Ethos of science and the approach to promotion in science

The quality of research is the most important feature in the world of science. A researcher who achieves an excellence in science has a chance to win recognition and gain authority in her scientific field. In order to succeed in science, a researcher ought to undertake effective personal marketing efforts. The aim of personal marketing is to create and maintain a desirable attitude and/or behavior of others towards a scientist and build a positive scientific image of herself. A scientist who engages in self-promotion may, however, take on herself the odium of the academic community. Hence, the researcher's perception of the importance of personal marketing engagement for success in science determines her activity in this domain. The approach to the issue may vary depending on the system of values and norms recognized as valid in science. The purpose of the study is to examine the differences in perceptions of the importance of personal marketing engagement between researchers who identify themselves with different scientific ethoses. In order to achieve the objective of the study, I created two research scales and classified surveyed scientists into four groups. Three of these groups professed the ethos of academic, industrial and post-academic science respectively, and the fourth group did not identify with any of the value systems above. Then, I examined how the members of distinguished groups perceive the importance of three potential success factors in science, i.e.: popularization of research results, recognition in the scientific community and recognition outside the scientific community. The analyses were performed on data obtained from 800 scientists who participated in a nationwide CAPI study conducted by National Information Processing Institute at the turn of 2015 and 2016. According to the surveyed scientists, the most attention should be paid to the popularization of research results, and the least attention should be given to the activities that ensure recognition outside the scientific community. Researchers who identify themselves with the ethos of post-academic science, that is based on values of both academic and industrial sciences, rate the importance of all three aspects of self-promotion relatively high. Scientists who acknowledge the Merton's ethos of academic science are at the opposite extreme. They rate extremely low the importance of striving for recognition in the non-scientific community.In accordance with intuition, researchers who incorporate the values of Ziman's industrial scienceappreciate recognition in the scientific community less than other respondents. It is safe to say that the greatest marketing awareness is characteristic for scientists who accept the ethos of post academic science, and the poorest - for those who identify themselves with the ethos of academic science.