‘breakthroughs’, and ‘excellence’ – much more cheerful than when they kept yammering on about the replication crisis. We used to end our tour at the library, but we had to dismiss our librarians after paying our bill to the academic publishers. Anyway, before you leave, please fill out our survey on the elusive notion of ‘work-life balance’. And don’t forget to cite your guide!
Sylvia Wenmackers
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