Cooperative, productive, and inspiring, but also sometimes overwhelming. How scientists assess the working atmosphere in their work environment
This news appears in the BUA newsletter in September 2025.
Culture is a holistic concept that cannot be reduced to just a few characteristics. The Berlin Science Survey examined several sub-concepts, including the working atmosphere in the immediate work environment. The working atmosphere is predominantly perceived as cooperative, productive, and, by a majority, also as inspiring. At the same time, many also feel overwhelmed.
Overall, a positive picture of work in academia is painted: the work climate is almost universally perceived as productive, cooperative, and mostly inspiring (see Figure 28). At the same time, however, 48% of scientists and academics feel “partly” overstrained, a further 13% even “mostly” and almost 5% “fully” overstrained. There may also be difficulties in those research contexts that are viewed as “not at all” or only “partly” productive (28.4%), cooperative (22.8%), or inspiring (40.6%) (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Work climate
At the level of status groups, there are clear differences in the assessment of the work climate (see Figure 2). For all dimensions, the ratings improve with increasing status. For example, professors are much more likely to report a cooperative (91%), inspiring (82%), and productive (85%) environment than postdocs (75% / 57% / 69%) and especially than predocs (74% / 54% / 70%) (see Figure 2). By contrast, only 9% of professors consider the work climate to be overstraining. This is far more common among postdocs (16%) and even more so among predocs (23%). Such differences reflect not only the role of the respective individuals in the working groups and knowledge production processes, but also socialisation, selection and self-selection processes.
Figure 2 Work climate, by status group
There are hardly any noteworthy differences between the subject groups (see Figure 3). Only in the humanities is the working environment perceived as somewhat less cooperative and productive, but also as somewhat more inspiring than in the other subject groups. Working environments in the life sciences and especially in the engineering sciences are more often perceived as overstraining than average. Almost 22% of respondents in these fields indicated this (see Figure 3).
Figure 3 Work climate, by subject group
The Berlin Science Survey
The Berlin Science Survey (BSS) is a scientific trend study on cultural change in the Berlin research landscape. To this end, the Robert K. Merton Center for Science and Technology Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin regularly surveys the experiences and assessments of scientists in the Berlin research area online. 2,776 female scientists in the Berlin research area took part in the most recent study. We would like to express our sincere thanks to everyone who took part in the study.
The whole report with all topics can be found here:
https://www.berlinsciencesurvey.de/en/results24/sum
The data from the 2024 wave of the BSS are available for download as a scientific use file from the HU's open-access publication server: https://doi.org/10.18452/32547