Thank you for your input about alternative academic practices!
More detail about the survey:
Who is conducting this survey? Dr. Preston Cosslett Kemeny is the principle investigator for this survey (ElementalCycles.org). It is funded using resources supplied by the University of Chicago Department of the Geophysical Sciences. The University of Chicago Survey Lab has been hired to carry out the direct data collection through Qualtrics, an online web survey platform. The Survey Lab will dis-identify all data before providing it to Dr. Kemeny, Dr. Alexandra Atlee Phillips, and Dr. Daniel Lee Johnson.
What is the purpose of this survey? The survey asks you to rate and, if you like, comment on 14 proposed alternative academic practices. Oriented primarily around the physical sciences within the United States, the 14 alternative practices reconsider common activities within the broad categories of: the graduate student experience, faculty careers, evaluation methods, peer review and publication, and conference norms.
What questions does the survey ask? The survey asks you to rate each of 14 proposed alternative academic practices on a 5-point scale. There is also an open text field for each idea if you wish to provide commentary, as well as a separate open field in which to suggest additional alternative practices. The survey also asks for demographic information in order to test whether and how opinion may align with occupation and social variables.
Where can I find the published article this survey references? To reference the original article, you can follow the link https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024CN000240. The full citation is as follows: Kemeny, P. C., Phillips, A. A., and Johnson, L. D. (2024). Replaying the tape of academia: Fourteen alternative practices for the physical sciences. Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists, 5, e2024CN000240.
Who will know what I say? Your ratings and commentary are confidential. The University of Chicago Survey Lab will only provide the investigators with dis-identified data.
Who is eligible to take part in this survey? The survey is targeted primarily towards undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, academic research staff, and academic research administrators.
Your participation is voluntary. You may decline to take part in the survey, may skip any question you do not wish to answer, and may leave the survey at any time.
Can I have access to the results of this survey? Once the survey has closed, approximately 18 months after the publication of the article, dis-identified results of this survey will provided to the authors and will subsequently be made public, to the extent possible, as part of a follow-up report.
What if I have additional questions?
- For questions or complaints about the content of the survey, please contact Preston Cosslett Kemeny at preston.kemeny@gmail.com.
- If you have problems with the mechanics of the survey, please contact the Survey Lab at surveylab@uchicago.edu.
- The University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division Institutional Review Board (BSDIRB) has reviewed this survey and determined it is exempt. If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact BSDIRB at bsdirb@bsd.uchicago.edu or 773-702-6505 and refer to protocol # IRB24-1039.