par Vanholsbeeck, Marc 
Référence RESSH 2017 (6 et 7 juillet 2017: Anvers)
Publication Non publié, 2017-07-07
Référence RESSH 2017 (6 et 7 juillet 2017: Anvers)
Publication Non publié, 2017-07-07
Communication à un colloque
| Résumé : | The European Research Area (ERA) acts as an important provider of policy prescriptions inthe field of research and innovation, now fully integrating the social sciences and humanities(SSH) (Birnbau et al. 2017) and inspiring policy making at national and institutionallevels with regard to a diversity of thematic priorities (Commission 2012). European prescriptionsare of a political as well as a managerial nature, setting objectives to be achievedand prescribing managing tools to monitor the progresses made towards the completionof these objectives. Since the EU has until now never used the legislative power on whichit could rely, European prescriptions are mostly articulated through soft laws -, policy documentsand statements as well as, more indirectly, through the management tools of theERA and the rules that govern the research and innovation funding programs.On the basis of a qualitative analysis of these political and managerial prescriptions and afirst-hand quasi-participant observation of the European research policy making, we willshow how European prescriptions have contradictory implications for the evaluation of thediversity of research outputs that characterize SSH research and, more particularly, withregard to the types of SSH publications which have a particular potential to impact society.On the one hand, ERA has been strongly influenced in its prescriptive activities since the1990s by programmatic ideas such as the “mode 2 of knowledge production” (Nowotnyet al. 2003) and is increasingly supporting the “exoterization” of research beyond the traditional“esoteric” circles of the peers. Hence ERA prescribes that research activities willtarget – and even include in a “co-creation” perspective - a broader audience of innovatorsand citizens, through the use of concepts such as “societal challenges” – which constitutethe best funded of the three pillars of the current Horizon 2020 framework programme -,RRI (“Responsible Research and Innovation”), “Science With and For Society” or “CitizenScience”. For SSH researchers, an important way to be in line with this prescribed tendencytowards exoterization is to deliver research outputs and types of publication thatmay reach an audience beyond Academia, such as: publications in vernacular languages,monographs, policy briefs, policy reports, results from locally anchored (action) research,textbooks, translations, exhibition catalogues, popularization works or book-lengthscholarly essays (Hicks 2005).On the other hand, European prescriptions concurrently support tendencies towards aNPM-driven “managerialization” of research that uses publications as regular indicatorsof performance, and bibliometric international databases (Web of Science and Scopus)as important management tools (Vinkour 2014). Together with the more general trendstowards massification and internationalization of research, this last tendency has contributedto foster an evaluation context in which research quality is increasingly assessed in lightof the number of articles in International Top Journals, often published by Majors (Larivière 110 University of Antwerp, Belgium • 6 - 7 July 2017et al. 2016), targeted towards academics – thus mostly inaccessible to exoteric audiences -,and in which a large share of the aforementioned SSH research outputs is not adequatelytaken into account (Archambault et al. 2006).Recent EU policies promoted under the banner of “Open Science” are to be deemed asambivalent in regards with this contradiction between exoterization and managerializationof research in the fields of SSH, presenting opportunities for its resolution, but also somerisks of further extending it. Open Science is indeed framed in European policy documentsand statements – such as in the discourses of the current Commissioner for research,science and innovation Carlos Moedas - as the epitome of the participative approach toresearch, with explicit support to the development of alternative metrics and the assessmentof research impact beyond Academia. Though the stress is concurrently put at EUlevel on achieving a total flipping to an Open Access (OA) dissemination model before 2020(Council 2016) – with a focus on articles of peer reviewed journals and embargo periods asshort as possible –, while giving an implicit support for the negotiation of “big deals 2.0”with Major publishers (Chartron 2016). In our experience, this particular approach towardsOA, while pragmatic and promising in the short term, is at risk of reinforcing the imbalancesinherent to the use of international bibliometric databases in the evaluation of SSH research.It is not in favour either of a better archiving, visibility, accessibility and assessabilityof those aforementioned SSH research outputs that, while not being published in InternationalTop Journals, are best placed to get an impact on society.Hence we believe that a more systematic, inclusive and complementary use of OA repositories,through which the whole scope of SSH research production could be made publicand accountable – i.a. through a diversity of metrics and altmetrics -, together with therecognition of a broader definition of what the very notion of publication means in theSSH, may contribute to overcome the aforementioned contradiction in European scienceand Open Science policy making. In this perspective archiving all types of publication in OArepositories will allow SSH researchers to be better rewarded, in evaluation situations, forthe whole scope of the contributions they make, as scholarly citizens, for the benefit ofour society |
