Research Assessment in the Humanities

Towards Criteria and Procedures

Abstract

Although the text in question began to be written within the framework of the conference ‘Research Quality in the Humanities: Towards Criteria and Procedures for Evaluating Research’ in 2010, it turned out to be the crucible where the results of multiple collaborators from different countries converged, yet with common concerns. We are talking about a collection of 18 well-founded studies, sequentially organized, produced by 28 internationally recognized scholars from 13 predominantly European nations.

The document situates the social sciences and humanities in the present time and space, even though the text was started nearly 15 years ago. It is known that the authors are still working on the same project, following the same thematic line, so while there has been progress, the situation remains largely the same. In the cited areas, there is persistent resistance to assessments derived from citation-based indicators, and it is within this context that increasing pressure is noted on these fields to adapt to an evaluative framework of a quantitative nature used in the natural sciences, engineering, and health sciences, despite their inherent differences.