1. No category

Measuring research quality in the humanities:
evaluation systems, publication practices and
possible effects
Björn Hammarfelt
bjorn.hammarfelt@hb.se
Swedish School of Library and Information
Science (SSLIS). University of Borås
Visisting scholar at the Centre for Science and
Technology Studies, Leiden University
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Outline
• Introduction
• The organization of research in the humanities
• How to measure social impact in the
humanities
• The possible consequences of bibliometric
evaluation
• Challenge: How to handle demands for
accountablity?
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Organization
Diverse audience
Hicks (2006) four types of literatures:
- journal articles
- books
- national literature
- non-scholarly literature
Nederhof (2006) three audiences:
- international scholars
- researchers on the national or regional level
- non-scholarly audience
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Organization
Intellectual organisation
Low dependence on colleagues (Whitley, 1984)
- fragmentation
- interdisciplinarity
High degree of task uncertainty (Whitley, 1984)
Rural (Becher & Trowler, 2001)
- slow pace
- little pressure to publish results fast
- less competetion/ lower rewards
- greater freedom (still?)
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Organization
Argument 1:
- Intellectual organization influences referencing
patterns (Hellqvist, 2011)
Argument 2:
- Intellectual organization of the humantities
makes it harder to come up with systematic
measures of quality
Argument 3:
- Systematic, strong evaluation systems, have
greater effects in fields characterized by high task
uncertainty and low dependence on colleges
(Whitley 2007)
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Social impact
Impact: ”The action of one object coming forcibly
into contact with another” OED
What is (not) social impact for the humanities?
“Rather than the humanities being pre-scientific, it is the
natural sciences which until very recently have been presocial.” (Gibbons et al., 1994, p. 99)
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Social impact
Altmetrics
http://www.altmetric.com/top100/2014/
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Social impact
Altmetrics
Pro
Con
Possibility to measure the
In reality restricted to journal
impact of a range of different articles (mostly in English)
dissemination forms: articles, with DOI
chapters, books, webbpages,
blogs…
Quality of data a major
concern
No ‟citation delay‟
Impact not restricted to a
scholarly audience
Doubts of whats really
measured: quality, popularity
or mere advertisment?
Hammarfelt (2014)
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Altmetrics
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Social impact
Impact case study
More in line with the epistemology of the
humanities
Provides, in-depth and thick descriptions that might
also facilitate reflection
Requires a lot of work both for evaluee and
evaluator
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
REF impact case studies:
http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStud
rch1.aspx
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
REF impact case studies:
http://impact.ref.ac.uk/CaseStud
rch1.aspx
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Evaluation in context
Publication practices and evaluation
systems
-
Faculty of Arts, Uppsala University
Bibliometric data on publication patterns
Survey of publication practices/attitudes
Moments of metric, 2009 (national - citations)
2011 (local – Norwegian model)
Hammarfelt & de Rijcke (2015)
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Evaluation in context
As everybody knows, and as all answers will confirm, we are
moving from publishing monographs to publishing articles, and this
is not always beneficial for the humanities [Established historian,
R68]
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Evaluation in context
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Evaluation in context
Never throw away good ideas or research in book chapters.
Everything that requires work should be published in
international peer reviewed journals, otherwise it’s a
waste of time (both for authors and readers) . . . (Novice
historian, R83)
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Evaluation in context
Internal and external demands
It‟s a problem that the status of monographs is very
uneven - they definitely count as an advantage in my field,
but not in funding and general academia. Thus, I have
focused on writing articles to be on the safe side [. . .]
[Novice literary
scholar, R71]
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Evaluation in context
Publication strategies
More and more scholars adapt to new publication strategies
to have any chance in the tough competition for permanent
positions within the field [Novice literary scholar, R89]
Young researchers appear to be more inclined to adapt to
the pressures of financiers and models for allocation of
resources. This is understandable but regrettable.
[Established historian,
R20]
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Evaluation in context
Publication strategies
1. Highly regarded within the
discipline
2. Peer reviewed
3. Quality of peer review
4. International reach/visibility
5. Suggestions from coauthors/colleagues
6. Demands from funding agency
7. Counts in evaluation schemes
8. Speed of publication
9. Open Access
10. Indexed in international databases
(WoS, Scopus)
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Challenge
How to handle demands for accountablity
and transparency?
- Protest
- Ignore
- Play along
- Game the system
- Engage in the construction of the system
University of Vienna, 7 May, 2015
Aagaard, K. (2015) „How incentives trickle down: Local use of a national bibliometric indicator system‟, Science and Public
Policy, pp. 1-13.
Literature
Becher, Tony & Trowler Paul R. (2001). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the cultures of disciplines.
Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Dahler-Larsen, P. (2012) The Evaluation Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, Peter & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of
knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: SAGE Publications.
Hammarfelt, B. and de Rijcke, S. (2015) Accountability in context: Effects of research evaluation systems on publication
practices, disciplinary norms and individual working routines in the faculty of Arts at Uppsala University‟, Research
Evaluation, 24/1: 63-77.
Hammarfelt, B. (2014). Using altmetrics for assessing research impact in the humanities. Scientometrics, 101(2), 1419-1430.
Hellqvist (2010). Referencing in the humanities and its implications for citation analysis. JASIST, 61(2), 310-318.
Hicks, D. (2004). The four literatures of social science. In Moed, Henk F. et al. (Eds.) Handbook of quantitative science and
technology research. (pp. 473-496). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Nederhof, A.J.. (2006). Bibliometric monitoring of research performance in the social sciences and the humanities: A
review. Scientometrics, 66(1), 81-100.
Whitley, R. (2000) The intellectual and social organization of the sciences. (Second Edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit!