What changed and the key elements of change
In response to the evolving Open Science movement, UZH adopted a policy on Open Science in 2021 , which defines priorities in the areas of access, research methods and culture change. As part of culture change, UZH launched the project HI-FRAME at the same time as the Open Science policy was adopted.
HI-FRAME was a 2-year project with the aim of creating a tool that helps align professorial hiring practices at UZH systematically with the demands that Open Science practices make on researchers. The tool consists of a set of questions that hiring panels may put to candidates, either in writing as part of the application submission or as part of the interviews with shortlisted candidates. The candidates’ answers to these questions were considered alongside, not instead of, more “traditional” indicators of academic profiles and track records.
The HI-FRAME tool can be understood as a narrative CV type set of pre-formulated questions to be answered through free text or, in the interview context, verbal answers. Each question refers to Open Science activities in relation to a specific dimension of academic activity (research, teaching, academic culture, service to the institution, clinical work, support for early-career researchers, impact/contributions to society) and asks the applicants to refer to their track record to exemplify their engagement. The hiring panel determined in advance whether to use all questions or a subset, depending on the position to be filled.
Although HI-FRAME concentrated on professorial hirings, the catalog of questions is in principle applicable to other types of academic hiring and potentially to certain research funding processes, too. Moreover, in addition to the Open Science Policy, HI-FRAME also indirectly helped implement UZH’s policies on gender equality and diversity.
For the full case study, visit: https://sfdora.org/case-study/university-of-zurich/