Science as / in Culture 1: Scientific Misconduct, Evaluation, Media

It is intended to enlarge our research network on Scientific Misconduct, Evaluation and Media by establishing long term co-operations with research organisations in the New Member States and Candidate Countries of the European Union. The research activities of our partners from Croatia and the Czech Republic are complimentary to the research network's activities. At present there are growing concerns on -Scientific misconduct (in this context: all kinds of scientific fraud, plagiarism, unethical authorship, inappropriate data & information withholding), -Discontentment with evaluation practices (peer review and quantitative evaluation, especially through "journal impact factors"), and -The ambivalent function of traditional and new "mass" media in science communication / public understanding of science. That is also reflected in the media reports about science. For instance, reports on Internet lists or servers, in conventional media (but also in many influential science journals) are focussing on heavy fraud, including personalizing and often "pathologizing" tendencies. This superficial sensational reporting makes it likely to create scapegoats, while neglecting the organizational and cultural conditions for other types of misconduct. For example: Why did peer review not prevent the uncovered affairs? Why are manipulated papers being found in high impact journals and cited often, even after retraction? Do we obviously need heroes in science, too? Do we meanwhile conceptualize the cumbersome processes of discovery and serendipity as high performance stopwatch competitions? An integrative perspective shall bring together science studies, research ethics and media studies focussing on improving formal and informal scholarly communication as well as science communication.