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- Convenor:
-
Paul Wouters
(Leiden University)
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- Format:
- Plenaries
- Location:
- Economy, Main Auditory (Aula) (with overflow in Economics IV)
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 17 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
Long Abstract:
European research systems continue to adopt more formal assessment and evaluation methods. This session discusses the implications of this for the practice of researchers themselves as well as for the policy goals of 'excellence' and 'relevance'. Themes that will be addressed in this session include individual and institutional coping strategies in different disciplinary, institutional and research contexts, a comparison of the landscape of European research system transition, east and west, and ethnographies of formal and informal processes of evaluation in the social sciences. As both actors within and analysts of the changing knowledge system we consider the challenges for our reflexivity and engagement in this process.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 17 September, 2014, -Tereza Stockelova (Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Paper long abstract:
Drawing upon qualitative data generated within five research projects I have participated in over the last ten years, I will discuss the main effects of the “RIV points” – the new academic currency introduced in the CR by a quantitative research assessment in 2004. Implemented with the declared intention of promoting transparency, excellence and international competitiveness of the Czech research system, it has had some intended and many unintended consequences, hardly controllable from the policy centre.
In my presentation I will focus on the social sciences and discuss two aspects specifically. Firstly, I will introduce the notion of 'domestication' to account for a variety of individual and institutional coping strategies in different disciplinary, institutional and research contexts. While the research assessment has substantially influenced academic practices, it can also be observed that researchers and institutions often strive to simply repackage their established habits into new brands. Secondly, by talking about 'power clinch' I will trace the coexistence, in university settings, of the research assessment with redistribution of another type of academic currency – the academic titles. Pursuant to the university law, habilitation and professorship procedures are enacted through peer review judgements of scientific council members manifested in a secret vote and, as such, can be highly unaccountable. Rather than balancing out the quantitative accounting logic of the assessment with a different accountability logic, it can operate as a mechanism to disregard academic performance of the new generation of academics to sustain the status quo for the (male dominated) professoriate established in 1990s.
Barend van der Meulen (University of Twente)
Paper long abstract:
While the European Union has developed into a significant research funding actor through its Framework Programs and Structural Funds, there is a clear divide still between research systems in North West Europe and research systems in CEEC and Mediterranean Countries. In all European countries a need for transition is felt, but the kind of transition is rather different as well as the perspective on science and its societal role. Drawing on experiences in science policy in the Netherlands, Lithuania and Hungary, I will contrast the situations through an assessment of the role the concept of "excellent science" has in the respective research systems. In the Netherlands and other rich and mature research systems, the notion of excellent is becoming a focus issue for debates on perverse effects within funding and academic career systems. In CEEC "excellence" is key to the hope and efforts of research organisations and scientists to link up with global dynamics of science. Excellence science then is not an individual performance but reflects the societal needs of countries for a healthy research system. The paper ends with a reflection upon the possibilities of a science policy studies that acknowledges the situations in CEEC.
Izabela Wagner (University of Warsaw)
Paper long abstract:
Evaluation approach dominated almost all kinds of human activity in the developed countries or countries aspiring for this status. The science is (not free of trend) also touched by this trend - the phenomenon today highly criticized by important part of the scientific community. Loss of scientific autonomy, negative effects of publish or perish rule, focus on a high citations-impact as the main goal of the young scientists career strategy, these are changes observed in the universe of scientific work.
The evaluation of scientific publications has become the key criteria in official accounting system of evaluating individual achievements. The ranking of scientists based on citations rate has become a tool of evaluation applied by people who ignore the field. In other words, opinions about the “quality” of scientists are produced by non-scientists and are based merely on algorithms of citation rate.
This presentation is not a simple repertoire of critics addressed to the system of scientific achievement evaluation. Rather, I shall propose a reflection on the process of evaluation in science. How does it proceed?
What kind of mechanism is applied to evaluation of creative, scientific work? Does this official system of evaluation work also within scientific communities? How do scientists themselves evaluate their peer achievements?
Using Hughesian concept of the auxiliary characteristics I will show phenomena of selections and processes of evaluation, which are observed in ethnographical studies, which can be called informal in opposition to the formal and well known citation impact based on evaluation. The relationship between formal and informal practices constitutes the central problem analyzed in this presentation.