University of Groningen high on list of 2012 Best Places to Work in Academia

The University of Groningen has again succeeded in being numbered among the top 25 of the ‘Best Places to Work in Academia’ list published by The Scientist. The 2012 top 25 comprises twenty American universities and research institutes and five institutions from the rest of the world.

The Scientist has been polling scientists every year since 2003. They want to know whether the institutions where they work are sufficiently supportive of innovative research. Is management up-to-date with current developments, do they give the scientists the support they require?

The emphasis is on research in the Life Sciences, the field in which The Scientist specializes. The Scientist publishes articles on developments and innovative trends in research and regularly pays attention to the question of how to make a career in the sciences.

Until this year the journal published two lists, one for American institutions and one for institutions in the rest of the world. Last year, Groningen was in fifth place on the list of institutions outside the US.

This year The Scientis t has published a single top 25 list, with the J. David Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco heading it. The Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna is the highest placed non-US institution, in fourth place.

The University of Groningen is in 24th place, and thus still the fifth-best institution outside the US. The top 25 only lists seven universities, including Groningen. The other places in the list are filled by significantly smaller research institutes. Scientists value the University of Groningen primarily for its personnel policy (‘Tenure and Promotion’) and also list Job Satisfaction as a plus point. The negative points they mention fall under the headings ‘Peers’ and ‘Research Resources’.

See also: The Scientist 2012 Best Places to Work in Academia