A team* of ENRESSH members has published a paper ‘Multilingual Publishing in the Social Sciences and Humanities: A Seven‐Country European Study’.

Abstract:

We investigate the state of multilingualism across the social sciences and humanities (SSH) using a comprehensive data set of research outputs from seven European countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Flanders[Belgium], Norway, Poland, and Slovenia). Although English tends to be the dominant language of science, SSH researchers often produce culturally and societally relevant work in their local languages. We collected and analyzed a set of 164,218 peer-reviewed journal articles (produced by 51,063 researchers from 2013 to 2015) and found that multilingualism is prevalent despite geographical location and field. Among the researchers who published at least three journal articles during this time period, over one-third from the various countries had written their work in at least two languages. The highest share of researchers who published in only one language were from Flanders(80.9%), whereas the lowest shares were from Slovenia (57.2%) and Poland(59.3%). Our findings show that multilingual publishing is an ongoing practice in many SSH research fields regardless of geographical location, political situation, and/or historical heritage. Here we argue that research is international but multilingual publishing keeps locally relevant research alive with the added potential for creating impact.

*Emanuel Kulczycki, Raf Guns, Janne Pölönen, Tim C. E. Engels, Ewa A. Rozkosz, Alesia A. Zuccala, Kasper Bruun Olli Eskola, Andreja Istenič Starčič, Michal Petr and Gunnar Sivertsen

An adequate research evaluation in the SSH (and beyond) corresponds to the research practices, makes its policy goals explicit, involves all stakeholders, ensures diversity of evaluation practices by respecting research’s local and international embeddedness, uses a broad range of explicit quality criteria adequate for the discipline(s) under evaluation, evaluates each criterion separately, is based on informed peer review combining qualitative judgement and quantitative information, respects interdisciplinarity and does not prioritise some fields over others. Download the full policy brief here.

This report identifies the challenges particularly relevant for the SSH, such as different
and thus often conflicting research paradigms or epistemological styles of reviewers
and applicants or authors; difficulty in many SSH disciplines to define and evaluate research
methodology compared to STEM disciplines; the lack of the idea of linear progress
and a much longer time span necessary to evaluate academic impact of publications; the
diversity of publication outputs and specific importance of books or monographs; the importance
of local languages; challenges related to recent developments in research and its
evaluation related to growing interdisciplinarity and Open Science turn. To this, the general
challenges of peer review are added, such as the risk of gender bias, conservative bias,
work load for all parties involved.

The development of research evaluation protocols and performance-based funding systems is rooted in policy decisions aiming to improve research and the research system as a whole. However, the implementation of such policies has attracted a great deal of criticism, especially from the SSH.

The purpose of the RESSH conference (September 17-18, 2020) is to explore whether evaluation can be useful to SSH researchers, whether it seeks to improve the quality and relevance of research or whether it is simply a management tool for the allocation of funds or imposition of policy.

More information can be found on the conference website.

ENRESSH organizes a dissemination meeting in Paris on February 18. Our stakeholders are very welcome to join us and to learn about our results! The agenda can be found below and downloaded here. If you would like to attend the meeting, please register here.

Dissemination meeting

Paris, 18 of February 2020

If you would like to attend the ENRESSH Meeting in Paris, please register via the registration form by 10 February 2020.

Participation in the meeting is free of charge.

Venue:

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
Institut du Monde anglophone
5, rue de l’École de Médecine
75006 PARIS

AGENDA

18th of February, 2020

Dissemination Event

10h00–10h30           Opening of the event by Mrs. Monica DIETL, former director of COST and Mr. Jamil Jean-Marc DAKHLIA, president of the Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle

10h30–10h45           Research evaluation for the benefit of society (Emanuel Kulczycki)

10h45–12h45           ENRESSH toolbox for SSH policy community

                                    Chair: Jack Spaapen

 Evaluation as a tool to achieve policies

• Michael Ochsner: Aligning research evaluation with clear policy goals: risks and opportunities
• Paul Benneworth: How to provide structures and incentives to foster impactful research

Improving research information systems

• Linda Sīle: National bibliographic databases for research evaluation: the knowns and the unknowns
• Elea Gimenez-Toledo and Gunnar Sivertsen: ABP, the register of Academic Book Publishers

Internationality and locality: Opposition or a winning team?

• Janne Pölönen: The Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication
• Jon Holm: Peer Review, language, national and international communities

 12h45–14h00           Lunch

 14:00–16:00             ENRESSH tips for SSH research community

Chair: Emanuel Kulczycki

Evaluation and publication strategy

• Tim Engels & Emanuel Kulczycki: Diversity of publication patterns and its implications for evaluation
• Marc Vanholsbeeck: How to promote open science
• Julia Olmos Peñuela: Managing the tensions of rigour and relevance in output evaluation

Evaluation and career

•  Ginevra Peruginelli: Diversity of evaluation systems
• Marc Vanholsbeeck: Early career investigators and evaluation in SSH: Opportunities and threats

Role as evaluators

• Michael Ochsner: Identifying research quality
• Raf Guns & Marek Hołowiecki: Ambiguity, labelling and questionable practices in peer review

In this manual of good practices for the maintenance of national bibliographic databases for research output, Linda Sīle, Raf Guns, Dragan Ivanović and Janne Pölönen outline several aspects that they regard as especially important for databases that are used for evaluation and funding allocation purposes.

ENRESSH published a video with testimonials of the participants of the Trainingschool ‘Evaluation procedures and their impact on SSH careers.’ The school was organised at Vilnius University in Lithuania from 7-11 January 2019. The materials of the training school can be found here.

Reviewers should rate the objects of evaluation across a broad range of criteria rather than giving a holistic judgement. Also, the criteria should clearly differentiate between criteria for scientific quality and criteria concerning policy goals or relation to or impact on society. Furthermore, reviewing should be part of academic education. This is what Work Group 1 concludes in a report on peer review practices in the SSH.

The deadline for STSM applications under call 4.2 has been extended until August 25. More information on this call and STSMs in general can be found here.

Researchers in sub-Saharan Africa tend to conceptualize impact as a result. They understand impact as ‘ ‘a (generally) positive effect that contributes to change in the daily life of human kind.’ Impact of the social sciences and humanities is the least recognized as such, also by researchers from the social sciences and humanities. Taking into account these perspectives on impact is important for African and European funders when designing calls and evaluating projects. European researchers need to be aware of and respect these perspectives when collaborating with researchers from sub-Saharan Africa.

The full paper is advance access available (login required): Nelius Boshoff & Stefan de Jong (advance access). ‘Conceptualizing the societal impact of research in terms of elements of logic models: a survey of researchers in sub-Saharan Africa. ‘ In: Research Evaluation.