Recognition and reward in the academy. Valuing publication oeuvres in biomedicine, economics and history
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-01-2017-0006 |
| Published date | 18 September 2017 |
| Date | 18 September 2017 |
| Pages | 607-623 |
| Author | Björn Hammarfelt |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
Recognition and reward in
the academy
Valuing publication oeuvres in biomedicine,
economics and history
Björn Hammarfelt
Swedish School of Library and Information Science,
University of Borås, Borås, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose –The publication oeuvre of a researcher carries great value when academic careers are assessed,
and being recognised as a successful candidate is usually equated with being a productive author. Yet, how
publications are valued in the context of evaluating careers is so far anunderstudied topic. The paper aims to
discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach –Th rough a content analysis of asses sment reports in three
disciplines –biomedicine, economics and history –this paper analyses how externalities are used to
evaluate publication oeuvres. Externalities are defined as features such as reviews and bibliometric
indicators, which can be assessed without evaluating the epistemological claims made in the actual text.
Findings –All three fields emphasise similar aspects when assessing: authorship, publication prestige,
temporality of research, reputation within the field and boundary keeping. Yet, how these facets of quality are
evaluated, and the means through which they are assessed differs between disciplines. Moreover, research
fields orient themselves according to different temporal horizons, i.e. history looks to the past and economics
to the future when research is evaluated.
Research limitations/implications –The complexities involved in the process of evaluating candidates
are also reflected in the findings, and while the comparative approach taken effectively highlights domain
specific differences it may also hide counter-narratives, and subtle intradisciplinary discussion on quality.
Originality/value –This study offers a novel perspective on how publications are valued when
assessing academic careers. Especially striking is how research across different fields is evaluated through
different time horizons. This finding is significant in the debate on more overarching and formal systems of
research evaluation.
Keywords Research quality,Research evaluation, Content analysis, Peer review, Reward systemof science,
Academic careers
Paper type Research paper
We appreciate the value and significance of a scholar only from his writings; he who does not write,
seems unsuited to the world of scholarship today, and when someone applies for a position,
one always asks what he has written ( Johan Adam Bergk, Die Kunst, Bucher zu lezen: Nebst
bemerkungen über Schriften und Schriftsteller, 1799, from Josephson, 2014).
Introduction
Reputation and recognition gained through publications has been a crucial merit for career
advancement in academia since the birth of the research university in the late eighteenth
century (Clark, 2008; Josephson, 2014). The ability to publish research is instrumental both
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 69 No. 5, 2017
pp. 607-623
Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-01-2017-0006
Received 4 January 2017
Revised 20 April 2017
5 June 2017
Accepted 19 June 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
© Björn Hammarfelt. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and
create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to
full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at
http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
This study was supported by the Swedish Research Council (Grant No. 2013-7368) and The Swedish
Foundation for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Grant No. SGO14-1153:1).
607
Recognition
and reward in
the academy
for gaining recognition within a specific field of research, and for the possibility of getting a
permanent position at a university or a research institute. The reputation of an academic is
dependent on their recognition among a wider community of peers, which means that the
research field, rather than the institution, is the venue where careers are valued. In this
sense, research fields are what Whitley (2000, p. 48f) calls “reputational work organisations”
where labour market standing is determined by reputation among colleagues. Generally, it
is assumed that the competition for positions in these reputational organisations has
increased over the last decades, and while idioms like “publish or perish”are usually
reiterated rather carelessly there appears to be some substance to the claim about increasing
pressures to publish (Van Dalen and Henkens, 2012).
Academic researchers are continuously evaluated on thebasis of their publication record,
either as part of informal assessments or in the form of more regular systems of evaluation.
A formal evaluation,which may have significantconsequences for the individualcareer, takes
place when applicants for an academic position are evaluated on the basis of their research
merits, teaching and administrative skills. In this study, a selection of 45 assessment reports
from four major universities in Sweden are used to study howpublications are valued in this
context. Commonly, the number and quality of publications are two main criteria through
which research quality is evaluated. However, more exact studies of how research quality
is defined in the context of evaluating candidates for academic positions are quite rare
(Hemlin and Montgomery, 1993; Nilsson, 2009; Hammarfelt and Rushforth, in press), and
research on conceptions of research quality has foremost been focussed on the peer review
process of grants(see e.g. Langfeldt, 2001; Lamont,2009; Van Arensbergen et al., 2014) rather
than on academic careers. Moreover, the literature on academic careers tends to focus on
structural aspects such as differences between national career systems (Musselin, 2009) or
systematic discrimination based on gender (Steinpreis et al., 1999), while actual evaluation
procedures have attracted less attention.
In focussing on how contextual information, such as information on the status of the
publication channel, or externalities (e.g. bibliometric measures), are brought in to evaluate
candidates this study engages in the current debate on peer review and indicator use in
research assessment (Wouters et al., 2015). Externalities are defined as features such as
publication channel, age of the texts, reviews, bibliometric indicators and prizes, which can
be assessed without evaluating the epistemological claims made in the actual text. Recent
research has shown how indicators are employed as “judgment devices”(Karpik, 2010)
when evaluating research. The journal impact factor ( JIF) has been identified as one
frequently used such device which is integrated in the field of biomedicine where it also
affects epistemological considerations (Rushforth and de Rijcke, 2015). The present study
broadens the perspective introduced in these studies by engaging with contextual
information about publications that might be used in similar ways, but which must not
directly involve the use of bibliometric indicators. Thus, the purpose of this study is to
provide a more detailed understanding of how “research quality”is defined and constructed
in the context of evaluating the publication oeuvres of candidates for academic positions.
The analysis combines a theoretical framework for analysing field differences developed
by Whitley (2000), and the theory of “judgment devices”formulated by Karpik (2010). Three
fields of research –biomedicine, economics and history –were deliberately selected to
highlight distinctive disciplinary valuation practices, although similarities in-between fields
will also be emphasised. These fields were chosen on the basis of their being large high
status fields both within and outside academia.
Biomedicine, a field in which principles of biology and chemistry are applied to clinical
practices, consists of several subfields including molecular biology and biochemistry.
The field hastaken a central position in recentdebates on the supposed crisisin science, where
issues regarding how research and researchers are evaluated take a prominent position
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AJIM
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