not More than once in 2018 is visible to everyone, that the cocoon is the right place for the scholars of the world. Enormous centrifugal forces are at work. And many outside of the research operation, just waiting for the self-created cosmos in the cocoon, flies at some point apart or collapses.

Joachim Müller-Jung

editor in the features section, responsible for the area of “nature and science”.

F. A. Z. Twitter

Two and a half million scientific publications each year, growth rates of more than five percent – “what do you think, how many of them are really worth to be read?” David Google books-mockingly, one of the American educational gurus from Stanford University, and the venerable “Nature” asked the time quoted him, as would be in finally come.

In the same Journal, another Stanford-size, the Meta-researcher John Ioannidis put free, the tip of the iceberg: thousands of scientists extend your CV, in the meantime, a year to 72 of your own article – all five days of a publication. The acceleration is revealing, in any case, overwhelming for all, even for us. Mass times acceleration.

acceleration and mass

of Course, not all garbage. The discoveries and major findings, of the wonderful increase in knowledge, with thousands of publications possible, he makes us the choice of rewarding science topics each year a bit heavier. In the artistic year in review image of our editor, Sibylle Anderl, adorns this Text, therefore, also, in our enthusiasm for the term: research is colorful without question, more complex, certainly unfathomable, but above all, richer. The hidden object shows a lot of things, which we have spent this year. It is often the seemingly small scientific advances that deserve our greatest attention, because it is not only the findings but also the conclusions of it are interesting.

“predator journals” and the greed

is Indisputable: if you are looking orientation, it is becoming increasingly difficult. The uncanny growth of the “predatory journals” that advertise extremely aggressively for the quick (and superficial peer-reviewed) publication that has shaken the confidence of many in the System. Greed, prestige and fame, were looking suddenly a big issue. At the same time, the System of political stakeholders, was attacked always open. The anti-scientific impulse of the populists came blatantly apparent, most clearly in the climate and environmental research.

Communicate Yes, but …

It is not only the internal centrifugal forces, which perturb the scholars of the cosmos, there is also the taunts from the outside, gnaw on the old cocoon. So how to respond? Communication is the term that falls in the meantime, most of the time. The most vocal of the in March, used the Federal Minister of research, Anja Karliczek, the demands of basic researchers legitimacy, “by consent of the General public”. The order is: create trust in an increasingly complicated world. Communication, it was reminiscent of the place, is the Hobby of all the research Minister. Also a legend the claim, diligently communicating researchers no longer not abzukanzeln, as did the Community, usually by hand, because it does not tolerate distraction and contextualization beyond the specialist activity, but to reward communication finally. It probably will not again, here is the cocoon of the luminaries at all seems to be the most stable. A cynic, who accounted for the success of the self-cleaning forces of the system.