Untold Histories of Research Evaluation

Abstract

Chapter 3 presents significant new background material that is critical for understanding research evaluation systems in Central and Eastern Europe. The chapter builds from the assertion that the history of research evaluation has been written largely from a Western perspective that has neglected science in the context of the Soviet Union and Imperial Russia. As a consequence, the beginnings of the scientific organization of scientific labor and the development of scientometrics in the first half of the twentieth century are missing from the literature. Related, research evaluation systems are often incorrectly characterized as technologies which came into existence forty years ago, introducing new ways of establishing relations between the state and the public sector. Aiming to correct these oversights, the chapter provides an in-depth analysis of research evaluation within the centrally planned science of the Soviet Union and countries of the Eastern Bloc. Thus it outlines how, decades before the rise of New Public Management and the first Western European systems, centrally planned science introduced a national (ex ante) research evaluation system and assessments of research impacts.