Setting Research Agendas: A Permanent Fight for the Scientific Communities

A fundamental question in relation to academic freedom is the setting of research agendas. In relation to this issue, this article first points to the great diversity of research as a result of the complex structure of the research ecosystem. Against this backdrop, the article continues by discussing six different steps in setting a research agenda. This, in turn, leads to a comparison of the two main approaches to set up a research agenda: bottom-up and top-down. Finally, the article presents recent tendencies and limitations to research agendas.