WYA position paper: “Room for Everyone’s Talent? Diversity and Inclusion in Recognition & Rewarding”

Universities in the Netherlands are developing their visions on a new balance in the recognition and rewarding (R&R) of academics, following the position paper “Room for everyone’s talent” published by VSNU and others in 2019. The paper calls for each Dutch university to develop its own R&R policy that allows for diversification of career paths, finds a balance between individual and team performance, puts more focus on quality rather than quantity, stimulates open science, and encourages academic leadership. Such policies should outline and implement systematic changes that allow for more diverse and inclusive routes for academic career development and advancement.

Wageningen Young Academy heartily welcomes this new vision and is engaged with WUR’s process of Recognition and Rewards. We also recognize, however, that diversifying standards of scholarly excellence is not the same as (and will not automatically lead to) acknowledging and advancing diversity in terms of gender, race, disability, faith, ideology, sexual orientation, or age.

In the WYA position paper “Room for Everyone’s Talent? Diversity and Inclusion in Recognition & Rewarding”, we argue that diversity and inclusion need to be center stage throughout the R&R process and we offer 10 recommendations for the R&R process and future R&R policies to help achieve this.