Open science failed to penetrate academic hiring practices: a cross-sectional study

Area of Science:

• Academic Hiring Practices
• Open Science Adoption
• Scholarly Communication

Background:

• Academic institutions globally are increasingly encouraged to adopt Open Science (OS) principles.
• Hiring practices are a key mechanism for integrating new scholarly values into academic culture.
• The current study investigates the extent to which OS is incorporated into academic job advertisements.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the prevalence of Open Science (OS) mentions in job advertisements for academic positions worldwide.
• To assess the current hiring practices of research-intensive institutions concerning OS.
• To identify the gap between OS principles and their reflection in academic recruitment.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study design was employed, analyzing 305 job advertisements from 91 global institutions.
• Institutions were selected from the 2017 Center for Science and Technology Leiden ranking and supplementary groups.
• The Modified Open Science Modular Scheme was used to assess the level of OS in job advertisements.

Main Results:

• Only 2 out of 305 (0.6%) job advertisements explicitly mentioned Open Science (OS).
• The analyzed positions included associate/assistant professor (39.0%), researcher/postdoctoral fellow (30.8%), and tenured positions (18.7%).
• A significant disparity exists between the promotion of OS and its inclusion in academic recruitment.

Conclusions:

• There is a critical need to increase the recognition and explicit mention of OS in academic job advertisements.
• Academic institutions are encouraged to integrate OS principles into their hiring processes.
• Promoting OS in hiring can be achieved by highlighting practices like preprint sharing, open access publishing, and data sharing.