…than the common three-pillar conceptualisation. The three pillar model, grounding sustainability on economic, environmental and social aspects, has become a commonplace intellectual framing whenever there is a need to defined and explain the scope of the concept ([1], Fig. 1). Here, I argue that two of the pillars: the environmental and the social ones, are… Read More »
Mit einem offenen Brief an die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) haben mehr als 50 deutsche Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaftlerinnen und –wissenschaftler im Jahr 2017 auf einen Missstand im Fächerkanon der DFG hingewiesen: Das Fehlen der verschiedenen Zweige der Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaften und insbesondere deren Grundlagenaspekte. Warum ist das ein Problem? Weil es wichtig ist, dass auch für die verschiedenen Aspekte der… Read More »
Re-using data and results from other peoples’ research is crucial to consistent and cumulative research, yet it is also often a frustrating experience. Many raw data and results are not available, and those that are available are often hidden in pdfs or books and need to be manually extracted. The access to research data in… Read More »
When I was introduced to industrial ecology about ten years ago, I never came across anybody substantially questioning the publishing system. Impact factors were considered but did not matter too much, Nature Climate Change and Nature Sustainability did not exist yet, open access was not an issue, and scholars were rather modest in their choice… Read More »
Um neue Forschungsfragen zur Nachhaltigkeit zu erschließen und Industrial Ecology als Forschungsfeld sichtbarer zu machen, ist eine bessere Forschungsinfrastruktur nötig. Die Rede ist hier von Datenbanken, Datenstrukturen, Modellierungswerkzeugen und Lehrmaterial. Die Entwicklung und Bereitstellung solcher Infrastruktur nach dem Prinzip “offene Wissenschaft” kann zu schnelleren Erfolgen führen, indem man die Kompetenz und Erfahrung einer großen Zahl… Read More »
To raise the standard of industrial ecology research we need to offer more examples of good research practice and teach future students the analytical skills that are required to adopt that practice. To that end I created the Industrial Ecology open online course (IEooc) by combining external content with large parts of my own teaching… Read More »
About two and a half year into my current position as independent researcher at the University of Freiburg, Germany, I thought it was time for reviewing how things are going. I started out in August 2015, in an empty office with an empty desk and the mandate to build up an industrial ecology research group… Read More »
Our material footprint is expanding (Wiedmann et al., 2015), in-use stocks are growing (Müller et al., 2013), and so are greenhouse gas emissions from material production, like cement (Andrew, 2017). The rollout of renewable energy and efficient technology hinges on ample supply of a vast array of materials and chemical elements (Graedel et al., 2013),… Read More »
Researchers and stakeholders in sustainability science and industrial ecology in particular often find it difficult to access and re-use the results of quantitative analyses described in the literature. The lack of access to data is part of a wider reproducibility problem in contemporary science [https://www.nature.com/news/empty-rhetoric-over-data-sharing-slows-science-1.22133], and several initiatives were started to alleviate the problem, reaching… Read More »
“Aufnahme der Grundlagenaspekte der Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaften in den Fächerkanon der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft” Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) ist einer der größten Geldgeber für unabhängige Forschung in Deutschland. 2015 betrug ihr Etat fast 3 Milliarden Euro. Forscher aus den Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaften haben jedoch regelmäßig Schwierigkeiten, ihre Anträge in der Fächerstruktur der DFG zu verorten. Dies liegt vor allem an… Read More »