What is a researcher?
European Commission defines roles and responsibilities
The European Commission has adopted a European Charter for Researchers and a Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. These two documents, addressed to researchers as well as to employers and funders in both the public and private sectors, are key elements in the European Union’s policy to make research an attractive career, which is a vital feature of its strategy to stimulate economic and employment growth.
Giving individual researchers the same rights and obligations wherever they may work throughout the European Union should help counter the fact that research careers in Europe are fragmented at local, regional, national or sectoral level, and allow Europe to make the most of its scientific potential.
In particular, the European Charter for Researchers addresses the roles, responsibilities and entitlements of researchers and their employers or funding organisations. It aims at ensuring that the relationship between these parties contributes to successful performance in the generation, transfer and sharing of knowledge, and to the career development of researchers.
The Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers aims to improve recruitment, to make selection procedures fairer and more transparent and proposes different means of judging merit: Merit should not just be measured on the number of publications but on a wider range of evaluation criteria, such as teaching, supervision, teamwork, knowledge transfer, management and public awareness activities.
The principles of both the Charter and the Code should be implemented on a voluntary basis: the process has already started. Be part of it.
http://europa.eu.int/eracareers/europeancharter/
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