Knowledge Regulation via Evaluations? On Negotiation Processes and Standardisation of Quality Assurance in Science

Discourse pertaining to evaluations in science often stresses their negative impact: that evaluations promote mainstreaming in research and that science communities lose their autonomy to govern themselves. These concerns are particularly raised, when control escapes from the hands of scientific peers. However, contributions keep quiet about learning processes via evaluations. I will demonstrate that if evaluations are analyzed in a more differentiated way, results will offer the perspective that evaluations also serve as an instrument of organizational development for those scientific entities being evaluated. Not least, it discusses reasons as to why peers reject increasing quantification and comparability of organizations and disciplines as unscientific. My contribution compares three evaluation regimes, the former and fairly quantitative British Research Assessment Exercise, the Standard Evaluation Protocol of the Netherlands and Institutional Evaluation Procedure of the German Leibniz Association, with the latter offering substantial collegial feedback in the course of endemic peer visits.