Pluralistic Research

Rather than rejecting the notion of “excellence”, the aim is to critically examine it:
 

• Quality ≠ Performance : the overemphasis on publication volume undermines the long-term nature of research
   

• Slow Science ? An invitation to slow down, but one that must be nuanced in light of researchers’ varied trajectories and professional statuses

Major Transformations Underway: Embedding Our Research at the Heart of Change : 
 

• Open Science : open access, shared data, open-source software... a new ecosystem is emerging.
  
  Open Science offers promising new pathways, but also raises novel and complex questions. It calls into question the current economic model for disseminating and valorising research. In the long term, it is expected to have structural effects on the entire academic research production chain, though the precise impacts remain difficult to foresee.
  
  In recent years, significant initiatives have been launched to anticipate the possible consequences of Open Science, but also to raise awareness of the risks posed by an approach to research that conflates short-term performance with long-term excellence.
   

• Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA): initiated in 2012 by the American Society for Cell Biology | a call for new evaluation practices—moving beyond the impact factor and assessing research on its content rather than the prestige of the journals in which it is published.
  
  At its core, the DORA declaration seeks to strengthen the quality of research, while underscoring the need to separate the assessment of journals from the evaluation of individuals and projects. The declaration expresses a multi-level commitment: to clarify the context and consequences of current assessment practices through a diagnosis from within the academic community itself; to demonstrate that these issues concern both individuals and institutions; and to propose concrete avenues for action.
  
  Within a university that takes seriously its mission of serving society, this working paper highlights the practical challenges of ensuring research quality, staff well-being, and effective governance. Two summary diagrams at the end of the document provide a visual synthesis of the key points.

Let us briefly revisit the broad outcomes of our collective reflection.

Pluralism
 

Pluralism is both a practice and a requirement. It implies not only a diversity of research objects, but also a genuine plurality in the ways research is disseminated and valued.
 

• Diversity of situated research topics, methodologies, approaches, and epistemologies
   

• Moving beyond current modes of research evaluation: it has become standard for research to follow a (neo-)positivist epistemology, be published in English, and appear in a “high-impact” journal—typically one that imposes a highly standardised format
   

• Giving greater importance to how knowledge circulates within society; for research that engages with social change, this also means developing more open and inclusive evaluation policies
   

A Holistic Approach
 

High-quality research cannot be achieved at the expense of the community that produces it. The two are inextricably linked—whether this involves improving overall workplace well-being or making specific changes to social relations, work organisation, or research governance.
 

• Research quality is inseparable from the well-being of those who produce it; attention must be paid to the ways in which a scientific community functions as a collective entity
   

• Rethinking work organisation, gender relations, hierarchical structures, and governance in order to strengthen research collectives

Our Researchers Express Concerns on Multiple Fronts
 

On the Human Side

Pressure to be constantly productive, disciplinary isolation, over-specialisation
Tensions between institutional expectations and the everyday realities of the profession

On the Structural Side

Internal competition, administrative overload, lack of recognition for invisible work

On the Dissemination Side

Erosion of diversity in publication formats (monographs, videos, reports, etc.)
Popular science communication remains undervalued