Science community

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The scientific community (Engl. Scientific community , often used in English) is the totality of all the international scientific community participating scientists . The Latin term res publica literaria , which up until the 18th century encompassed all those working in the sciences and regarded class differences or nationalities as insignificant, is to be regarded as a forerunner in the matter .

The term still takes into account the fact that the sciences have their own forms of communication and their own media - the specialist journals are particularly important here , and more recently the scientific mailing lists . They meet at international specialist conferences and cooperate on an interdisciplinary basis , especially in large research projects . The community forms its own network , or the discipline- specific discourses often focus on specialist societies in which the scientists work to further develop their discipline. There they discuss technical questions, ask new questions and evaluate scientific contributions. One of the tasks of the scientific community is also to evaluate and legitimize science; it thus serves as a kind of quality control. Although these processes in the scientific community demand factual orientation, they are also to be assessed as social processes. Within the closer networks of the specialist societies, the course is also being set for junior careers, which often depend on protection within the sciences. You know each other, discuss each other in the media of the scientific community and speak your own language. Personnel structures also emerge within the networks in which some scientists occupy more central positions and can influence the direction of science more than other people in the network. These structures are loose and informal, but are often based on how well established the individuals are in their institutional context. For example, chair holders or heads of research centers have a significantly higher chance of being heard in the scientific community.

The term “scientific community”, like its predecessor “res publica literaria”, promises an overarching ethos within the sciences. The republican moment, forming a state of its own, which took into account the prominent legal position of academics in the early modern era , gave way to the looser, friendly moment that resonates in “community”. The most common German-language equivalent is the term scientific enterprise , which, however, places much more emphasis on the institutionalized side of the sciences.

In feminist social research, the scientific community is increasingly examined for its inherent gender-specific exclusion mechanisms. In particular, the demands of the scientific community on an objective assessment of scientific achievements are being scrutinized. Recent studies have shown that scientific achievement is always ascribed to social processes and that the scientific community's belief in objective assessment of achievement conceals selective mechanisms that in many cases lead to the exclusion of women from the community. One effect of the gender-specific exclusion of women from science is the Matilda effect , which was conceived as a counterpart to the Matthew effect . Furthermore, specific ideas about the place of women in society or the special, rather precarious working conditions in science are important in this context.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cave, Ester (2015). From apprentice to agenda-setter: comparative analysis of the influence of contract conditions on roles in the scientific community. Studies in Higher Education 40 (8), 1423-1437. [1]

Web links

Wiktionary: Wissenschaftsgemeinde  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations