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The culture of orphaned texts: Academic books in a performance-based evaluation system
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SYSNO ASEP 0496177 Document Type J - Journal Article R&D Document Type Journal Article Subsidiary J Článek ve WOS Title The culture of orphaned texts: Academic books in a performance-based evaluation system Author(s) Brož, Luděk (UEF-S) ORCID, RID
Stöckelová, Tereza (SOU-Z) RID, ORCID, SAISource Title Aslib Journal of Information Management. - : Emerald Publishing - ISSN 2050-3806
Roč. 70, č. 6 (2018), s. 623-642Number of pages 20 s. Publication form Print - P Language eng - English Country GB - United Kingdom Keywords Czech Republic ; Research evaluation ; Classification Subject RIV AO - Sociology, Demography OECD category Sociology Subject RIV - cooperation Institute of Ethnology - Archeology, Anthropology, Ethnology R&D Projects GA15-16452S GA ČR - Czech Science Foundation (CSF) Institutional support SOU-Z - RVO:68378025 ; UEF-S - RVO:68378076 UT WOS 000449153300004 EID SCOPUS 85055995591 DOI 10.1108/AJIM-03-2018-0063 Annotation Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the body of knowledge on how research evaluation in different national and organisational contexts affects, often in unintended ways, research and publication practices. In particular, it looks at the development of book publication in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in the Czech Republic since 2004, when a performance-based system of evaluation was introduced, up to the present.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper builds upon ethnographic research complemented by the analysis of Czech science policy documents, data available in the governmental database “Information Register of R&D results” and formal and informal interviews with expert evaluators and other stakeholders in the research system. It further draws on the authors’ own experience as scholars, who have also over the years participated in a number of evaluation procedures as peers and experts.
Findings – The number of books published by researchers in SSH based at Czech institutions has risen considerably in reaction to the pressure for productivity that is inscribed into the evaluation methodology and has resulted in the rise of in-house publishing by researchers’ own research institution, “fake internationalisation” using foreign low-quality presses as the publication venue, and the development of a culture of orphaned books that have no readers.
Practical implications – In the Czech Republic robust and internationally harmonised bibliometric data regarding books would definitely help to create a form of research evaluation that would stimulate meaningful scholarly book production. At the same time, better-resourced and better-designed peer review evaluation is needed.
Originality/value – This is the first attempt to analyse in detail the conditions and consequences the Czech performance-based research evaluation system has for SSH book publication. The paper demonstrates that often discussed harming of SSH and book-writing in particular by performance-based IF-centred research evaluation does not necessarily manifest in declining numbers of publications. On the contrary, the number of books published may increase at the cost of producing more texts of questionable scholarly quality.
Workplace Institute of Sociology Contact Eva Nechvátalová, eva.nechvatalova@soc.cas.cz, Tel.: 222 220 924 / linka 351 Year of Publishing 2019
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