The Tragedy of Commons.

Every neuroscientist goes through a few phases on their path toward growing a happy research life. At first, there is an initial period of fascination with brain research as such.

Everything seems exciting at that point: every piece of information, every new study, every new research idea. Hanging out with all these intelligent people solving fundamental problems feels like you have just won your life. It feels like you were in the womb, developing yourself in the best possible way.  

After this initial stage, in a few months to a few years later, the inflow of dopamine usually gets weaker. The sense of excitation fades away, killed by the everyday routine.

The initial feeling of unconditional love towards research soon meets a range of duties: a sense of solitude, high expectations, and everyday grind. Research, after all, takes only a small portion of working time. Finally, there comes the enlightenment that academia is yet an institution wrapped around science.

To some young researchers, it becomes impossible to digest some of the rules in the game of grants and papers.

Many young researchers experience an identity crisis at this stage. According to Levecque et al. (2017), one in three PhD students is at risk of a common psychiatric disorder.

They ask themselves the question: is research life good for me? Some researchers can overcome everyday inconveniences while others disappear from academia for good – with a deep feeling of relief.

How to Develop Self-Motivation to Stay?

There are a few pieces of advice often given to young researchers. These pieces of advice help them foster their passion and motivation in academia. The first popular strategy involves developing a second passion outside academia.

By engaging yourself in another activity after working hours, you can switch your brain off from solving complex research problems. This rest, combined with another activity, also helps you develop as a person.

That hobby might be anything: travelling, dancing, sports, and arts, or charity work. It could even be building financial independence through entrepreneurship and investments in the stock exchange or real estate.

Another commonly practised remedy for everyday frustration is sharing your everyday problems and dilemmas with peers. Student mentors could also guide you through your scientific career.

Indeed, it is a good practice to unload frustrations on a daily basis, as soon as they arrive. Do not let them overwhelm and burn you out.

Lastly, what often comes recommended as an anti-frustration pill is taking care of yourself. This means monitoring your mood, eating and sleeping well, taking proper vacations, and engaging in relaxing activities.

One factor that all these strategies have in common, though, is an assumption. Satisfaction from work is treated as each researcher’s personal responsibility, and everyone needs to take an active effort to maintain their happiness. If everyone took better care of their personal happiness, academia would be a better place.

What Is the Tragedy of Commons?

The year 2009 was groundbreaking, for at least two separate reasons. Firstly, on January 3rd of 2009, miners mined the genesis block of bitcoin.

Secondly, on October 12th of 2009, Elinor Claire “Lin” Ostrom made history. She became the first woman awarded a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The committee recognized her “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”.

According to the Nobel Prize committee (2009), her research demonstrated that communities can often manage shared resources such as fisheries, forests and grazing lands sustainably through self-organized rules. This challenged the assumption that only privatization or top-down government control can prevent overuse.

 The clue of this work is a phenomenon known in the economy as the tragedy of commons. This phenomenon occurs when a group shares a resource, but every individual acts on their own behalf.

This is often against the common interest of the community. According to Hardin (1968), such freedom in a shared resource ultimately brings ruin to all.

For instance, in China, there is still a preference to have a son over a daughter, for economic reasons. The abortion of female fetuses has led to a severe gender imbalance in the whole population.

Another example is the economically incentivized pollution of the environment by private companies, which causes a deep global ecological degradation. Yet another example is the overuse of antibiotics, which causes increased susceptibility to bacterial infections in the whole population. One could multiply examples of the tragedy of commons occurring in many societies.

Do We Have a Tragedy of Commons in Academia?

In a way, yes, we do. What is academia, actually?

It is, beyond any doubt, a common resource: a platform on which researchers are able to define and execute scientific projects. As a shared resource, this platform needs to be a clean, friendly and collaborative place.

But academia’s structure demands competitiveness if you intend to stay for longer. There are not enough seats for everyone on the higher levels of the ladder.

This requirement generates an intrinsic conflict of interest and often pushes researchers to make self-oriented career choices that neglect the happiness of others. As a result, it is easy to cross the red line beyond which a scientific environment becomes a toxic place polluted with personal aversion, biased peer review, and employment process, ignorance and avoiding responsibility for projects and students. 

In such conditions, motivation strategies oriented at growing motivation from the inside, can only soothe the consequences of the problem, and not solve the problem itself.

Is There Any Possible Remedy to This Issue?

In her pioneering work, Elinor conducted field studies on how different societies develop rules for managing natural resources in order to avoid resource exploitation. In particular, she conducted studies on the management of irrigation systems in Nepal and pastures in Africa. According to Ostrom (1990), long-enduring commons share a set of recognizable design principles.

To briefly summarize her findings, in order to be successful, care for the commons needs to be a common task for the whole community, organized and constrained by the culture. Even though trust underlies resource sharing, Ostrom formalized principles that are, according to her research, absolutely necessary for effective management of the commons in every community. Firstly, in order to achieve effective management of the common resource, the rules for managing the resource need to be clearly defined.

The community should make all decisions with respect to the resource through a collective agreement, and should maintain public awareness of these rules. Communities should adapt the rules to local conditions, to optimize the overall performance.

Furthermore, the community should also monitor the resource, and needs to define and execute sanctions for those who violate the rules. Lastly, there should be clear rules for fast, easy-access conflict resolution.

How Do These Principles Relate to Academia?

First of all, talking about burnout and lack of motivation still remains taboo. This differs between cultures, and in general, in some areas of the world, it is more accepted and regulated than in other cultures.

For instance, in the Netherlands, the institution of paid sick leave exists while in some other countries, such as the US, it does not. Also, universities fix most contracts with respect to the research topic and the supervision panel. Of course, over the course of a few years of a PhD, many things can go differently than expected, yet typically, there are no clear rules for fast and easy-access conflict resolution.

Then, projects sometimes go in an unexpected direction, either because the project turns out to be impossible or because of a personality mismatch between the team members. In these cases, the early career researcher is always the one whose well-being suffers the most.

Lastly, there is still no public awareness that happiness in the working environment is in the best interest of everyone. In most cases, institutions take no sanctions even if a given person has a bad record of their workers’ satisfaction over a prolonged period of time.

Is This Accidental?

To end with, a little food for thought. Harvard University and Stanford University have recently made it to the top 20 in America’s Best Employers ranking AD 2018. The question remains: is this accidental that the universities that treat their workers best, also happen to perform the highest quality research?