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Débats. L’évaluation des publications scientifiques en débat

Evaluation of scholarship in the Human Sciences in the United States

Martha Howell e Jan Goldstein
p. 319-323

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  • 1  M. Howell is professor of History, as is J. Goldstein, who is as well president of the American Hi (...)

1In the United States, post-secondary education is decentralized and provided by a wide variety of more than 4.000 institutions1. The diversity of institutional types is compounded by diversity of funding sources: some institutions are funded principally by private endowments and others by state legislatures, although most compete for additional resources from foundations such as the Fulbright or Mellon. Importantly, there are no national universities or colleges and there is no formal review of scholarship at the national level. Thus, although generally accepted standards for evaluating scholarship certainly exist, they are differently applied at different institutions. In addition, each discipline uses its own metrics for evaluation.

The landscape for research in the humanities and social sciences

2The institutions of higher education in the United States vary so widely in terms of the training they provide, the students they teach, and the scholars they employ that the influential Carnegie Foundation has divided them into six types: 1) colleges granting the associate’s degree (after two years of undergraduate study), which make up almost half the national total; 2) Doctorate-granting Universities; 3) Masters Colleges and Universities; 4) Baccalaureate Colleges; 5) Special Focus Institutions (those concentrating on a single field of study, such as engineering or business); 6) Tribal Colleges. Within each type, further distinctions are made. Doctorate-granting Universities, for example, are divided into «very high research activity» universities (108 institutions), «high research activity» universities (99 institutions) and «research universities» (90 institutions). Masters Universities, of which there are 724, are also subdivided and a significant number of the 413 classified as «larger programs» are staffed by faculty comparable to those in Doctorate-granting universities of «very high» or «high» research activity. Of the 271 Baccalaureate Colleges that grant degrees in the human sciences (among about 800) many employ scholars comparable to those at leading research universities. Many scholars begin their academic careers at one kind of institution but later to move to another, and it is very rare for scholars to spend their entire careers at the institution from which they received their PhD.

3Almost all research in the human sciences in the United States takes place in these colleges and universities. The institutions themselves provide the bulk of research support through libraries and other facilities and through paid leaves, using funds from institutional endowments, state legislatures, private donors, and grant-giving agencies such as the Mellon Foundation. In the human sciences there are no large organizations that employ full-time scholarly researchers, like France’s CNRS, and only a few disciplines like economics regularly have recourse to extra-university venues for conducting primary research. Furthermore, almost all faculty, no matter where they are appointed or at what level, are expected to teach and, although at major research institutions and selective baccalaureate colleges faculty teach fewer courses than at other kinds of institutions, in many institutions teaching is considered the faculty’s principal, even their only, task. Post-doctoral appointments are very rare in comparison to the hard sciences; they are fixed term and almost all require teaching.

4Given this diversity, grant-giving organizations and departmental committees or deans have significant freedom to interpret and adjust standards for assessing scholarship. Furthermore, each discipline develops the metrics it considers suitable. As a result, departments themselves have wide latitude in making appointments and a major voice in deciding if a candidate will be promoted to tenure, usually after six or seven years. Tenure guarantees employment, assures the scholar liberty to choose research topics and organize curriculum (in consultation with colleagues), and often provides additional privileges in the form of paid leave and research funds. Although beginning scholars who will be considered for tenure in the future (those on «tenure-track» lines) are given support comparable to that granted tenured members of the department, not all faculty will reach this level, and in some institutions tenured appointments are rare.

Evaluation standards and procedures

5Scholarly standards are set by major research universities but they are adapted at the disciplinary level. In general, there is a divide between those disciplines or subdisciplines that rely largely on qualitative judgments and those employing quantitative measures. There is also a difference between those disciplines that consider articles the significant measure of scholarly achievement and those that privilege the book.

  • 2  In history, either one like The American Historical Review or one focused on a subfield like Specu (...)

6The traditional humanities (with the exception of philosophy in departments emphasizing analytic philosophy), along with history and certain social science subdisciplines like sociocultural anthropology, cultural sociology, and political theory, give books primary weight, but generally give such credit only to monographs and original interpretations. Textbooks, student aids, syntheses, edited collections and text editions (except in certain subfields) serve only as indications of professional activity, as do appearances at scholarly conferences. The reputation of the press publishing the book matters as well, with top academic presses such as Chicago, Cornell, or Harvard or semi-commercial leaders like Cambridge and Oxford generally carrying the most weight. Articles count for considerably less, although a major article in a top journal is taken very seriously2. Articles in less prestigious journals are judged on an individual basis; an article in a relatively specialized journal with a small circulation can be given serious weight if it represents new work that the journal’s readers are best qualified to assess. Non-peer reviewed conference papers are treated as evidence of productivity, not necessarily quality, and articles that simply recast material published elsewhere are discounted, even dismissed in tenure evaluations. In these fields, quantitative measures of publication are rarely applied. Evaluators are interested more in the impact the publication has had in the field, measured simply by its critical reception. In large research departments, the assessment of colleagues is at least as important, for in these settings there are likely to be readers able to judge the technical quality and originality of the manuscript.

7In contrast, the «hard» social sciences—economics, sociology, political science, and physical anthropology (with the kinds of exceptions noted)—tend to privilege the article and to use quantitative measures like the citation index and frequency of publication to make their judgments. Because in these fields the emphasis is more on collecting and analyzing commensurate data, a premium is put on sharing the results of investigations in the course of ongoing research in order to test conclusions with scholars working on analogous projects. Thus, scholars often publish their studies as they complete a stage in the research process, expecting feedback that will help them improve their methodologies and analytic strategies for completion of the project. In these fields as in the humanities, however, there is a hierarchy among presses, with some journals having reputations for conducting especially rigorous reviews and having the widest readership. But again, as in the humanities, the individual disciplines, subdisciplines, and departments themselves exercise independent judgment about what counts as «significant» research. Even in these fields, a scholar who publishes less—even one who is less widely quoted—can advance to tenure or a chair if his or her colleagues consider the work of sufficiently high quality.

8A further split among disciplines in the human sciences is emerging with the question of online publication without prior review. Although most scholars are agreed on the value of sharing work as widely and cheaply as possible, some disciplines are very reluctant to abandon the traditional practices of initial publication in print and only after review by editorial committees and their anonymous advisors. In fields that emphasize interpretative and rhetorical originality as well as highly specialized research in non-commensurate sources—as do most humanities, history and some social sciences—it is considered vital that specialists provide prior review to assure quality; scholars rely on it as well to strengthen manuscripts before publication. Disciplines that use similar kinds of evidence and share analytical strategies, in contrast, find it useful to release their results quickly in order to elicit commentary from the broader community qualified to judge their work. It is not clear how this debate will finally be resolved but for the time being the traditional humanities, history included, are resisting the call to bypass peer-review and publish online. Electronic publishing more generally is also threatening to divide this group of disciplines. Although scholars in the human sciences have long published statistical material online, some are now putting such products as opinion pieces, lectures, or unedited material collected in archives or from manuscripts on the web. Whether departments and deans will come to recognize this form of publication suitable for inclusion in a scholarly dossier remains to be seen.

9Although the aforementioned standards are widely accepted, they are differently applied in institutions outside the leading research universities. In general, the less active a university is in research, the less is expected of candidates for appointment and tenure. Adjustments are variously made, for example in terms of the amount of publication, the reputation of the presses distributing the work, or the nature of the publication, with syntheses and conference papers perhaps counting more than at major research universities. The most selective colleges tend, in contrast, to apply the same standards as the active research universities but, in recognition of the fact that their faculty usually devote more time to teaching, they expect somewhat less research productivity.

10Researchers in the human sciences depend not only on their own institutions for much of the support they require but also turn to granting agencies for supplemental funds and extra research leaves. Ad hoc committees consisting of nationally recognized specialists make the agencies’ decisions, with the help of outside reviewers who write anonymous evaluations. Their assessment is based both on the candidate’s scholarly record (with criteria like those used by active research universities) and the research proposal itself. The agencies also adjust standards, however, as they think appropriate. A promising proposal from someone at a small college might, for example, be awarded a grant, while an accomplished scholar who has previously enjoyed significant support might be denied. Some agencies, like the National Endowment for the Humanities, target scholars at different kinds of institutions through special programs, thus explicitly acknowledging that scholars do not all have the same opportunities to build a strong c.v. Others, however, like the Guggenheim, tend to make awards to well established scholars.

Considering the American system

11The flexibility characteristic of the American system might seem to put standards of evaluation at some risk. To a large extent, however, competition among institutions for scholars, students, and funding mitigates that risk. Indeed, a research university or selective college failing to impose sufficiently rigorous standards will quickly lose status as its faculty win fewer outside grants, receive fewer contracts from prestigious presses, or are less favorably reviewed in leading journals. The size of the country does much as well to ensure objectivity, for it is not hard to find qualified specialists to advise on reviews who have no personal relationship with a candidate. Finally, the ubiquity of English as a lingua franca means that foreign scholars can easily be consulted for advice about a dossier, thus increasing the pool of unbiased reviewers. In our opinion, the American system, at its best, combines rigor with the kinds of non-mechanical assessment criteria that encourage scholarly originality and permit individual rhythms of productivity.

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Notas

1  M. Howell is professor of History, as is J. Goldstein, who is as well president of the American Historical Association for 2014.

2  In history, either one like The American Historical Review or one focused on a subfield like Speculum; in literature the analogues are PLMA and, for example, Shakespeare Quarterly.

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Referência do documento impresso

Martha Howell e Jan Goldstein, «Evaluation of scholarship in the Human Sciences in the United States»Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 44-2 | 2014, 319-323.

Referência eletrónica

Martha Howell e Jan Goldstein, «Evaluation of scholarship in the Human Sciences in the United States»Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez [Online], 44-2 | 2014, posto online no dia 01 janeiro 2018, consultado o 28 março 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/mcv/5870; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/mcv.5870

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Autores

Martha Howell

Columbia University, New York

Jan Goldstein

University of Chicago

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