Across the world, structures and control mechanisms of publicly funded research have changed dramatically in the last decades. Input governance of research funding has increasingly been replaced by output and control related mechanisms inspired by economic models – a transformation of all publically funded activities since the 1980s and onwards, referred to as ’new public management‘ (NPM) – rather than traditions in academia. These trends have been, and continue to be, accompanied by a decrease in public funding of research, especially in the social sciences and the humanities (Brinkley, 2009; Halevi & Bar-Ilan, 2013). These developments arise in parts from issues related to the scientific work process per se. However, they are also driven by external factors, such as economical or technical challenges and their impact on academic life.