Public accountability and the politicization of science: The peculiar journey of Czech research assessment

0390553 - SOÚ 2013 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Linková, Marcela - Stöckelová, Tereza
Public accountability and the politicization of science: The peculiar journey of Czech research assessment.
Science and Public Policy. Roč. 39, č. 5 (2012), s. 618-629. ISSN 0302-3427. E-ISSN 1471-5430
R&D Projects: GA AV ČR KJB700280907; GA MŠMT OK08007
Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z70280505
Keywords : research assessment * Czech Republic * public accountability
Subject RIV: AO - Sociology, Demography
Impact factor: 0.983, year: 2012
http://spp.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/05/29/scipol.scs039

In recent decades, research has undergone major changes, resulting in radical shifts in patterns of governance. In this process, external forms of research assessment have developed as a proxy for researchers’ and research institutions’ accountability to society. In this paper we focus on the developments of research assessment in the Czech Republic. First, we trace the trajectory of accountability measures in the socio-historical contexts of post-socialist science as a tool of not only evaluating but also de-politicizing and re-politicizing research. Second, we focus on the active participation of scientists in the introduction of research assessment into national research policy. Closely related is our third concern, namely the emergence of and clashes between two different accountability frameworks in/of science: (internal) professional accountability and (external) managerial accountability. Our findings underscore the ambiguous, messy and fluid nature of research assessment and the inability to totalize its effects.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0219429