Fagpressenytt

The debate on research quality in Norway has just reignited, as it does periodically. Current proposals for increasing quality focus on reducing outputs, for example by removing existing incentives to publishing more (publiseringspoeng) or by introducing constraints to make researchers publish less, presumably on the assumption that 'less is better'. A more straightforward approach is to ask two simple questions: who is doing research, and what do those people need in order to do better research?

Most academic employee s at universities in Norway contribute some of their time to research. But it is temporary staff, discounting any teaching obligations, who contribute the most hours overall to hands-on research. Among these, PhD students are a fairly large and growing group. The law regulating PhD positions says that «Normal åremålsper