Congratulations, Dr. Alexander Schniedermann!
PhD defence
On 11 June 2026, Alexander Schniedermann successfully defended his PhD thesis at Leiden University, titled 'Standardization in Science. Effects and Issues of Guidelines for Biomedical Reporting'.
Alexander Schniedermann was supervised by Sarah de Rijcke, Paul Wouters, and Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner. In his dissertation, he investigated the sociological role of reporting guidelines in biomedical research, showing how scholarly communication is standardized within this field and beyond: 'Scientific publishing has become a daily matter of course for most researchers. However, my investigation of the PRISMA reporting guidelines reminds us how central the formalisation and distribution of scientific information is for connecting researchers worldwide and building human knowledge'. In order to account for the complexity of scholarly communication, Alexander's approach combines bibliometric and sociological methods and makes use of concepts from the science and technology studies.
In his laudatio following the PhD defence, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner praised Alexander’s work, stating: 'Alexander (...) approached the dissertation as an independent scholar with a strong sense of direction, curiosity, and intellectual confidence. I can therefore also confidently say that I personally learned a great deal from supervising Alexander, and not because this is my first defence as a (daily) supervisor'. He further commended Alexander’s scholarly approach: 'In particular, he worked in an discursive space that is replete with problem diagnoses concerning scientific publishing, reform agendas, and opposition to the reform agendas. Alexander resisted the temptation of adopting ready-made explanations from any of these camps. He managed to maintain a critical perspective without allowing critique to become an empty intellectual posture'.
Alexander Schniedermann worked on his PhD at the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW). He developed his interest in systematic reviewing based on a project about the roles and functions of the scientific review literature. Although doing mostly sociological and bibliometric research, he has a rich background in the philosophy and history of science which he studied at Bielefeld and Zürich. Besides doing research, Alexander served as board member and member of Ombuds group for stsing e.V. and was PhD Student representative at DZHW.
At CWTS, we are very proud of Alexander’s achievement and look forward to following his future work and accomplishments. We wish him all the best in his career ahead!