Self-evaluation Research

Transcription

1 Self-evaluation Research October 2011

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3 Table of contents 1. Self-evaluation of the research of the Meertens Institute General 1.1 Objectives and research area Composition National and international positioning Quality and scientific relevance Output Earning capacity Academic reputation Societal relevance Viability PhD training SWOT-analysis Strategy Self-evaluation research group Dutch ethnology 2.4 Quality and scientific relevance Output Earning capacity Academic reputation Societal relevance Viability Next generation SWOT-analysis Self-evaluation research group Variation Linguistics 3.4 Quality and scientific relevance Output Earning capacity Academic reputation Societal relevance Viability Next generation SWOT-analysis 27 1

4 Appendices Appendix 1a Present organization structure of the Meertens Institute 29 Appendix 1b Concept of new organization structure 30 Appendix 2 Academic reputation; Dutch ethnology 31 Appendix 3 Most important publications/results; Dutch ethnology 34 Appendix 4 Academic reputation; Variation linguistics 43 Appendix 5 Most important publications/results; Variation linguistics 46 Appendix 6 PhD-students 57 Appendix 7 Technology (chapter of new research plan) 59 Appendix 8 Valorization (chapter of new research plan) 71 2

5 1 Self-evaluation of the research of the Meertens Institute General 1.1 Objectives and research area Objectives and criteria The Meertens Institute has a long tradition in the documentation and research of Dutch language variation, and in particular dialects, and the traditions and rituals that we encounter in everyday culture. In the past decennia the focus of the institute has shifted from documentation to research. At present, research is the major component of the activities at the institute and documentation and other activities are made dependent of the scientific efforts to a large extent. In this chapter we describe the activities of the institute from the research perspective. There are five criteria that determine the relevance of individual research projects at the Meertens Institute. The combination of these five criteria make the projects unique in comparison with research that takes place at other institutions. The first criterium is intellectual prominence. A research institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has an obligation to produce excellent research on its field of inquiry, in our case Dutch language and culture. The scientific prominence should follow from important publications in a-level journals and in books with prestigious publishers, in high-level book publications, in being successful in acquiring funds, in key-note and state-ofthe-art-lectures etc. Although the focus of our research activity is directed towards the understanding of variation and diversity in Dutch language and culture, the research is comparative and should be internationally prominent in such a way that it leads to new insights with respect to existing theories (this chapter). Research of the Meertens Institute is generally based on unique and well-developed databases. In the first 60 years of its existence the Meertens Institute has systematically built and acquired a large amount of collections which provide unique perspectives on our language and culture. These databases and, whenever relevant, new data to be collected, form the starting point for most research projects (cf. Self Evaluation Collections). The projects make use of innovative technology. Large amounts of data can be brought together and made relevant for research by well structured databases with, among others, standardized metadata and persistent identifiers, and by the development of specialized applications. In recent years, a fast development of electronic databases and tools has opened new and fascinating research perspectives, especially with regard to large amounts of data. Optimally each project should have an ehumanities component in which new approaches to the data are exploited and investigated (cf. Self Evaluation Collections and appendix 7, Innovation and Infrastructure). The projects function in a national and international network of research groups. The network is important to create cooperation between research groups focusing on the same or similar research questions. Moreover, it increases the impact of the projects (this chapter). Finally, the projects should have a focus on utilization/valorization. In our view, it is important for the success of a research project to have a broader audience than the scientific research community alone. Projects should be active in finding ways to enhance their impact by connecting to societal demands or interests. In the case of language and culture such connections can often be realized quite naturally (cf. appendix 8, Utilization and distribution of research and documentation). 3

6 1.1.2 Research area: Empirical domains, perspectives and theoretical approaches The Meertens Institute has always taken Dutch language and culture as its field of inquiry. However, within the rather broad empirical domain that is defined by these themes, there should be specialization in order to have sufficient focus in the research programme. This specialization is determined by the relevance of the subfields and by the potentials of the research staff. At present, there are four domains taken to be relevant. These domains are oral culture, traditions and rituals, syntactic variation, and phonological variation. These domains have a long history at the institute supported by the large corpora constructed, and the researchers at the institute belong to the international top of their fields. Other domains that have a history at the institute, such as onomastics or lexicology, thus do not qualify as research domain at our institute at this moment. The four research fields given above all employ a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. They study how present-day phenomena came about and how they have spread. Given the variability and complexity of the data, we opt for a number of theoretical approaches that optimally complement each other. First of all, we have the structuralist approach that approaches the empirical object by investigating the observable properties and trying to find empirical generalizations that may give rise to an explanatory theory. In linguistics, the generative theory is dominant at the Meertens Institute. In ethnology, there are various approaches that are reminiscent to the structuralist approach, especially in the study of oral culture. A second option is the interpretive approach, which at this point is the dominant perspective in ethnology, focusing on the meanings and symbols people employ in human interaction and emphasizing agency and performance over structure. Another way to gain insight into the phenomena is a quantitative approach making use of statistical techniques. In socio-linguistics for instance structuralist approaches are quite naturally connected to quantitative approaches. A similar quantitative orientation is helpful in studying culture. Finally, we have the rather new and daring biological/cognitive approach to variation in language and culture. Obviously, the selected research domains have cognitive significance, for instance with regard to the mental organization of the linguistic system or the way music is organized in the brain. These four domains, the two perspectives and the four theoretical approaches determine the research space at the Meertens Institute. 1.2 Composition Organization of research Until now the research has been organized in two research groups, Dutch Ethnology and Variation Linguistics. These groups are embedded in the organizational structure of the institute as given in Appendix 1a. Within these groups there are a number of structural research positions that are based on a division in scientific subfields. For instance, the domain of Dutch Ethnology is divided into Feast&Ritual, Religious Culture, Material Culture and Oral Culture. The field of oral culture is again divided in folktales and folksongs which each have a structural research position. The structural staff of ethnology divides over the different research areas in the following way: Feast & Ritual Religious culture Material Culture Oral Culture Stengs Helsloot Margry Roodenburg Dibbits (until ) Grijp - songs Meder - stories 4

7 For the research group Variation Linguistics, the field is divided in six different subfields with six research positions, as given in the matrix below (cf. research plan Dynamische tradities, 2006). 1 geography diachrony society phonology Van Oostendorp Hermans Hinskens syntax Barbiers Postma Cornips This organizational structure based on fields of specialization determines the size of the structural research staff. Although this structure provides a relatively good coverage of the fields of investigation, it does not create enough flexibility and dynamics in the research programme given that individual research is determined by the quality and ambition of the individual researcher occupying a specific cell within the structure, and not by the specific project he/she is working on. In order to create a stronger dynamics, the management of the institute has decided to change the research organization in such a way that the topics of research and the related staff positions will depend on actual research projects that are being carried out. As a consequence, research will be based on temporary research themes in which different researchers cooperate. This perspective creates a new situation in which the division in two research groups will be replaced by a division in a number of research themes and in which the composition of the staff depends partly on the selection of research themes. This perspective requires a stricter management of the research activities given that actual projects must be selected and monitored regularly. It also creates a more dynamic situation requiring a constant discussion of the research policies of the institute. The institute has already started to implement the organizational change described above. In January 2011 a call for research themes has been launched. From the six research proposals submitted, two have been accepted - Life of the Liquidae and Oral Transmission - and one is conditionally accepted - Dutchness - after an extensive, partly external review and selection procedure. These projects will start in January We expect to approve at least two more projects in a next round. Large externally funded projects may also receive the status of research theme. In order to accommodate this new research structure, we plan to change the organization of the institute by adding a Research Board, which is composed of the leaders of the various research themes and the director of the institute. This board will prepare decisions concerning the selection and monitoring of the research themes and the institute s research policy. As a consequence, the research themes will function more as independent research units - eg. with respect to finances and hiring personnel - than is possible in the present organizational structure. The intended organizational structure of the institute as of 2012 is given in Appendix 1b Research staff and financing, As shown in Table 1 below, the research staff of the institute has been decreasing in the period There are two reasons for this. The financial situation (see Table 2) has forced us to reduce the number of tenured research positions that are financed through the lumpsum of the KNAW and the number of externally funded temporary project positions. There is a reduction of 23% of the tenured staff, in particular of the tenured staff of Variation Linguistics (28%, vs 16% in the case of Dutch Ethnology). In addition to this, the number of PhD-positions, which are mostly financed by externally funded projects (especially NWO-funds), and the non-ten- 1 The director of the institute, Bennis, is formally not part of the research groups. However, given the fact that his research is in the field of Variation Linguistics, he is taken as member of Variation Linguistics in the overviews for research staff (Table 1) and for output (Table 3). 5

8 ured research positions which are also project bound, show a decreasing tendency as well. The pressure on external funds - due to budget cuts on research at the universities - has increased substantially, causing a negative effect on the success in acquiring externally funded research projects. When we look at the total research staff, it emerges that the staff of the research group Variation Linguistics shows a significant and gradual reduction of 37%: 16.5 in 2006 to 10.4 in In our view, we are reaching a critical point. In order to continue a research institute like the Meertens Institute, the research staff should have sufficient volume. Given the ambitions of the institute and its broad scope, the size of the research formation should certainly not sink lower than 20 fte. We observe that the staff for documentation, ICT and support is not much affected over the period One of the reasons for this is that we have invested in technology in the past period. Moreover, we have been quite successful in the acquisition of ICT-projects over the last years. Therefore, both with respect to tenured technicians and with temporary technicians in projects, we have been able to increase the size of this group, partly at the expense of research and analogue documentation. Table 1: Research staff at institutional and programme level Institute tenured research staff (fte) non-tenured research staff (fte) PhD (fte) Total research staff (fte) documentation & ICT support staff (fte) visiting fellows (number) Total staff (fte) Variation linguistics tenured staff non-tenured staff PhD Total research staff (fte) Dutch ethnology tenured staff non-tenured staff PhD Total research staff (fte)

9 Table 2: Funding and expenditure Funding direct 2.69 m / 80% m / 81% grants/contract 0.69 m / 0.67 m / 20% 2 19% 3.04 m / 75% 1.02 m / 25% 3.09 m / 79% 0.84 m / 21% 2.98 m / 78% 0.85 m / 22% total 3.38 m 3.47 m 4.06 m 3.93 m 3.83 m Expenditure personnel 2.86 m 3.04 m 3.25 m 3.51 m 3.47 m other 0.42 m 0.37 m 0.73 m 0.47 m 0.51 m total 3.28 m 3.41 m 3.98 m 3.98 m 3.98 m If we look at both tables above, it will be clear that the slow increase of direct funding is not sufficient to support the increase of the average costs per fte. Both the grants/ contracts funding and the direct funding show a small upward effect; the same holds for the personnel costs. However, Table 1 shows a reduction of the staff of the institute with 15% (52.2 in 2006 vs 44.2 in 2010). It can be concluded that the average costs of personnel expenditure have substantially increased over the period (average in 2006 and in 2010), although the salaries of the research staff are generally lower than in comparable functions at universities. There are various reasons for this rise. A first reason is that the costs have increased due to general salary measures. Secondly, the average costs per fte have increased due to low mobility of the personnel, which causes most employees to have arrived at the top of their salary scale. The third relevant factor in this context is that the personnel costs have increased due to a higher average quality of the personnel employed. Fourthly, more costs have been added to the budget of individual employees, such as the costs for computer assistance (a.o. helpdesk) which were outsourced in A final reason is that the expenditure for personnel also contains the costs for a growing number of interns and volunteers, and the costs for temporary staff with free-lance contracts; these groups are not included in the staff formation in Table 1. All in all, this might become a critical situation. The best way to reduce the average salary cost will be by attracting cheaper personnel. This means hiring more young, temporary employees, which is desirable anyway for reasons of continuity and flexibility (see below). 1.3 National and international positioning In this paragraph we focus on the national and international position of the institute as a whole. Of course, the most relevant way to position the institute nationally and internationally is through important publications (journals and books) and lectures. We will postpone an overview of these and related results until sections 1.4, 2, 3 and the appendices 3 and 5, in which the major data are given for the two research groups. Other ways to position the institute are discussed below. 2 The percentage of external funding is substantially higher (>30%) if we relate the amount of funding to the research/technological groups only. It appears to be correct to say that our research is for more than 30% externally funded. 7

10 One of the criteria of research projects at the institute - both internally and externally financed projects - is the criterium of national and international collaboration (cf ). The institute is first applicant cq coordinator of many projects that involve collaboration with universities and research institutes in the Netherlands and abroad. For instance, the NWO-groot project Taalportaal, the Catch-projects Witchcraft, Fact and Cogitch, the Computational Humanities project Tunes&Tales, NWO-program projects such as Roots of Ethnolects or Heritage Dynamics, or the ESF-project EDISYN crucially involve national and international cooperation. The idea is that the institute should have a leading role within its research domains not only by producing outstanding results but also by supporting and initiating cooperation with important research groups or individual researchers outside the institute. The institute supports and initiates cooperation with guest-researchers. There are three groups of guest-researchers. First, there is the group of retired or otherwise unemployed scholars and scholars that have a temporary freelance position at the institute. In this period it concerns researchers such as Har Brok, Ton Goeman, Joep Kruijsen, Nicoline van der Sijs, Piet van Reenen (Variation Linguistics) and Willem de Blécourt (Ethnology). The second group consists of Dutch scholars that are involved in one of the research projects and who study part-time at the institute, such as Aafke Hulk (Amsterdam/NIAS), Pieter Muysken (Nijmegen), Ton van der Wouden (Leiden) and Roeland van Hout (Nijmegen). The third group consists of foreign scholars that visit the institute for some time to strengthen ongoing research projets. Examples of this category are Simon Bronner (USA), Michaela Fenske (Germany), Marcel den Dikken (KNAW-visiting professor, New York), Alexandra Lenz (Germany/Austria), Ioanna Sitaridou (Cambridge UK). A list of guests of the latter category is provided in 2.7.b and 3.7.b. Another approach to create a strong position in our fields of research is holding positions in national and international boards and organizing national and international conferences. For instance, since 2002 the institute hosts the secretarial office of the international ethnology organization SIEF (secretary Margry), while members of the institute are in the board of the European organization for generative linguistics GLOW (chair Barbiers, member Van Oostendorp). At the interface of research and technology, the institute is also well represented nationally and internationally (CLARIN: Barbiers, Bennis, Kemps Snijders; CATCH: Bennis, Brugman, Alkhoven). A list of board memberships is provided in the appendices 2c and 4c. In the past five years the institute has (co-)organized a number of prominent international conferences and workshops, among which the Sociolinguistics Symposium 17 (2008), the Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop 26 (2011), the International Ballad Conference (2010) or the SIEF Congress 10 (2011). A list of international conferences can be found in the appendices 2a and 4a. Finally, one of the goals of the institute is that each structural researcher at the institute also holds a position as professor ( bijzonder hoogleraar, 0-hoogleraar or deeltijd hoogleraar ) at a university. At this moment, there are eight members of the research staff holding such a position, spread over six universities: University of Utrecht (Barbiers, Grijp), Free University Amsterdam (Hinskens, Roodenburg), University of Amsterdam (Bennis), University of Leiden (Van Oostendorp), Maastricht University (Cornips) and Leuven University (Margry), which comprises around 60% of the present structural research staff (cf. 2.7a and 3.7a). 1.4 Quality and scientific relevance It is not an exaggeration to claim that the institute is a scientific leader with respect to its fields of investigation within the Netherlands. It is also a key player in the European context. A list of the most significant results is provided in the paragraphs 2.4 and 3.4 and the most relevant signs of recognition are provided in 2.7 and 3.7, in which the research groups describe the quality and relevance of their research activities. See also the appendices 2-5. These results demonstrate that researchers of the institute are very well embedded in their fields of study. The quality of their output is on average high and their work has impact on the international research community. 8

11 A point that should be made here is that the institute has gained a strong position in the field of ehumanities in the past years. The general idea behind the change towards technology is that new technological developments appear to make it possible and in the long run inevitable to change the field of humanities studies, in particular in areas that make use of large amounts of data. The institute has invested a lot of energy and manpower to change our rather modest department of technological support into a department of technological innovation that is taking a leading position in our country and a strong position in the international context (together with the Max Planck Institute Nijmegen) in the fields of data management and infrastructure, with a leading role in programmes such as CLARIN (ESFRI/Roadmap), Catch (NWO Exact/Humanities) and Computational Humanities (KNAW). We expect fascinating new possibilities for our research in the near future, based on these innovations. For a discussion on this issue, see Appendix 7. We may add to the criterium of scientific relevance the fact that much of the work that is being done at the institute also has significant relevance for societal issues with respect to the discourse on topics such as national identity, immaterial cultural heritage, multicultural society, language norms and language change. For a discussion on these issues, see Appendix Output The output of the institute and the two research groups is given in Table 3, conform the categories that are given in the SEP-protocol. In order to determine the meaning of these numbers, it is necessary to relate them to the size of the research staff. There are a few general tendencies which we may observe in Table 3. We see that the size of the non-scientific output (the last four categories) has clearly been diminishing over the past years (from 110 in 2008 to 54 in 2009 and 47 in 2010). Similarly, we observe a decline in the number of non-reviewed articles in the past two years: 36 in 2007, 32 in 2008 versus 13 in 2009 and 17 in Both are a sign of the relative importance that is given to refereed scientific articles in the past period. Table 3: Main categories of research output total mean p/y Institute refereed articles in journals non-refereed articles in journals scientific books refereed book chapters non-refereed book chapters editor scientific volume/issue PhD-theses ,25 scientific lectures articles in non-scientific journals articles in non-scientific books non-scientific books non-scientific lectures total

12 Variation linguistics refereed articles in journals non-refereed articles in journals scientific books refereed book chapters non-refereed book chapters editor scientific volume/issue PhD-theses scientific lectures articles in non-scientific journals articles in non-scientific books non-scientific books non-scientific lectures total Dutch ethnology refereed articles in journals non-refereed articles in journals scientific books refereed book chapters non-refereed book chapters editor scientific volume/issue PhD-theses scientific lectures articles in non-scientific journals articles in non-scientific books non-scientific books non-scientific lectures total Looking at the output figures in Table 3, there appears to be a more or less stable amount of peer reviewed publications over the years. For instance, if we take the refereed articles in journals and books together, no clear picture emerges: 2006=44, 2007=32, 2008=36, 2009=41 3 The output of 2011 is not included since these figures represent the period until September 1 only, and thus the totals of 2011 are not comparable to the figures given in Table 3. The impression is that these numbers support the general picture that emerges from Table 3. A remarkable fact is that Dutch ethnology has 20 refereed articles in journals and books in 2011, which is already higher than the total of last year. 10

13 and 2010=47. However, if we relate these figures to the size of the research staff (tenured and non-tenured research staff without PhD students), the picture changes, as is shown in Table 4. After 2006, there is a clear rise in the amount of peer-reviewed publications per fte, from 1.8 in 2007 to 3.1 in We may interpret these results as the consequence of the policy of the institute to give special attention to the publication of articles in peer-reviewed, high quality journals or in books with prestigious publishers, preferably in a well-known series of books. However, a remark is in order here. Although the number of international, peer-reviewed articals in journals and books is rising and has reached a satisfactory level of three per fte, results might be improved further by aiming at the highest level of publication more than is done at present, i.e. at the selective level of journals that have the highest prestige in their fields, i.e. the triple-a-journals. This might enhance the visibility and the impact of the research on the international level. There is no clear discrepancy between the two research groups. Although linguistics has a longer tradition in peer-reviewed publications, it appears to be the case that ethnology is taking over the tradition and that the researchers at the Meertens Institute have catched up rapidly. Table 4: Number of peer-reviewed articles in journals and books per fte research staff VL+DE VL DE Although there is no strict norm concerning the amount of output a researcher at a humanities research institute must or can realize, it seems to be the case that the research output of the Meertens Institute is substantial, in scientific articles and books, in scientific lectures (the average is more than five scientific lectures per fte per year), and in the popular-scientific domain which is important for reasons of valorization PhD students In the past period, 17 PhD-students have been employed, eight of which have graduated. Given the fact that eight of the non-graduated students are still working on their dissertation, of which five are still employed as PhD, and of which six have reached a final stage, we might be satisfied with the results. The more so, since six of the graduated students have acquired a position in the scientific world (university, research institute, library). 11

14 Table 5: PhD-students name M/F Ethno/ Ling financ. 1 Haslinger F Ling UvT/ MI period diss. +1 more exp. stop n.a. 2 Efting Dijkstra F Ethno MI Boerrigter F Ling MI Spruit M Ling NWO vdhorst F Ethno NWO Jansen F Ling MI Polisenska F Ling NWO MacLean F Ling NWO Köhnlein M Ling NWO vkranenburg M Ethno NWO Prehn F Ling NWO vwijngaarden M Ling NWO Boef F Ling ESF Balkenhol M Ethno NWO Elpers F Ethno MI/ UvA Lefeber F Ethno NWO Vidarsson M Ling MI/ UvA On the other hand, we might say that the overall number of PhD-students is somewhat low. It turns out to be more and more difficult to finance PhD-students from our structural lumpsum budget, for financial reasons that are given above (cf.1.2). It can be seen from Table 5 that there are few PhD-students financed from the lumpsum budget in the last period ( MI ). A second reason for the relatively low average number of PhD-students is that it is very complicated as well to receive research funding from external organizations such as the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) or the European Science Foundation (ESF). There is a constant pressure on these funds by a high number of research proposals that we submit to these organizations. However, given that the percentage of success is often not higher than 10% and the average quality of submissions is high, it happens frequently that projects which are reviewed as very promising (A or A+) still do not get financed. This is a source of concern. A second issue concerns the success rate of projects that have been funded. In the humanities it is more or less usual that PhDs need more time for writing their dissertation than their period of enrollment (3-5 years). In our view, a PhD should not spend more time to reach graduation than one year after the end of his/her contract. Given the time that is needed in the last phase for judgement of the final manuscript by the promotion committee and the time that is needed to reserve the graduation location, the maximum of a year after the end of contract seems reasonable. However, as is clear from the table above, two out of eight graduated PhDs have graduated more than a year after the end of their contract, and two not yet graduated PhDs will not succeed in graduating within that time frame. Although in the end we have good 12