Evaluation of Legal Research: Comparison of the Outcomes of a Swiss and Dutch National Survey

Law as a discipline is lagging behind other (social) sciences when it comes to research evaluation. There is no European ranking of law journals or legal publishers, no generally accepted system of peer review, no bibliometrical databases, and no consensus on quality indicators for academic legal publications. Scholars in Switzerland and the Netherlands organized surveys to ask their colleagues how they feel about different research evaluation methods and which quality indicators they prefer for the assessment of their research. The results reveal that, unlike university managers, legal schola... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Rob van Gestel
Karin Byland
Andreas Lienhard
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
Reihe/Periodikum: Tilburg Law Review, Vol 23 (2018)
Verlag/Hrsg.: Ubiquity Press
Schlagwörter: Research evaluation / academic legal research / evaluation methods / quality criteria / Law of Europe / KJ-KKZ / Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence / K1-7720
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27409413
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.5334/tilr.6

Law as a discipline is lagging behind other (social) sciences when it comes to research evaluation. There is no European ranking of law journals or legal publishers, no generally accepted system of peer review, no bibliometrical databases, and no consensus on quality indicators for academic legal publications. Scholars in Switzerland and the Netherlands organized surveys to ask their colleagues how they feel about different research evaluation methods and which quality indicators they prefer for the assessment of their research. The results reveal that, unlike university managers, legal scholars have a strong preference for qualitative evaluation methods (e.g. editorial scrutiny or independent peer review) over quantitative methods, such as citation counting and ranking. However, scholars in both countries seem to be worried about the costs and bureaucracy that come along with substantive quality assessment and about the selection and instruction of reviewers.