What are the chances? Clinician scientist` career pathways in Germany.

BACKGROUND: Germany faces a lack of clinician scientists. This problem is widely acknowledged, not just in Germany, as clinician scientists are crucial for medical translation and innovation: trained in medical practice and research they are capable of translating scientific problems into clinical application and vice versa, clinical problems into research. The implementation of nationwide clinician scientist programs (CSPs) in Germany is supposed to solve the lack of trained clinician scientists and, as consequence, to improve the translational relationship between biomedical research and clinical practice. Against the backdrop of an increasing number of CSPs, our study provides early insights into their effectiveness with a focus on what it means to become a clinician scientist and to establish a subsequent career path as a clinician scientist in Germany. METHODS: During a research project that was conducted from 2020 to 2023 and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, we studied thirteen CSPs. We developed a qualitative questionnaire and interviewed 36 clinician scientists in training, their program supervisors, as well as policy stakeholders. The goal of the interviews was to identify the key obstacles in establishing a career path for clinician scientists in Germany. RESULTS: We found three types of challenges for establishing and ensuring long term career paths for clinician scientists: First, local working conditions need to allow for clinician scientists to create and perform tasks that combine research, teaching, patient care and translation synergistically. Protection from the urgency of patient care and from metrics-based performance measures both in the clinic and in research seem key here. Second, a stable career path requires new target positions besides clinic management and senior residency. Third, there is a need for cultural change within university medicine that recognizes and rewards new translation-focused practices. CONCLUSION: We find that CSPs improve working conditions for the duration of the program and provide protected time for doing research. After the programs, however, the career paths remain unstable, mainly due to a lack of target positions for clinician scientists. CSPs support the initial development of the clinician scientist' role, but not in a sustainable way, because the separation of research and patient care is stabilized on an institutional and systemic level. The tasks clinician scientists perform in research remain separate from patient care and teaching, thus, limiting their translational potential. In order to remain a clinician scientist within this differentiated system of university medicine, clinician scientists have to do a significant amount of extra work.

The Rise of the Guest Editor-Discontinuities of Editorship in Scholarly Publishing.

Scholarly publishing lives on traditioned terminology that gives meaning to subjects such as authors, inhouse editors and external guest editors, artifacts such as articles, journals, special issues, and collected editions, or practices of acquisition, selection, and review. These subjects, artifacts, and practices ground the constitution of scholarly discourse. And yet, the meaning ascribed to each of these terms shifts, blurs, or is disguised as publishing culture shifts, which becomes manifest in new digital publishing technology, new forms of publishing management, and new forms of scholarly knowledge production. As a result, we may come to over- or underestimate changes in scholarly communication based on traditioned but shifting terminology. In this article, we discuss instances of scholarly publishing whose meaning shifted. We showcase the cultural shift that becomes manifest in the new, prolific guest editor. Though the term suggests an established subject, this editorial role crystallizes a new cultural setting of loosened discourse communities and temporal structures, a blurring of publishing genres and, ultimately, the foundations of academic knowledge production.

Cycles of invisibility: The limits of transparency in dealing with scientific misconduct.

Sanctions for plagiarism, falsification and fabrication in research are primarily symbolic. This paper investigates sanctions for scientific misconduct and their preceding investigation processes as visible and legitimate symbols. Using three different data sources (retraction notices, expert interviews, and a survey of scientists), we show that sanctions for scientific misconduct operate within a cycle of visibility, in which sanctions are highly visible, while investigation and decision-making procedures remain mostly invisible. This corresponds to high levels of acceptance of sanctions in the scientific community, but a low acceptance of the respective authorities. Such a punitiveness in turn exacerbates confidentiality concerns, so that authorities become even more secretive. We argue that punitiveness towards scientific misconduct is driven by such a cycle of invisibility.

Assessing the Organizational Climate for Translational Research with a New Survey Tool.

Promoting translational research as a means to overcoming chasms in the translation of knowledge through successive fields of research from basic science to public health impacts and back is a central challenge for research managers and policymakers. Organizational leaders need to assess baseline conditions, identify areas needing improvement, and to judge the impact of specific initiatives to sustain or improve translational research practices at their institutions. Currently, there is a lack of such an assessment tool addressing the specific context of translational biomedical research. To close this gap, we have developed a new survey for assessing the organizational climate for translational research. This self-assessment tool measures employees' perceptions of translational research climate and underlying research practices in organizational environments and builds on the established Survey of Organizational Research Climate, assessing research integrity. Using this tool, we show that scientists at a large university hospital (Charité Berlin) perceive translation as a central and important component of their work. Importantly, local resources and direct support are main contributing factors for the practical implementation of translation into their own research practice. We identify and discuss potential leverage points for an improvement of research climate to foster successful translational research.

The visibility of scientific misconduct: A review of the literature on retracted journal articles.

Retractions of scientific articles are becoming the most relevant institution for making sense of scientific misconduct. An increasing number of retracted articles, mainly attributed to misconduct, is currently providing a new empirical basis for research about scientific misconduct. This article reviews the relevant research literature from an interdisciplinary context. Furthermore, the results from these studies are contextualized sociologically by asking how scientific misconduct is made visible through retractions. This study treats retractions as an emerging institution that renders scientific misconduct visible, thus, following up on the sociology of deviance and its focus on visibility. The article shows that retractions, by highlighting individual cases of misconduct and general policies for preventing misconduct while obscuring the actors and processes through which retractions are effected, produce highly fragmented patterns of visibility. These patterns resemble the bifurcation in current justice systems.

Le retrait d'articles scientifiques après publication est devenu le principal instrument pour mesurer l'ampleur de la fraude scientifique. L'augmentation des cas de retrait d'article, essentiellement pour des raisons de fraude, fournit une nouvelle base empirique pour analyser la fraude scientifique. Cet article se propose de passer en revue la littérature scientifique traitant ce sujet dans un contexte interdisciplinaire. Il contextualise les résultats de cette étude dans le champ sociologique en s'interrogeant sur le mécanisme de dévoilement de la fraude. Il considère les retraits d'article comme un nouvel instrument de révélation de la fraude qui insiste sur la notion de visibilité dans une perspective sociologique de la déviance. En mettant l'accent sur les cas individuels et les politiques de prévention des fraudes tout en faisant l'impasse sur les acteurs et les procédures de retrait des articles, ce processus produit un espace fragmenté de visibilité. En cela, il s'apparente à la séparation des questions judiciaires (bifurcation) dans les décisions de justice.

Las retracciones de artículos científicos se están convirtiendo en la institución más relevante para dar sentido a la mala conducta científica. Un número creciente de artículos retractados, mayormente debido a la mala conducta, está proporcionando una nueva base empírica para la investigación sobre la mala conducta científica. Este artículo revisa la literatura de investigación relevante desde un contexto interdisciplinario. Además, los resultados de estos estudios se contextualizan sociológicamente preguntando cómo la mala conducta científica se hace visible a través de retracciones. Estamos tratando a retracciones como institución emergente que vuelve visible a la mala conducta científica, por lo tanto, seguimos a la sociología de la desviación y su enfoque en la visibilidad. Mostramos que las retracciones, al iluminar los casos individuales de mala conducta y las políticas generales para evitarla, oscurecen los actores y los procesos mediante los cuales se efectúan las retracciones, produciendo patrones altamente fragmentadas de visibilidad. Estos patrones se asemejan a la bifurcación en los sistemas de justicia actuales.