Research evaluation as scalar politics: A research agenda

Abstract

With the growing importance of the knowledge economy across Europe and beyond, governments increasingly demand research to deliver tangible economic and societal impact, translating into funding systems incentivizing societally relevant research and leading to an increasing monitoring of societal impact. This commentary pleads for a re-engagement with the ‘geographies of research assessment’. Informed by a dualistic understanding of scale as both fixed and socially constructed, the commentary firstly argues for comparing and contrasting the influence of different national research evaluation systems on geographical knowledge production. Secondly, the contribution conceives of research evaluation systems as a form of scalar politics which enables a view of the actors and networks contesting current evaluation systems and promoting alternatives. The paper concludes that rather than trying to fit the discipline to the system, geographers should instead question which evaluation system would fit the discipline.