Abstract
In the weak evaluation state of Germany, full professors are involved in the traditional social governance partnership between the state, and the self-governing higher education institutions (HEI) and disciplinary associations. Literature suggests that formal and informal governance could trigger changes in academics’ publication behavior by valorizing certain publication outputs. In the article, secondary data from three surveys (1992, 2007 and 2018) is used for a multi-level study of the evolution of academics’ publication behavior. We find a trend toward the “model” of natural science publication behavior across all disciplines. On the organizational level, we observe that a strong HEI research performance orientation is positively correlated with journal articles, peer-reviewed publications, and co-publications with international co-authors. HEI performance-based funding is only positively correlated with the share of peer-reviewed publications. At the level of individual disciplines, humanities and social sciences scholars adapt to the peer-reviewed journal publication paradigm of the natural sciences at the expense of book publications. Considering how the academic profession is organized around reputation and status, it seems plausible that the academic profession and its institutional oligarchy are key contexts for the slow but steady change of academics’ publication behavior. The trend of changing academics’ publication behavior is partly related to HEI valorization of performance and (to a lesser extent) to HEI performance based-funding schemes, which are set by the strong academic profession in the weak evaluation state of Germany.
Highlights
The changing expressions of academic excellence (e.g., Bol et al, 2018; Bourdieu, 1975; Clark, 1983; Cole & Cole, 1973; Merton, 1968) under managerial governance (e.g., Espeland & Sauder, 2007, 2016; Gläser, 2019; Marginson & Conside, 2000; Münch, 2014) are considered major international trends affecting the publication behavior of academics
RQ1 is based on the assumption that publications by individual academics in every discipline develop over time towards publication behavior valorized in natural sciences, i.e., more journal articles and fewer books, and more
We theoretically assumed that we could observe a change in publication behavior within the academic profession by differentiating disciplines (RQ1) and organizational valorization of performance (VoP) (RQ2)
Summary
The changing expressions of academic excellence (e.g., Bol et al, 2018; Bourdieu, 1975; Clark, 1983; Cole & Cole, 1973; Merton, 1968) under managerial governance (e.g., Espeland & Sauder, 2007, 2016; Gläser, 2019; Marginson & Conside, 2000; Münch, 2014) are considered major international trends affecting the publication behavior of academics. World University Rankings (e.g., Johnes, 2018; Kauppi, 2018; Selten et al, 2020) and the Journal Impact Factor (e.g., Karpik, 2011; Larivière & Sugimoto, 2019) are considered major drivers of a metrification trend toward valorization of performance (VoP). Books are mostly not subject to indicator-led performance evaluation, which affects publication cultures in humanities and the social sciences (e.g., Hammerfelt & de Rijcke 2015, Mathies et al, 2020). This valorization of performance (VoP) according to the natural sciences publication paradigm is executed top-down in “strong evaluation states” This valorization of performance (VoP) according to the natural sciences publication paradigm is executed top-down in “strong evaluation states” (Whitley, 2007, p. 9), such as Australia (e.g., Butler, 2003a, 2003b; Woelert & McKenzie, 2018), the United Kingdom (e.g., Moed, 2008), South Korea (e.g., Choung & Hwang, 2013; Shin & Lee, 2015; Shin et al, 2009) and other East Asian countries (e.g., Lyu et al, 2017; Park et al, 2016)
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