Each month, the open access team of the University of Groningen Library (UB) puts a recent open access article by UG authors in the spotlight. This publication is highlighted via social media and the library’s newsletter and website.

The article in the spotlight for the month of June 2026 is titled 'The value of credit in science’, written by Thijs Ringelberg (Faculty of Philosophy).  

Abstract

The Credit Economy Approach (CEA) explains scientific behaviour in terms of credit-seeking: scientists pursue social credit, which furthers their careers. This paper investigates the relationship between such credit incentives and the normative motivations often attributed to scientists, such as epistemic and ethical commitments. A default assumption – which I call the cumulative view – holds that these are distinct sources of motivation, each exerting independent influence. Drawing on a conceptual analysis of social credit and findings from social psychology, I argue instead for an entangled view: credit incentives operate through, and depend upon, shared normative commitments. On this view, the credit economy functions in virtue of a scientific community’s shared evaluative norms. This account deepens existing work that situates the credit economy within a broader social context, and offers a framework for further research integrating formal work in the CEA, conceptual analysis in philosophy of science, and empirical insights from the social sciences.

We asked author Thijs Ringelberg a few questions about the article:

In this article you argue for an entangled view of credit incentives and normative motivations attributed to scientists. Can you explain this entangled view in layman’s terms?

The question that this article is all about, is: to what extent do shared evaluative norms – norms about right and wrong behaviour – play a role in the behaviour of scientists? The credit economy approach, which I scrutinise in this article, seems to provide a picture of scientific action that is devoid of such shared norms: scientists merely need to follow the credit incentives – citations, publications, and prizes – and the design of the incentive structure does the rest. Put very bluntly: as a scientist, I don’t need to care whether my work is scientifically good in some way; I just need to care whether I can get my work published – and the institutional setup will do the rest.

But I argue in this article that this incentive structure itself arises due to scientists sharing some notion of right and wrong scientific behaviour. It is only, say, because many scientists think it good scientific behaviour to make significant discoveries, that the people who make such discoveries garner citations, publications, and prizes, and can therefore further their careers: these credit-rewards are a consequence of scientists esteeming certain behaviours. So the norms and the incentives are entangled: the incentives arise because there are shared norms of good behaviour – which also means that the action of an individual scientist can be guided both by the norms (normative motivations) and by credit incentives.

Traditionally, scientists receive credit (and are evaluated) based on their number of publications and citations. Recognition and rewards programmes are about giving credit for other activities as well, like teaching, leadership and societal impact. In your view, how should these programs be organized to maximize their chance of success? 

The question is: how do you “give credit” for something? A citation, publication, or prize is credit – I argue – because it tracks something that is considered valuable: a prize is a signal that its recipient has done something good, and it is because of that value-judgement that winning the prize is good for one’s career. So to be able to give credit for such things as teaching or leadership, those activities must first be valued by members of the community.

If they are already valued, then the aims of the programme can be institutionally focused: what is needed is some information structure to reliably track achievements on such fronts, akin to the citation system. A registrar for leadership and teaching achievements, if you will; the internal prestige system of science will do the rest. But if such behaviours are not valued, the job is harder. You might aim to get community members to value these behaviours by means of education or propaganda campaigns, but probably a more reasonable first step is to engage the community in a conversation: why are these behaviours not valued? Should they be – in which case education or propaganda are maybe in order – or are there good reasons not to?

In another article, currently under review, I dive deeper into these policy implications of the entangled view. There, I argue that there are real dangers in tinkering with incentive structures, because it can cause the community norms and the incentive structures to walk out of step, thereby – over time – eroding the community’s shared norms.

Does open science succeed by changing incentives, by changing norms, or by changing the relationship between the two?

All of the above. Open science is clearly a normative movement: arguments for open science are raised in terms of right and wrong, for example by referring to what society is owed in return for its funding of research, or by arguing that the quality of scientific research improves if access is opened up. This very blog is an example of an education or propaganda campaign: its aim is to spread the good word of open science, thereby aiding the uptake of open science as a norm, something that is considered good.

Simultaneously, incentives are also changed. When universities and governments introduce rules that publications should be open access, that changes the incentive calculus that individual scientists perform by restricting the range of options and changing their relative payoffs.

The entanglement thesis that I advocate raises the expectation that these processes will bleed into each other: the more open science is normatively endorsed, the more the incentive structures will follow; and the more the incentive structures make space for open science, the more it can be instituted as a norm.

Could you reflect on your experiences with open access and open science in general?

This was my first article to be published, so I don’t really have anything to compare the process to. But it was very easy: the European Journal for the Philosophy of Science is published by Springer, and due to Springer’s agreement with RUG, publishing open access was as easy as pressing a button. It’s very nice that my article is now freely accessible, both on a personal level – it’s easy to share with friends and family – and on a professional level: anyone who is interested can read it without restrictions.

As a philosopher of science interested in the social and institutional aspects of the scientific process, my main interactions with open science have been at a theoretical level. It is a perfect example of the complicated nature of the social world of science, the complexity of the task of intervening on that world, and of the fact that institutional change, when it is genuinely grounded in shared values, can make a real difference.

Useful links:

• Recognition & Rewards programme at the University of Groningen

• Open access journal browser: search engine that can be used to check if a discount on the article processing charge (APC) is available for a specific journal. UG corresponding authors can publish with an APC discount (mostly 100%, so for free) in more than 12,000 journals!

Citation:

Ringelberg, T. (2026). The value of credit in science. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00731-2

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