IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/scippl/v45y2018i6p775-789..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The evaluation of research excellence and the dynamics of knowledge production in the humanities: The case of history in Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Carolina Cañibano
  • Immaculada Vilardell
  • Carmen Corona
  • Carlos Benito-Amat

Abstract

This article addresses how the progressive development of a strong research evaluation system in Spain has affected research practices in two highly prestigious university departments in History. Our research finds that researchers perceive that evaluation mechanisms relying on bibliometric indicators pressure them to publish more and to publish in international indexed journals. Researchers feel the time available to develop their research before publishing their results has been reduced, which does not allow them to address research questions with the former rigour and to fully exploit information sources. The pressure is also perceived as an obstacle to conceiving long-term intellectual projects. The strong evaluation culture and its accompanying mechanisms are thus perceived as directly undermining the fundamental pillars on which the academic prestige of these departments was built, namely originality, scientific rigour and methodological innovations.

Suggested Citation

  • Carolina Cañibano & Immaculada Vilardell & Carmen Corona & Carlos Benito-Amat, 2018. "The evaluation of research excellence and the dynamics of knowledge production in the humanities: The case of history in Spain," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 45(6), pages 775-789.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:scippl:v:45:y:2018:i:6:p:775-789.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/scipol/scy025
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Catherine Paradeise & Jean-Claude Thoenig, 2015. "In Search of Academic Quality," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-29829-4.
    2. Anton J. Nederhof, 2006. "Bibliometric monitoring of research performance in the Social Sciences and the Humanities: A Review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 66(1), pages 81-100, January.
    3. Ülle Must, 2012. "Alone or together: examples from history research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(2), pages 527-537, May.
    4. Thelwall, Mike & Sud, Pardeep, 2014. "No citation advantage for monograph-based collaborations?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 276-283.
    5. Björn Hammarfelt & Sarah de Rijcke, 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, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 63-77.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ramón A. Feenstra & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, 2022. "Philosophers’ appraisals of bibliometric indicators and their use in evaluation: from recognition to knee-jerk rejection," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 2085-2103, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eugenio Petrovich, 2022. "Bibliometrics in Press. Representations and uses of bibliometric indicators in the Italian daily newspapers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2195-2233, May.
    2. Emanuel Kulczycki & Władysław Marek Kolasa & Krystian Szadkowski, 2021. "Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin as highly cited researchers? Historical bibliometrics study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8683-8700, October.
    3. Verleysen, Frederik T. & Weeren, Arie, 2016. "Clustering by publication patterns of senior authors in the social sciences and humanities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 254-272.
    4. Elías Sanz-Casado & Daniela Filippo & Rafael Aleixandre Benavent & Vidar Røeggen & Janne Pölönen, 2021. "Impact and visibility of Norwegian, Finnish and Spanish journals in the fields of humanities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(11), pages 9031-9049, November.
    5. Kuang-hua Chen & Muh-chyun Tang & Chun-mei Wang & Jieh Hsiang, 2015. "Exploring alternative metrics of scholarly performance in the social sciences and humanities in Taiwan," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 97-112, January.
    6. Moshe Blidstein & Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet, 2022. "Towards a new generic framework for citation network generation and analysis in the humanities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 4275-4297, July.
    7. Daniela Filippo & Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent & Elías Sanz-Casado, 2020. "Toward a classification of Spanish scholarly journals in social sciences and humanities considering their impact and visibility," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1709-1732, November.
    8. Metwaly Ali Mohamed Eldakar, 2019. "Who reads international Egyptian academic articles? An altmetrics analysis of Mendeley readership categories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 105-135, October.
    9. Ramón A. Feenstra & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, 2022. "Philosophers’ appraisals of bibliometric indicators and their use in evaluation: from recognition to knee-jerk rejection," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 2085-2103, April.
    10. Walters, William H., 2017. "Do subjective journal ratings represent whole journals or typical articles? Unweighted or weighted citation impact?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 730-744.
    11. Daniela De Filippo & Fernanda Morillo & Borja González-Albo, 2023. "Measuring the Impact and Influence of Scientific Activity in the Humanities and Social Sciences," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-17, June.
    12. Mehdi Rhaiem & Nabil Amara, 2020. "Determinants of research efficiency in Canadian business schools: evidence from scholar-level data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 53-99, October.
    13. Daraio, Cinzia & Simar, Leopold & Wilson, Paul, 2019. "Quality and its impact on efficiency," LIDAM Discussion Papers ISBA 2019004, Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA).
    14. Sándor Soós & Zsófia Vida & András Schubert, 2018. "Long-term trends in the multidisciplinarity of some typical natural and social sciences, and its implications on the SSH versus STM distinction," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 795-822, March.
    15. Zoltán Krajcsák, 2021. "Researcher Performance in Scopus Articles ( RPSA ) as a New Scientometric Model of Scientific Output: Tested in Business Area of V4 Countries," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-23, October.
    16. Geert Campenhout & Tom Caneghem & Steve Uytbergen, 2008. "A comparison of overall and sub-area journal influence: The case of the accounting literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 77(1), pages 61-90, October.
    17. Aksnes, Dag W. & Rip, Arie, 2009. "Researchers' perceptions of citations," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 895-905, July.
    18. Qing Ji & Xiaoping Pang & Xi Zhao, 2014. "A bibliometric analysis of research on Antarctica during 1993–2012," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(3), pages 1925-1939, December.
    19. Hanna-Mari Puuska & Reetta Muhonen & Yrjö Leino, 2014. "International and domestic co-publishing and their citation impact in different disciplines," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 823-839, February.
    20. Wei, Yi-Ming & Mi, Zhi-Fu & Huang, Zhimin, 2015. "Climate policy modeling: An online SCI-E and SSCI based literature review," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 57(PA), pages 70-84.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:scippl:v:45:y:2018:i:6:p:775-789.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/spp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.