GU-Journal 5–2020

GUJournal

INDEPENDENT JOURNAL FOR THE STAFF AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG #5 WINTER 2020

News

How you end up in the citation top Report

Everyone can be a citizen researcher Focus

What happens after the pandemic?

NO LIMITS FOR A PHYSICIST GIOVANNI VOLPE IS CURIOUS ABOUT EVERYTHING

Vice-Chancellor

Thank you for your efforts HE PAST YEAR HAS BEEN like nothing

we have ever experienced before.

We have been forced to change both our private and our professional lives. We have lived with unease and uncertainty, about the pandemic as well as its repercussions in the form of its economic impact on society.

I would like to thank you for all your efforts throughout this strange year of 2020.

It has required all of us to be fleet of foot as new government information and restrictions were announced one day, which then required us to adapt quickly to them the following day. It has required patience and calm when the questions far outnumbered the answers. We have had to be constructive and creative as ready-made solutions were not always available. The problems caused by the email failure has contributed even more to the frustration, concern and demands for adjustments to be made.

2020 has challenged us to change and make quick decisions. We have shown that our organisation, at all levels, is robust and able to weather even radically changing circumstances. It has been tough, but also

instructive. We will take on board the lessons learned and most people agree that it will affect our future operations.

Resting in the knowledge that we have a robust and secure organisation, I am looking forward to tackling the new year together with all of you. It will involve an extended educational remit, many new students and new research grants, which we are very happy about, but it will also entail a lot of responsibility. We face 2021 equipped with a new vision for the university, a university for the world. Our vision emphasises education and research of the highest quality. Over the next ten years, we will focus on contributing to a sustainable and knowledge-based development of society. And we will continue to be a unified organisation that is an attractive workplace and educational environment.

I wish you a really happy 2021! Let’s do it!

Rektor EVA WIBERG

Editor-in-chief :Allan Eriksson, phone: 031–786 10 21, e-mail: allan.eriksson@gu.se Editor-in-chief: Eva Lundgren, phone:031–786 10 81, e-mail: eva.lundgren@gu.se Photographer: Johan Wingborg, phone: 070–595 38 01, e-post: johan.wingborg@gu.se Layout: Anders Eurén, phone: 031–786 43 81, e-mail: anders.euren@gu.se Address: GU JOURNAL, University of Gothenburg Box 100, 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden E-mail: gu-journal@gu.se Internet: gu-journal.gu.se ISSN: 1402-9626 Translation: Språkservice Sverige AB

News

Contents

NEWS 04–20 04. Cooperation give higher rankings.

06. Many issues with the lists.

07 Have human rights and freedoms been given enough attention?

08. Long-term support for future hopes.

10 Scholars at Risk supports academic freedom.

12. He found freedom in Gothenburg.

14. Six focus areas in the new vision.

15. Launch date for Skagerak.

PROFILE 16–19

Giovanni Volpe is a physicist

with classical knowledge

in his luggage.

FOCUS 20–25 21. Citizens do the

hard work in research.

24. The third task –

how to get your research out.

20

Citizen researching

Photo: TOMAS LUNDÄLV, LISBETH JONSSON

Masthead

Pandemics, freedom and research communication EAR READER, when this is-

sue reaches you, it will be Christmas time and only a few days left of the old year. Most of us have been working from home this special year, and there is a strong indication that we will continue to do so in the spring.

In this issue, we write about SAR, Scholars at Risk, an international network that supports researchers that are threatened or prevented from doing their profession. According to Staffan I. Lindberg, professor of Political Science, the situation for academics is getting worse in many countries, not only in dictatorships but also in democracies. One of the academics that has come to Sweden, under the protection of SAR, is Isa Eraslan.

Freedom is also threatened, not by the pandemic as such, but by the way governments throughout the world react to the disease. As Damon Barret points out, in the wealthy parts of the world we all have to live under strict restrictions, but the global crisis will have a much worse impact on the poorer parts of the world. It is understandable

that many countries resort to more draconian measures to constrain people’s freedom of movement, but is the fight against a serious illness really more important than all other human rights? Another consequence of a long-term quarantine is increasing mental ill health and domestic violence. Now, as extensive vaccination programmes are being planned, it raises the question of whether having a vaccination will become a future requirement for travelling to other countries. We do not currently know what long-term and sustainable protection these vaccines will provide. The fact remains that it may still entail constraining human rights.

DO YOU FIND IT interesting to communicate your research to the public? Dick Kasperowski reminds us that teaching students and lecturing to different groups are also ways to connect to non-experts.

We hope that you will enjoy this issue, that you will have a cheerful holiday and, above all, that you, all readers, will have a happy and healthy new year 2021.

ALLAN ERIKSSON & EVA LUNDGREN

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■ News

Cooperation gives higher ranking

EVERY YEAR, the company Clarivate Analytics calculates which researchers are among the most cited within various fields. In order to make the list, it is important to co-publish with prominent colleagues, explains Johan Bengtsson-Palme, a microbiology researcher, whose name was added to the list this year.

– My most cited works are database and method articles that frequently stem from major collaborative projects involving several universities and researchers. And I also work a lot with my previous supervisor, Joakim Larsson; one of our most cited publications is an overview article about antibiotic resistance from 2017. That is now part of the core articles in the field, which “everyone” cites.

Johan Bengtsson-Palme has published 52 articles since 2011, of which a large portion are highly cited. But he is doubtful whether these types of lists are particularly important.

– It may be an ace up your sleeve when you have only just started your career, like myself, and then finding yourself in the

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same context as Joakim Larsson, Henrik Zetterberg, Fredrik Bäckhed and Kaj Blennow can never be a bad thing. I think there is “many-a-mickle-makes-amuckle” type of effect: the list is not very important in itself, but it contributes to an overall perception of a successful research environment, both for myself and for the university, which I believe may be valuable in the long term.

Kaj Blennow, Professor of Neurochemistry, argues that the number of citations is primarily important for assessing research applications, simply because there is no other way of assessing quality.

– A frequently cited researcher is probably a person who has done something important to the advancement of research.

It simply feels credible that the researcher will manage their project in a good way.

BUT IT IS ALSO important where you publish. A journal’s prestige is connected to its impact factor, which is determined by the average number of citations per article published by the journal.

The Lancet, for example, has an impact factor of 60.4, which means that the articles have been cited an average of 60.4 times over the past few years.

– And the prestigious journals are of course more widely read than others, simply because so much is being published that you only have time to read the most important journals.

The competition is good, Kaj Blennow argues, even though it can sometimes have less pleasant consequences.

Photo: JOHAN WINGBORG

A multitude of publications and even more citations, these are the measurements of a researcher’s success. And in order to get to the top, you have to co-publish with prominent colleagues.

But the system can also lead to a rush to publish, that in some instances is harmful to research.

This is what two of the researchers at the top of this year’s list are arguing

Kaj Blennow

A frequently cited researcher is probably a person who has done something important in the advancement of research.

KAJ BLENNOW

– My colleague Henrik Zetterberg and I recently wrote an article about a completely new blood test for Alzheimer’s disease. We sent the text to The New England Journal of Medicine who took a long time to respond and also demanded additional difficult-to-conduct experiments. We suspected that the problems were perhaps due to the fact that the journal’s reviewers had a competing article that they wanted to publish first.

Eventually we sent the article to another journal, The Lancet Neurology, but then we had already lost four or five months.

This was why two articles in Nature Medicine about a similar blood test, developed by the American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, with very similar promising results, were publis-

This map shows the degree of co-publications. Kaj Blennow och Henrik Zetterberg account for a large part.

Source: Lars Kullman, University library.

replicated, something which they have written about themselves. In particular, I would like them to include results from studies on patients before they draw conclusions about pre-clinical data being relevant for a disease.

JOHAN BENGTSSON-PALME

hed before ours. Those articles attracted a lot more attention than ours when The Lancet Neurology was published the following month. However, we derived some comfort from the fact that Henrik and myself were co-authors of those publications, as we had run other analyses which were presented there.

An additional problem can be journals that do not publish follow-up articles which show that the data in the first article cannot be verified, says Kaj Blennow.

Subsequently, it turned out that a significant number of other researchers had also failed to replicate the experiment. Unfortunately, Nature is a little bit like a tabloid sometimes. They like to be the first to present interesting news. However, they can have problems with results not being

Johan Bengtsson-Palme

Eva Lundgren Allan Eriksson

FACTS The analysis firm Clarivate Analytics is the owner of Web of Science, which lists 1 percent of the world’s most frequently cited researchers.

The list is based on publications from the past ten years, from 2009-2019. The analysis is based on data from the company’s publication database.

– ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO, Nature

published a startling result by Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard about a cancer medicine which, even though it had only undergone cell and animal testing, was presented as a promising treatment principle for Alzheimer’s disease. When we tried to replicate the results on samples from patients, we concluded that the cancer medication had no effect at all. We compiled our results in a comment to Nature who then, after having talked to Greengard, refused to publish our article.

argues that excessively chasing citations is one explanation for the research scandals that have generated attention recently, such as the Macchiarini scandal.

– I would like to see a greater degree of responsibility, from both the universities and the funders, so that young researchers are able to develop their project over time instead of quickly pushing out articles that are as citable as possible. This rush to cite and publish leads to short-term thinking, and an unwillingness to tackle complicated problems that do not have any obvious quick solutions. But used responsibly, citations are a form of verification that we conduct valuable research.

KI has the highest number of researchers on the list Karolinska Institute

13

Stockholm University

10

University of Gothenburg 9 Uppsala University

5

SLU

5

The list comprises the one percent of researchers who are most frequently cited in one of 21 different fields, or the newly established cross-disciplinary category. Overall, the list comprises

6,200 researchers worldwide, of whom almost half work in the USA. This year, nine researchers from the University of Gothenburg made the list, of whom two are new: Johan Bengtsson-Palme and Alexandre Antonelli, Professor of Systematics and Biodiversity at the University of Gothenburg and former manager of the Botanical Garden.

However, his current main place of employment is the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in Great Britain.

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■ News

Many issues with the list

THE LISTS ARE also problematic from a methodological perspective, not least because performance is linked to the fields of study defined by Clarivate, and not to the researcher’s own discipline, Gustaf Nelhans explains, who researches the very subject of citations and bibliometrics at the University of Borås.

– For example, library and information science journals are listed under “computer science”, which in turn counts as “mathematics and technology”. And just like that, a researcher who works on critically qualitative studies of research is suddenly a high-ranking mathematician! In addition, researchers are listed on the basis of their university affiliations. This has led to a scramble to get researchers to accept “secondary affiliations”, where the second university gets the same attention as the first one.

One such example from a few years ago was when Saudi Arabia managed to be ranked among the top-ten countries in terms of citations because a couple of universities in the country had employed highly cited researchers who hardly actually worked there, but only served to elevate the status of the universities.

The fact that the same researchers keep appearing on the

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Photo: JOHAN WINGBORG

Each year, the company Clarivate publishes a list of the one percent of top researchers who over a ten-year period have been cited most frequently within certain fields. The list is based on data from the Web of Science.

– However, the list has a number of issues. One issue is its focus on individuals when instead, research is very much a team effort, says theorist of science, Gustaf Nelhans.

lists is due to a rolling ten-year average, where you keep moving a ten-year citation window forward one year at the time, Gustaf Nelhans explains.

– BECAUSE THE DISTRIBUTION

of bibliometric data is extremely skewed, individual articles that stand out in the calculations may be the ones that drive inclusion on the list more than an even distribution of moderately highly cited articles year on year. There is also a so-called Matthew effect where researchers who meet the required criteria to climb through the rankings continue to break through the noise.

The system also means that the social scientists who are cited by medical researchers gain a cumulative advantage, simply because there are many more medical researchers than there are, say, sociologists.

There are many issues with these lists, among other things the way scientific fields are defined, says Gustaf Nelhans.

Most publications (2009–2019)

Number of publications

Kaj Blennow Henrik Zetterberg Karl Swedberg Fredrik Bäckhed Antonelli Alexandre Joakim Larsson Henrik Nilsson Johan Bengtsson-Palme Valentina Tremaroli

967 956 372 176 124 110 84 52 41

Source: Lars Kullman, University library.

Number of highlycited publications

59 48 30 37 9 14 13 10 15

– YOU HARDLY SEE the opposite, where a medical researcher who is cited in social science journals climbs up the list. Due to field normalisation, citation numbers are weighted in favour of social science research, which may lead to relatively low citation numbers having a great impact, which is another problem. If I could present a proposal, a researcher’s work should be assessed by experts while the bibliometric tools should be used to provide support and evidence for assessments, where aspects other than simple calculations are difficult to assess. In any case, it is rather the universities themselves that use these rankings rather than the researchers themselves: they are only marginally impacted by different top-ten lists.

Eva Lundgren

Human rights forgotten Countries around the world have imposed extensive lockdowns with delays in the provision of healthcare, depression and increased domestic violence as a result. In the Global South, the number of deaths from malaria and other diseases is increasing due to Covid responses.

– The reaction to the pandemic seems to have been that it is ‘better to be safe than sorry’. But we have to think very carefully about what we want to be safe from, and what we want to avoid being sorry for. Have human rights and freedoms been given enough attention? This is the question Damon Barrett poses.

IT IS NOT unusual for governments to use

IN THE FIGHT against a contagious di-

sease, certain rights may be restricted, such as the right to move freely, says Damon Barrett.

– But this is only the first step in any analysis. From there we have questions of legality, proportionality and reasonableness. The ease with which some restrictions have been put in place is worrying. In some cases, this was done without proper justification, and in some cases without even a proper legal basis.

In some cases, the restrictions have no end date. I think it is to Sweden’s credit that these concerns about rights and legality were raised from the outset. In times of crises, we often believe that we must act quickly and drastically, but maybe it is precisely during crises that we really have to pause and make sure we protect our rights and institutions.

It is true that the pandemic is very Photo: PRIVATE

security or health threats as a reason to implement restrictions to human rights, points out Damon Barrett, a lawyer and researcher at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Sahlgrenska Academy.

– New research shows that half of the world’s democracies have reversed their progress on human rights during the pandemic. This has not been caused by the virus. It has been caused by responses to what is presented as an unprecedented threat. Drawing comparisons with influenza seem to have become taboo, as if influenza is not a major cause of illness and death, and as if the comparisons would minimise the threat posed by Covid. We are confronted with a daily reminder of the threat through case counts in the newspapers.

With a threat of this scale, when would governments stop restricting rights?

One reason for the strong reactions, at least in the UK, is a mathematical model which, in the spring of 2020, showed that about 250,000 Britons risked dying in the pandemic if drastic measures were not taken.

– It subsequently turned out that such a scenario was simply not possible, but the country’s policy was designed on the basis of this worst-case scenario. And once you have started by restricting freedoms and rights on the basis of this kind

of threat, it is difficult to stop. Surveys have shown that not only is it acceptable in some countries to restrict rights in response to Covid, it is in fact, politically unpopular not to do so. During the Blitz in London during World War II, there was an ‘all clear’ signal to let people know when it was safe to come out of the bomb shelters. What is the Covid equivalent of the ‘all clear’? It seems to me that it is a concerted effort to walk back the narrative and perception of threat that has built up throughout 2020. This is a massive communications challenge.

Damon Barrett

serious, says Damon Barrett.

– But we must separate the harm a virus can cause from the harm caused by public policy. My 80-year-old father, who lives in a care home in Ireland, became seriously ill with Covid-19. He almost died, and if he had died, he would have died alone. He has lived this year, surely one of his last, with practically no visits from friends or family. It is important to reduce the risk of infection, but the price we are paying is very high. In the Western world, depression and violence within the family are increasing, together with many other social and health problems. In developing countries, the pandemic response will lead to a catastrophe, both from an economic and a health perspective. These are the terrible long-term consequences of policies often implemented in haste.

EXTENSIVE VACCINATION programmes

are planned, not least here in Sweden.

Damon Barrett points out that only ten years ago, it was forbidden for people living with HIV to enter the United States.

– The vaccine is welcome news, but alone it will not be sufficient to provide the ‘all clear’ signal as long as the perception of threat remains so high. It could ultimately become a form of social control.

It is not unlikely that some countries will require people to be vaccinated against Covid-19 before they are allowed entry.

This is the case with yellow fever in some places. It could affect people’s ability to gain entry to certain places within a specific country. Whatever happens, the pandemic will have consequences for human rights and fundamental freedoms well into the future. We must take the time now to pause and take stock of the consequences of policy responses. What do human rights really involve? Well, among other things, they concern the relationship between the individual and the state. We should not forget that public health can be a considerable exercise in state power. Moreover, in our turbulent world, there will always be another threat with which we have to contend.

Eva Lundgren

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Long-term support to future hopes As many as four researchers at the University of Gothenburg have received the Swedish Research Council’s very prestigious consolidation grants.

This means that, of the universities in Sweden, the University of Gothenburg has received the second highest number of these grants, surpassed only by the Karolinska Institute.

– It is really fantastically gratifying that the University of Gothenburg has received so many grants, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Göran Landberg points out.

EXERCISE, especially if you start doing something new, can reduce the changes that occur in the brain during nicotine use. This was shown by Louise Adermark, Associate Professor of Neurobiology, in a study last year.

– Tests we have carried out on rats confirm that the changes are quite long lasting. But we have also been able to show that physical exercise restores brain function in animals. This was especially true if the exercise was physically strenuous, and they exercised in a way that they had not done before. The use of tobacco has long been in decline in Sweden. But in the last decade, a reversal has taken place.

– A contributing factor is probably all the new tobacco-free nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes, and white snus. But the marketing is misleading, the cigarettes contain nicotine that is extracted from the tobacco plant. Tobacco usage is also on the rise in the world as a whole.

The project the Swedish Research Council is now investing

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in means, among other things, that new theories will be tested to see why people relapse into nicotine addiction, says Louise Adermark.

– The project is being carried out in part in collaboration with the Tobacco Prevention Clinic at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital and the goal is to develop new treatments for nicotine addiction. But we also hope to find ways to reduce the cardiovascular effects of tobacco use. For me, this grant means completely new opportunities to invest in an idea for a longer period of time without having to apply for new grants.

Björn Burmann, Associate Professor of Biophysics, gets funding for a study of how protein machineries are able to degrade toxic protein aggregates.

But in this study, we will be able to follow the development in different regions, even in individual villages.

ADEL DAOUD

– I WANT TO UNDERSTAND how

these proteins work, not just single components but proteins embedded in larger complex systems and how their three-dimensional structure is affected by their surrounding environment. What I want to study is how these advanced systems unfold and degrade protein aggregates that can be toxic to the cells at the atomic resolution. One of the most important classes of these proteins is an evolutionarily conserved group called AAA+ proteases, which use the cellular energy, ATP, to do its work. The mechanism by which this class of proteins degrades various aggregates s one of the biggest mysteries of fundamental protein function.

The project will use nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) but also other highly complementary techniques such

Louise Adermark

as cryo-electron microscopy (cryo EM).

– Since the mechanism we are investigating is directly linked to diseases such as cancer, metabolic diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases, our research results will be of great importance in many areas. In addition, our studies will hopefully also provide important novel knowledge regarding the development of new antibiotics targeting theses highly conserved systems.

Using NASA’s satellite images from the 1980s to the present day, Adel Daoud, Associate Professor of Sociology, will create a database of living standards in Africa.

– The pictures give a clear view of homes, roads, cars and arable land, but will also be checked against surveys of how people perceive their health, for example. By comparing images over time between different geographical areas, we hope to be able to investigate why some parts of Africa have been more successful than others SURVEYS OF THE development

Björn Burmann

Adel Daoud

of poverty are often carried out at the country level, says Adel Daoud.

– That means that you miss the differences that exist within a country, which can be significant. But in this study, we will be able to follow the development in different regions, even in individual villages.

Thus far, the project is about Africa.

– But the idea is that the project will be evaluated, developed further and in the long run can be used for poverty studies all over the world.

When nature’s ability to store

carbon is discussed, it is often forests that get the attention. But plants that live in the sea also store carbon, so-called ”blue carbon”.

– Despite the fact that they cover fairly small areas, coastal mangrove swamps, salt marshes, seagrass beds and kelp forests account for half of all the carbon that is stored in the seabed, explains Isaac Santos, Professor of Marine Chemistry. Much of the research so far has focused on quantifying the carbon content of the seabed. But carbon is also transported onwards and stored in the oceans, which are the largest global carbon reservoir.

The aim of the project is to prepare detailed carbon budgets from source to sink at the flow across the continental shelf from the coastal habitats. My hypothesis is that the outflow of blue carbon and subsequent storage in the ocean is an overlooked mechanism for long-term carbon storage that is greater than the storage in soil and sediment.

The project will use state-ofthe-art geochemical methods to quantify pore water flows,

coastal transformations of organic and inorganic carbon and the further flow of carbon to the continental shelves and out into the oceans.

Isaac Santos is doing research on carbon in the ocean, so called blue carbon.

–WE HOPE TO gain in-depth

insight into whether blue carbon is ultimately returned to the atmosphere or remains in the sea permanently. Maybe blue carbon can be a natural solution to the climate crisis?

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Göran Landberg points out that the Research Council grant is a prestigious and important form of support for the most promising young researchers.

– They have now been given even better opportunities to consolidate their research and expand their activities. To work with the Research Council to optimise the development of young researchers into the research leaders of the future is something we value highly at the University of Gothenburg.

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Malin Arnesson

FACTS The Swedish Research Council’s consolidation grants are given to the country’s most prominent young researchers. This year, the grant has gone to 20 researchers, of which the following are at the University of Gothenburg: Louise Adermark, Associate Professor of Neurobiology, for Nikotinberoende – en konsekvens av neurofysiologiska rubbningar (Nicotine Addiction - A Consequence of Neurophysiological Anomalies); Björn Burmann, Associate Professor of Chemistry, for Atomiska detaljer för AAA+ proteasfunktion avslöjas genom lösning NMR-spektroskopi (Atomic details

for AAA+ protease function revealed through NMR spectroscopy); Adel Daoud, Associate Professor of Sociology, for Fattigdomsobservatorium: att mobilisera artificiell intelligens för att mäta fattigdom i Afrika från satellitbilder (The Poverty Observatory: Mobilizing Artificial Intelligence to Measure Poverty in Africa from Satellite Images), and Isaac Santos, Professor of Marine Chemistry, for Den saknade kolsänkan i blå kol-ekosystem: Ytliga flöden i oceanen.

(The Missing Carbon Sink in Blue Carbon Eco-systems: Surface Flows in the Ocean) The grants amount to approximately SEK 10–12 million over six years.

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Scholars at Risk – a way to show solidarity A way of standing up for academic core values and showing solidarity, but also an opportunity to get to know a colleague with different a perspective and experiences – these are some of the reasons to host a researcher supported by Scholars at Risk.

In December, departments could submit notices of interest, and we are currently working on matching subjects with registered candidates.

THE DEPARTMENT receiving a SAR researcher is also responsible for appointing a scientific mentor. The mentor’s task will include helping the researcher to network with colleagues, and provide support within publishing and research in their new environment. This is what Olof Franck tells us, Professor of Subject Matter Education, who recently concluded a mentorship period with Professor Gun-Britt Wärvik.

– The SAR researcher frequently comes from a different context and may need a fair bit of peer support. But the mentor should also be there as a fellow human being and help out with various social contacts. The ability to listen is essential, but it is also important to create a proper structure for hosting the SAR researcher, Olof Franck points out.

– YOU NEED TO plan, to know what you are able and willing to provide, and have colleagues with whom to share the responsibility.

A mentor does not necessarily have to have done research within the same exact field as the SAR researcher. This may be an opportunity for both parties to broaden their horizons. But it is important to contribute to the SAR researcher’s ability to develop contacts

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to provide support to both the SAR researchers and receiving universities. They can provide a lot of information for the departments, so that they do not have to think of everything themselves.

Receiving a SAR researcher is incredibly instructive for all the parties involved, Olof Franck argues.

– I am grateful for my time as a mentor, and would gladly do it again. Having a SAR researcher that has had different experiences to yourself is enriching, for the mentor, colleagues and the entire department alike.

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg

Olof Franck is grateful for his time as a mentor.

with colleagues who work within his or her field.

Both the mentor and the SAR researcher are also regularly in contact with Karolina Catoni at the International Centre, which coordinates SAR in Sweden.

Scholars at Risk, SAR, is an inter-

– SAR RESEARCHERS are normally

offered employment for just over one year, but there are frequently opportunities to extend that period by 11 months, she explains.

If the researcher requires additional support, we may be able to arrange that through our partnerships with other universities in Sweden. We also have a Nordic partnership in the pipeline that hopefully will provide additional opportunities for the SAR researchers that come here.

There are currently six scholars at risk in Sweden receiving support from SAR, says Karolina Catoni.

– The University of Gothenburg is also a member of the InSPIREurope network, funded by the European Union and which is intended

FACTS

The ability to listen is essential.

OLOF FRANCK

national network comprising more than 500 universities, who work to safeguard academic freedom and to provide protection to scholars at risk. The Swedish section, SAR-Sverige, comprises 21 universities and has been coordinated by the University of Gothenburg since 2016. Since 2017, SAR-Sverige has been granted funding by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

The University of Gothenburg has been a member of the international network since 2013 and has to date hosted six scholars at risk. Funds are reserved each year from the Vice-Chancellor’s allocation in order to accommodate researchers.

The university is also one of ten project partners in InSPIREurope, funded by the European Union. The project aims to create a collaborative platform for researchers at risk, to provide support and to influence policies regarding funding for the target group. The project webinars can be found here: https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/sar-europe/inspireurope.

Many threats to academic freedom Freedom of academic and cultural expression 4

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ANOTHER INDICATOR is the

universities’ dependence on the government. In fact, Sweden is worse off than many other countries, says Staffan I. Lindberg.

– In Sweden, the majority of the members of university boards are appointed by the government. No change in the law is required, merely a

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16

14

12

Turkey

20

20

10

Sweden

20

20

08

04

06

20

20

02

Russia

20

20

00

8

Poland

20

4

6

19 9

19 9

2

Hungary

19 9

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0

0

*World

Highcharts.com | V-Dem data version 10.0

Photo: JOHAN WINGBORG

THE INDEX IS BASED ON five indicators of academic freedom, including whether academics have the opportunity to freely pursue research and education, whether they can freely communicate their results and whether researchers can publicly criticize their government’s policies.

– The very possibility of questioning those in power is an important measure of how free the researchers are, Staffan I. Lindberg points out. Unfortunately, that freedom has diminished in a worrying way, even in democracies, especially in the last 5-6 years. For example, I have colleagues in India with whom I have planned a collaboration but who suddenly do not dare to proceed. Dictatorships, like China, are of course even worse. Previously, there was at least freedom within the scientific community to discuss difficult issues, but now this is gone

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Rating

– If academic freedom declines in a country, it is an important warning sign that democracy is in danger. Unfortunately, we are now seeing a drastic change for the worse in a number of countries, explains Staffan I. Lindberg.

He is the Director of the V-Dem Institute, which is one of the bodies that compiled The Academic Freedom Index.

The very possibility of questioning those in power is an important measure of how free the researchers are.

STAFFAN I. LINDBERG

government decision, for the government to take over and control the universities completely. It is also serious when lecturers are reprimanded, or even fired, for example for using particularly charged words, as has happened in Sweden. Although our democracy is stable, we do not know if it will be in the future.

THREE THOUSAND researchers

and other experts contribute to the data collection, of whom about two thirds are active in the country in question.

– However, in some countries, we cannot engage domestic researchers for ethical reasons, such as in Iran, Saudi Arabia, China and North Korea. It would quite simply be too dangerous for them.

There is a clear correlation between a deterioration in academic freedom and democratic decline, Staffan I. Lindberg points out.

– Academic freedom is also linked to the freedom of the media; when the government attacks researchers or journalists, such as in Hungary, then democracy is seriously threatened. Even though many things seem quite dismal at the moment, we must not forget that academia also has a lot of power that perhaps we do not fully utilize.

We can resist undemocratic and oppressive forces and in those efforts, The Academic Freedom Index can play an important role.

Eva Lundgren

FACTS The Academic Freedom Index

was created through a collaboration between V-Dem at the University of Gothenburg, the Scholars at Risk Network, the think tank the Global Public Policy Institute and researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. The data in the index dates back to 1900 and is based on five variables: freedom to research and teach, the right to exchange research results – both within academia and with the general public, the independence of universities, free campuses and the academic and artistic freedom to express oneself.

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He found freedom in Gothenburg On the morning of July 16, 2016, 15 universities in Turkey were forced to close. Thousands of academics, officers and senior officials lost their jobs in one fell swoop, thousands more were arrested.

One of the academics whose life was suddenly turned upside down was Isa Eraslan, who was recently made a doctor of political science.

IT WAS THE failed coup that led to the Turkish government cracking down on anyone who might be critical of President Erdogan. The day after the coup attempt, more than 50,000 public employees were fired. In the months that followed, thousands more people were arrested and fired, and 17,000 people were put in prison for alleged terrorism offences.

– A quarter of all the country’s professors lost their jobs. It resulted in a catastrophic decline in all academic activities in Turkey. The number of academic articles in reputable journals fell by 40 percent and there is no Turkish university left on any of the lists of the 500 best universities in the world. An increasing number of well-functioning primary schools have also closed down, instead Koran schools have been established all over the country. The whole thing is a cultural trauma.

ISA ERASLAN TELLS us about it. His university, Fatih University in Istanbul, was one of the universities that was closed.

– All the academics who lost their jobs were blacklisted. This meant that they could not apply for another academic position. In connection with the fact that I lost my job, I also lost my email and all my networks, because all my contacts were also fired. The whole thing was awful but also a little ironic:

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the area I was conducting researching on was the Turkish military and how to prevent coups.

Isa Eraslan believes that the reason the Turkish government targeted ordinary people so remorselessly after the coup attempt was mainly to do with power.

– IN THE USA, a president can

Sometimes­ your passport can be withdrawn just like that, without you knowing why.

ISA ERASLAN

only hold office for eight years.

This is because power has the ability to corrupt even the best politicians. Erdogan has now been president for 18 years and he has got rid of all his former political friends and replaced them with family members. And the reason that he has targeted the education system so ruthlessly is to prevent people from being inspired by democracy in the West.

A friend told Isa Eraslan about the SAR Network, Scholars at Risk, which helps academics who live under threat.

– Since I had nothing to lose, I applied for support from the organisation. However, I did not feel very hopeful as there were thousands of Turkish academics in need of help. I also had to support myself in some way, so I turned to my parents.

Isa Eraslan’s parents own a small shop that sells sweets and nuts.

– I was inspired by them and started a combined candy store and restaurant. Because I wanted to do something good for other people, I also took the opportunity to hire people who, like me, had lost their jobs, including an English teacher, a police officer, and a government

official. None of us had any experience of restaurant work but we learned little by little. We also made an effort to create as beautiful an environment as possible around the restaurant. For example, there were only five trees, but we started planting more of them so that soon there were a hundred.

After waiting two years to become a SAR researcher, Isa Eraslan was starting to give up.

– However, Sarina, who was my contact person at SAR in New York encouraged me all the time, so I persevered.

And finally he received the good news: in early January 2019, I was told that the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg was willing to accept me! To come to Sweden, known for its democracy and its human rights, felt as if I had arrived in Paradise!

On January 29, he stood with his bags at the airport in Istanbul. But he was still not sure he would really be allowed to leave Turkey.

– SOMETIMES YOUR passport can be withdrawn just like that, without you knowing why. So I did not terminate the lease on my apartment or move my things out as I might have to return home again.

It took two weeks in Gothenburg before Isa Eraslan began to feel safe.

– In Turkey, you always think that you are going to get into trouble as soon as you

see a police officer, and that fear remained with me for a while. But when I saw the trees outside the department, which were luscious and green, on a beautiful April day, I finally felt that I could start to feel hopeful.

IN GOTHENBURG, Isa Eraslan has

Isa Eraslan is one of thousands of academics who lost their jobs after the failed coup in Turkey 2016.

continued his research. – I have received invaluable help from Helena Lindholm and Isabella Schierenbeck at the School of Global Studies, as well as Karolina Catoni at the International Centre. Among other things, I continue to study the Turkish military but also the Turkish diaspora in Gothenburg. I hope to be able to continue my research here or at the Swedish National Defence College, to which I have sent an application.

Isa Eraslan is optimistic, simply because it is impossible to be anything else. – Populism is spreading like a pandemic throughout the world, and it is probably not so strange that the gaps in society keeping getting wider. But it is partly because I believe in a better future that I decided to do this interview: my experience shows that there are plenty of good people in the world and that situations that seem hopeless can be changed.

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg

Isa Eraslan Currently: Scholars at Risk researcher at the School of Global Studies.

Family: A wife and 2 children, aged 7 and 5 months.

Interests: Democratization, comparative politics, the relationship between civil society and the military.

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Six focus areas part of the University’s new vision

– We have had intense discussions about what the university should focus on, in the Board of Education, the Research Board and the Central Health & Safety Committee as well as at the various meetings of the University Board, says Fredrika Lagergren Wahlin who headed the initiative. The next step is to adopt a university-wide operational plan for 2021, containing clear items that can be ticked off.

Among the focus areas adopted by the board we find Physical and Digital Environments.

– Of course, it is important to harness the experience of a more flexible way of working that we garnered during the corona pandemic. Naturally, it is about transitioning to remote working, but also about the fact that we have perhaps started to realise the importance of also meeting in person for work.

Another area is Sustainable Work and Studies.

– We plan to be one step ahead and consider what is conducive to health, for example when designing new premises. It is about providing opportunities to work in

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Photo: JOHAN WINGBORG

On December 7, yet another step was taken to realise the new vision of the University of Gothenburg. The board decided on six university-wide focus areas for the next three years.

– The focus areas will serve as support for the development of our operations, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Fredrika Lagergren Wahlin explains.

work harder with the Academic Appointments Board and the appointment procedures.

Third stream activities as part of research and education is also something that needs highlighting in this context.

The area Governance and Organisation is an important area as well.

– I think that those of us in university management could make use of our work on the vision where we invited all interested employees to seminars. We had an amazing response from all categories of employees. Perhaps we could organise more of these types of meetings to continue discussing the core values of the vision in light of topical issues.

Other focus areas include Sustainable Development and External Relations and Partnerships.

Lars Nicklason

FACTS – We have had intense discussions on what the University should focus on, explains Fredrika Lagergren Wahlin.

peace and quiet as well as for socialising.

Skills Supply is another focus area, Fredrika Lagergren Wahlin tells us.

– The fact that research is valued more highly than lecturing is something that we have tried to tackle for some time. Research is of course important, but we must not forget that we are employed as teachers. In order to place a greater focus on educational qualifications, we need to

– Of course, it is important to harness the experience of a more flexible way of working that we garnered during the corona pandemic.

FREDRIKA LAGERGREN WAHLIN

On December 7, the Board of the University of Gothenburg adopted the six focus areas that will form the foundation of the strategies that the university will work with from 20212024: Sustainable Development, External Relations and Partnerships, Skills Supply, Physical and Digital Environments, Sustainable Work and Studies as well as Governance and Organisation. The next step is to establish annual operational plans. The focus areas and operational plans form part of the vision adopted by the board on April 15.

Skagerak ready in June

THE COMPLETION of the research vessel Skagerak, which is being carried out by the Falkvarv shipyard in Falkenberg, is expected to be concluded next summer.

They are currently installing the propulsion system, the frequency converters have been replaced and the ship’s wooden quarterdeck is being replaced.

– We are also working on the new electronic control

system, a new automation system and an inspection of the ship’s functionality before the trial runs, says project manager Mats Hjortberg.

After careful analysis, it has been revealed that the vessel does not have sufficiently good capacity in terms of dynamic positioning, which enables the vessel to hold a steady position in windy conditions.

This means that Skagerak

will be complemented with additional equipment next winter.

– In terms of financing, there are still a number of uncertainties. As it currently stands, we will end up with a final bill of 225 million SEK, including dynamic positioning, says Göran Hilmersson, Dean at the Faculty of Science.

Göran Hilmersson

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News â– Profile

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– If you do not know ­anything about antiquity, how will you be able to understand our modern world?

Giovanni Volpe wonders. But he is neither a linguist, ­a historian nor a philo­sopher.

Rather, he is a new ­professor of physics, with four major areas of ­interest: optical tweezers,active ­particles, n ­ euroscience and the ­development of artificial intelligence.

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg

irst you have to go through a lock chamber and put on special shoes, to then walk over an antistatic mat before being let into the corridor of the laser laboratory where Giovanni Volpe’s doctoral students are based. Safety goggles are essential if you want to get into the room where the lasers are located.

Research is underway on optical tweezers, the technology for which Arthur Ashkin received the Nobel Prize in 2018. The tweezers consist of a laser beam that is directed down through a lens in a microscope.

With the help of the extremely small pressure that light exerts, the tweezers can move small physical objects around.

The technology has been further developed by Giovanni Volpe’s group, which uses AI technology to analyse individual cells without destroying them. The project is called LUCERO and in the spring they received an ERC Proof of Concept Grant.

Optical tweezers are a sufficiently interesting area to satisfy the curiosity of most researchers. But Giovanni Volpe likes to do a lot of things at the same time. Among other things, he researches active particles. To develop this work he recently received an ERC Consolidator Grant. But active particles, what are they?

– Imagine that you have a sphere of glass in a liquid. The glass bubble lies there completely still. But if you put a thin layer of gold on one side of the sphere and then shine a light on it, the side with the gold on it will get warm, while the other side, which has no gold on it, will still be cold. The temperature difference causes the sphere to move. Active particles work in a similar way, they can move even though they are not alive. Active particles are an example of a system that is far from equilibrium, and they present some of the greatest challenges in physics.

By combining two research areas – artificial intelligence and active particles

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– a completely new field of research has emerged and Giovanni Volpe’s group is at the forefront.

– It is about producing particles, so-called micro-swimmers, that can sense their environment and collaborate in groups. Such particles could be used in a variety of different areas, for example in medicine: the particles could be sent to an organ to detect a disease or be loaded with a drug molecule and sent to exactly the right cells in the body, where the medicine will do the most good without inflicting harm. Particles that carry out tasks by themselves also save energy, a very important feature because energy consumption is a major problem in AI research.

Giovanni Volpe gets inspiration for his research from everything he encounters.

He got ideas for micro-swimmers after reading the book Good Reasons for Bad Feelings which provides an evolutionary explanation for why people suffer from depression and anorexia, for example.

– It included an example of how blueberry pickers rarely completely pick a bush clean, but instead move on to the next bush. That mathematical balance, to know when there are so few berries that it is not worth continuing to pick them, gave me inspiration for my research on how you can make micro-swimmers move and not just stick together.

Giovanni Volpe has another project underway. It was his girlfriend, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute, who got him interested in diseases of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

– Neurodegenerative diseases are often detected far too late. This is because the brain has such a tremendous capacity to compensate for injuries that the patient does not notice that something is wrong until it has advanced so far that large parts of the brain have been damaged.

In order to improve the diagnosing and monitoring of these types of diseases, Giovanni Volpe’s group have developed the tool BRAPH (BRain Analysis using graPH theory).

With the help of BRAPH, different kinds of information about a patient can be compiled, for example, data from MRI examinations.

– In this way, the patient’s brain activity can be compared over time, which makes it possible to notice changes earlier. The tool is also easy to use and adapt to different needs.

Scientific research has always really interested Giovanni Volpe. So I am surprised when he tells me that he actually has a background in classic humanism. At secondary school and upper-secondary school back home in Padua in northern Italy, he studied both Latin and Greek, eight hours a week for five years.

– It was my father who, together with

my French teacher, came to the conclusion that a classic education was probably best; maths and physics can always be learned anyway, they said. And I think they were right, I have enjoyed my humanist education immensely. Reading Plato is important for understanding how we got to where we are now, but history and philosophy are also interesting for their own sake. For example, when I was at a conference in Mexico a couple of years ago I, of course, took the opportunity to visit the pyramids at Teotihuacan, which have fascinated me since I was a teenager. Thus, the journey was not only interesting from a scientific perspective but also personally enriching for me.

Language has continued to fascinate Giovanni Volpe. For example, he is currently learning Swedish.

– Previously, in addition to English and French, I studied Spanish, German, Turkish and a little Portuguese because my girlfriend is from Portugal. In the beginning, Swedish was difficult. It could take me a whole day to read a single page. But now I read fluently and think that in fact, Swedish is the easiest of all the languages I have studied so far.

After an engineering degree in telecommunications at the University of Padua in 2004, Giovanni Volpe got a job in the private sector. But he only lasted three months.

Reading Plato is important for understanding how we got to where we are now, but history and philosophy are also interesting for their own sake 18

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– It was too boring. Instead, I began my doctoral studies at ICFO in Barcelona. After my doctoral thesis, I did my postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart and then ended up at Bilkent University in Ankara. In the late summer of 2016, I came to Gothenburg.

So I have been here for just over four years, which for me is an unusually long time to stay in the one place.

That he enjoys being here is not least due to the master’s students and doctoral students he supervises.

– I have never had such talented students! They are interested, committed and always trying do their best. Sweden is also a good country to do research in, as long as you do your job, you get to do your work in the way you want to. Many people wonder how I was able to leave sunny Italy for Sweden, but Padua is as rainy as Gothenburg and the summers are nicer here. Besides, my girlfriend lives in Stockholm and it is not that far, even though I do not like to travel by train. I do not know how long I will stay, but right now I am very happy with my life.■

Giovanni Volpe Aktuell: Currently: New Professor of Physics, recipient of the ERC Proof of Concept Grant to develop the LUCERO project: Smart Optofluidic micromanipulation of Biological Samples. Recently received an ERC Consolidator Grant of 2 million Euro for the project Microscopic Active Particles with Embodied Intelligence.

Family: Girlfriend.

Latest book: Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo Latest film: The trial of the Chicago 7.

Interests: Reading, travelling.

Watch the movie about Wolpe: www.gu.se/volpe

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Volunteers do the hard job

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News Report ■

It is a thrilling experience to study a 120 centimetre long, green worm at a depth of one hundred metres.

Or to discover with dismay how many coral reefs have been destroyed.

Citizens’ projects attract thousands of ordinary people and get them to contribute to research.

Text: Lotta Engelbrektsson Photo: Tomas Lundälv, Lisbeth Jonsson

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Photo: JOHAN WINGBORG

The feather star floats like an abandoned

Christmas decoration in the dark water. The depth displayed in the right corner of the film shows that it is 86 metres below sea level. On the Koster Seafloor Observatory’s website, the unusual find elicits enthusiasm. “That is beautiful!”, writes a diver from San Diego in the comments field.

– Over 2,400 volunteers around the world have helped us classify almost 6,000 biological species, says marine biologist Matthias Obst, who has created a citizens’ project about the Koster Sea.

In order for scientists to understand how the sea has changed over time, they must study the richness of the species carefully. Have the number of crustaceans and fungi declined, are coral reefs in a state of decline and are there new species that have not been found in the water before?

– Thanks to marine biologists at the Tjärnö Marine Laboratory, we have lots of underwater films from the 1990s onwards that can be used to study changes on the seabed, says Matthias Obst.

Today, there are modern machines that film the seabed on their own and deliver enormous amounts of data to researchers. The crux of the matter is that the machine does not really know what has been caught on

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film. The species must first be classified so that the algorithms recognize a starfish or a crab when it appears.

– There are hundreds of hours of film to be analysed, which one person on their own cannot do. This is where citizen research comes in, says Matthias Obst.

Anyone can sign up on the website Zooniverse – which is an association of internet-based citizens’ projects around the world – and contribute to the research.

Most studies are about classifying large amounts of data that cameras or computer programmes have collected.

It can be anything from identifying stars and animals to transcribing historical documents.

The Koster Seafloor Observatory, which documents

Koster’s underwater park, is one of about 50 such projects.

– Citizens watch short films and mark the species they discover. We then enter the information into our algorithms that learn to distinguish between the species. The machine is subsequently able to identify certain species from the sea twenty-four hours a day, Matthias Obst explains.

Getting help from private individuals is not really a new idea. In Sweden, it has long been common among researchers to collaborate with volunteers. Ever since the middle of the 19th century, there have been stories of ordinary people who have contributed with observations on everything under the sun. They have reported on weather and wind, animals and nature and astronomical phenomena in the firmament.

The big difference compared to today is digitization and the internet. The new technology has changed the roles of researchers and lay people, says Dick Kasperowski, who is an Associate Professor of the Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg and

project manager for ARCS, ARenas for Cooperation through citizen Science.

– Researchers now have access to enormous amounts of digital images, which they cannot manage on their own. Therefore, anyone can sit at home and contribute to the research, he says.

The ARCS project – which will culminate in a national platform for citizen research, medborgarforskning. se – is intended as a place that will assemble tools and advice for researchers and other people who want to get help from citizens. The web portal that will be launched in 2020 contains, among other things, a list of the projects currently underway in Sweden. The most active researchers are the researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU, which has about 50 ongoing citizens’ projects.

– Although no one knows exactly how many collaborations there are in the country as a whole. When it comes to the University of Gothenburg, I know of seven or eight projects that are underway, says Dick Kasperowski.

Medborgarforskning.se has been created as a showcase for citizen research. Researchers should be able to initiate a project or advertise it on the website.

At the same time of course, the project manager hopes that citizens will find the page and register their participation.

But how can the researchers trust that the data that Joe public is reporting is correct? What if he sits in front of his computer and cheats?

– It is a constantly recurring problem, a genuine ethical issue. But we must trust that citizens want to help increase confidence in science, says Dick Kasperowski.

Of course, the researchers are not really that confident and there are different ways of handling the validation process. Citizens’ information is usually filtered through a number of security systems, and there is usually a committee that reviews the observations. Dick Kasperowski takes the SLU Species Portal as an example, where Swedes who are interested in nature report their encounters with various birds, fungi and plants. Every day, hundreds of citizens enter their findings on the website.

Those who want to participate must register with their real name and be contactable by the selection committees. Even if citizen research is based on trust, there must obviously be a capacity for quality control, says Dick Kasperowski.

– The Species Portal, which is one of the world’s major portals for citizen research, is used by many Swedish authorities. It may not be very well known, but data from citizen research is used in many contexts when societal decisions about the environment and sustainability are being made at the regional and local level in Sweden, he says.

Most Swedish citizen projects are about flora and fauna in their native environment, but those who are curious about Zooniverse can find lots of global projects to get involved in. Sorting galaxies, for example, is hugely popular, says Dick Kasperowski.

– At present, the project has mobilized 1.8 million

people who have helped researchers classify millions and millions of images, he says.

Marine biologist Matthias Obst is equally excited about the possibilities. He says that the research has received a tremendous boost in the months that the Koster Seafloor Observatory has been in operation.

Now the project will grow.

Next year, five times as much material will be launched on the website. Then everyone who has been there before can come back again, says Matthias Obst enthusiastically.

– During the Corona epidemic, there have been lots of people wanting to explore the outdoors. We have given them the opportunity to ”travel” to the deepest places in our ocean, to an ecosystem they would never have had the chance to see otherwise, he says.

Lotta Engelbrektsson

Soft Coral

Facts Zooniverse is the world’s largest platform for citizen projects. In total, over two million volunteers have registered as amateur researchers at zooniverse.org.

ARCS, ARenas for Cooperation through citizen Science, brings together all the Swedish citizen research projects at medborgarforskning.se.

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THE THIRD TASK Getting your research out Researchers are better at communicating than some people think. They lecture, teach patient groups and talk to journalists.

Some employ the help of professionals to get their message out.

times – the most downloaded text in the publisher’s history.

On this occasion, Dick Kasperowski can feel satisfied with the communication.

– The third task is interesting to analyse. Right now I am working on my own book on science communication, funded by the Swedish Research Council, he says.

There is a notion that many re-

searchers dislike that third task, i.e., getting their message out.

That it takes time away from the important work and is not meritorious in the research world.

But it can also be difficult to disseminate their knowledge to the public, even for those who are interested in popular science.

– A common perception is that Swedish researchers do not participate sufficiently in the public discourse. But the third task eludes us quite easily, because it is so multifaceted, says Dick Kasperowski, Associate Professor of the Theory of Science.

Together with 108 other

authors, he has just published a new book, about science communication. In one chapter, which he wrote together with Per Hetland at the University of Oslo and Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen at Aarhus University, he shares the Scandinavian perspective on the third task of getting their message out.

At the time of writing, the article had been shared 14,000

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Ever since the 1970s, resear-

A common perception is that Swedish researchers do not participate sufficiently in the public discourse DICK KASPEROWSKI

chers have had an obligation to disseminate their knowledge outside universities, and the discussion regarding what exactly the third task is has been going on for about as long. And how can we measure how much of this the researchers manage to accomplish?

According to Dick Kasperowski, there are at least two ways to think about the role of researchers when it comes to communicating their results. For the discussion to be relevant, it may be important to separate them.

– The first is that the researchers at the university disseminate their knowledge and inform society, which means that the universities and society are in some way separate and that there are boundaries. The second is that university always operate in society. That science is part of society, so to speak, he says.

The first approach is often

associated with statements about universities needing to orient themselves towards “wider society”. Subsequently, the third task is usually described in terms of the researcher telling the public something in the role of expert. But this task can be difficult to define, as there are no clear rules. Is it important how many times someone has lectured on their subject, or been on a radio programme, for example?

Or is it sufficient for the researcher to email his dissertation to a journalist, in order to have completed the third task? There is no easy way to investigate this, says Dick Kasperowski.

If instead, you think that the university is part of society, and that the parties influence one another, then communication is obviously an aspect of that.

This means that the researchers already reach out with their knowledge by taking into account the first and second tasks in the Swedish Higher Education Act. That is, by lecturing and researching, Dick Kasperowski points out.

– It is difficult to escape the third task if, as a researcher, you are part of society, he says.

A few years ago, he went through the qualifications of researchers applying for professorships, together with his

colleague Fredrik Bragesjö. They studied data from the mid-1970s, through the various legislative changes, and discovered that researchers, to a very great extent, actually carry out the third task – whether there is legislation or not.

– When we counted how many times researchers taught doctoral students, lectured to selected groups and presented their science, we could see that Swedish researchers do a lot.

They just do not call it the third task, he states.

Text: Lotta Engelbrektsson Photo: Johan Wingborg

Researchers communicate quite a lot, even if they do not think of it as “the third task”, points out Dick Kasperowski.

Facts Communicating Science.

A ­global perspective is the first ­study to describe how scientific communi­cation has developed around the world over the past fifty years. It addresses the situation in 39 countries, in Europe, Asia and America, as well as in emerging economies such as Russia, ­Jamaica, Estonia, Iran and P ­ akistan.

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