Nygaard, L. P., & Bellanova, R. (2017). Lost in Quantification: Scholars and the Politics of Bibliometrics. In M. J. Curry & T. Lillis (Eds.), Global Academic Publishing: Policies, Perspectives, and Pedagogies (pp. 23-36). Bristol: Multilingual Matters., 2017
As scholarship becomes increasingly globalized, bibliometric systems for quantifying research pro... more As scholarship becomes increasingly globalized, bibliometric systems for quantifying research productivity have become increasingly relevant to academia (Curry & Lillis, 2014; Lillis & Curry, 2010; Gingras, 2014; Hicks et al., 2015; Pansu et al., 2013). Bibliometric indicators are used to convert information about research activity (primarily publications and citations) into numbers that, in their apparent neutrality, seem to transcend linguistic and cultural (including disciplinary) boundaries. Developed as a way to study academic publication and citation patterns statistically, bibliometrics were originally used mostly for research purposes – to substantiate claims about who produces what and under which circumstances (De Bellis, 2014). Today, however, bibliometrics are most familiar to scholars as evaluative devices (see, e.g., Pansu et al., 2013). The aim of this chapter is to look at bibliometrics as a specific instance of quantification, and thus – as with any other form of quantification – as a form of governing things and people. The politics of bibliometrics deserve to be unpacked because even with the best intentions, developers of bibliometric indicators must make non-trivial decisions about how to measure things that are notoriously difficult to quantify (De Bellis, 2014).
The chapter is organized as follows: First we present our theoretical perspective, which draws from the traditions of science and technology studies (STS) and academic literacies theory to conceptualize academic publishing as a social practice where technologies (such as bibliometric databases and algorithms) play a key role in articulating the values that underlie scholarly production. This perspective sheds light on how power is communicated through the creation of metrics – how measuring a phenomenon turns into defining it and thus how some groups can become marginalized. We illustrate this perspective by describing some of the dilemmas developers can face when constructing a bibliometric indicator that is intended to work fairly across different academic contexts. We then take a closer look at examples of two kinds of metrics to illustrate how the politics of bibliometrics work in practice: Google Scholar as an example focused on citations where technological innovations set it apart from its competitors, and the Norwegian Publication Indicator, an output-based indicator for performance-based funding of research-producing institutions in Norway. We demonstrate how each of these examples represents innovations that are meant to improve fairness yet do not fundamentally challenge the underlying notions of impact, quality, and productivity which give primacy to the natural sciences and English-language publications and thus marginalize scholars in both the geolinguistic periphery (Lillis & Curry, 2010) and the social sciences and humanities. We conclude with some thoughts about the importance of maintaining a critical stance about what goes into the construction of bibliometric indicators, how they are used, and what academia stands to lose from their widespread (and uncritical) use.
The chapter will be published in: Curry MJ and Lillis T (eds) Global Academic Publishing: Policies, Perspectives, and Pedagogies. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. A flyer of the book is attached to the document.
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Digital data matter for (in)security practice. And yet they remain ‘neglected things’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011) in critical studies on security. Certainly, critical security studies regularly enquires into the deployment of data-driven systems and the power rationalities that they foster (Amoore, 2013; Bigo, 2014; De Goede, 2018). However, critical security studies remains primarily concerned with the diverse techniques for governing through data. Critical security studies scholars fail to explore the politics underpinning the becoming of data as (in)security things. We should further explore how data are objectified as (in)security data, and how this affects our own subjectification.
security studies. Conversations about normative stances, political engagement, and the role of critique
are mainstays of the discipline. This article argues that these conversations tend to revolve around a too
disembodied image of research, where the everyday practice of researchers is sidelined. But researchers do
do research: they work materially, socially, and cognitively. They mediate between various feedback loops or
fields of critique. In doing so, they actively build and exercise critique. Recognizing that fact, this article resists
growing suggestions to abandon critique by, first, returning to the practice of critique through the notion
of companionship. This permits us to reinvigorate our attention to the objects, persons, and phenomena
through which critique gains inspiration and purpose, and that literally accompany our relationship to critique.
Second, we explore what happens when our companions disagree, when critique faces controversies and (a)
symmetries. Here, we support research designs of tracing credibility and establishing symmetries in order to
move away from critique as denouncing positions we disagree with. Third, we discuss the relation between
companionship, critique, reflexivity, and style. Here, the rhetorical practices of critical inquiry are laid out,
and possibilities for its articulation in different and less silencing voices are proposed.
The chapter is organized as follows: First we present our theoretical perspective, which draws from the traditions of science and technology studies (STS) and academic literacies theory to conceptualize academic publishing as a social practice where technologies (such as bibliometric databases and algorithms) play a key role in articulating the values that underlie scholarly production. This perspective sheds light on how power is communicated through the creation of metrics – how measuring a phenomenon turns into defining it and thus how some groups can become marginalized. We illustrate this perspective by describing some of the dilemmas developers can face when constructing a bibliometric indicator that is intended to work fairly across different academic contexts. We then take a closer look at examples of two kinds of metrics to illustrate how the politics of bibliometrics work in practice: Google Scholar as an example focused on citations where technological innovations set it apart from its competitors, and the Norwegian Publication Indicator, an output-based indicator for performance-based funding of research-producing institutions in Norway. We demonstrate how each of these examples represents innovations that are meant to improve fairness yet do not fundamentally challenge the underlying notions of impact, quality, and productivity which give primacy to the natural sciences and English-language publications and thus marginalize scholars in both the geolinguistic periphery (Lillis & Curry, 2010) and the social sciences and humanities. We conclude with some thoughts about the importance of maintaining a critical stance about what goes into the construction of bibliometric indicators, how they are used, and what academia stands to lose from their widespread (and uncritical) use.
The chapter will be published in: Curry MJ and Lillis T (eds) Global Academic Publishing: Policies, Perspectives, and Pedagogies. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. A flyer of the book is attached to the document.
This drive towards a security governance based on digital mass-surveillance raises, however, several issues: Are the resulting infringements of privacy and other human rights compatible with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union or the EU data protection framework and the values of demo- cratic societies? Does security necessarily depend upon mass-surveillance? Are there alternative ways to frame security? Do surveillance technologies address the most pressing security needs, and if so, are they the most efficient means to do so? In other words, the promotion and adoption by state authorities of mass-surveil- lance technologies invites us to ask again if the argument of increasing security at the cost of civil liberties is acceptable, and thus to call into question the very idea that this would be necessary to preserve democratic societies.
Focusing on the citizens’ perspective on surveillance, privacy and security, this volume contributes new insights from empirical research and theoretical analysis to a debate, characterized by evident tendencies to provide simplified answers to apparently multidimensional and correspondingly complex societal issues like security. This book tries to further nurture a debate that challenges the assumption that more security requires less privacy, and that more surveillance necessarily implies more security (Bigo et al., 2008). A key motivation is the wish to incorporate into new analyses the perspectives, attitudes and preferences of citizens, understood as being the main beneficiaries of security measures, while at the same time potential and actual targets of mass-surveillance programmes conducted in the name of responding to imminent security threats.
Visibility is structurally linked to invisibility, and together they configure the different modes of in/visibility allowing for the very functioning of surveillance. However, the in/visibility dyad, rather than merely describe surveillance, contributes to its operations and stabilisation. In order to better understand and unpack surveillance it is thus necessary to tackle its practices, not only in search of who watches whom, or what, but also by studying what is concealed through in/visibility, through both hiding and exposing, and what is left out of the scene (or being pushed away) in these processes.
In a dialogue with Surveillance Studies and critical security studies, this contribution examines the disappearance of bodies in the deployment of security scanners and post-Snowden developments to illustrate the productivity of dis-appearance and the emergence of surveillance’s ob-scene. Against this background, the paper argues that through the lens of the ob-scene it is possible to grasp surveillance’s ripples, and open up their political discussion.
Digital data matter for (in)security practice. And yet they remain ‘neglected things’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011) in critical studies on security. Certainly, critical security studies regularly enquires into the deployment of data-driven systems and the power rationalities that they foster (Amoore, 2013; Bigo, 2014; De Goede, 2018). However, critical security studies remains primarily concerned with the diverse techniques for governing through data. Critical security studies scholars fail to explore the politics underpinning the becoming of data as (in)security things. We should further explore how data are objectified as (in)security data, and how this affects our own subjectification.
security studies. Conversations about normative stances, political engagement, and the role of critique
are mainstays of the discipline. This article argues that these conversations tend to revolve around a too
disembodied image of research, where the everyday practice of researchers is sidelined. But researchers do
do research: they work materially, socially, and cognitively. They mediate between various feedback loops or
fields of critique. In doing so, they actively build and exercise critique. Recognizing that fact, this article resists
growing suggestions to abandon critique by, first, returning to the practice of critique through the notion
of companionship. This permits us to reinvigorate our attention to the objects, persons, and phenomena
through which critique gains inspiration and purpose, and that literally accompany our relationship to critique.
Second, we explore what happens when our companions disagree, when critique faces controversies and (a)
symmetries. Here, we support research designs of tracing credibility and establishing symmetries in order to
move away from critique as denouncing positions we disagree with. Third, we discuss the relation between
companionship, critique, reflexivity, and style. Here, the rhetorical practices of critical inquiry are laid out,
and possibilities for its articulation in different and less silencing voices are proposed.
The chapter is organized as follows: First we present our theoretical perspective, which draws from the traditions of science and technology studies (STS) and academic literacies theory to conceptualize academic publishing as a social practice where technologies (such as bibliometric databases and algorithms) play a key role in articulating the values that underlie scholarly production. This perspective sheds light on how power is communicated through the creation of metrics – how measuring a phenomenon turns into defining it and thus how some groups can become marginalized. We illustrate this perspective by describing some of the dilemmas developers can face when constructing a bibliometric indicator that is intended to work fairly across different academic contexts. We then take a closer look at examples of two kinds of metrics to illustrate how the politics of bibliometrics work in practice: Google Scholar as an example focused on citations where technological innovations set it apart from its competitors, and the Norwegian Publication Indicator, an output-based indicator for performance-based funding of research-producing institutions in Norway. We demonstrate how each of these examples represents innovations that are meant to improve fairness yet do not fundamentally challenge the underlying notions of impact, quality, and productivity which give primacy to the natural sciences and English-language publications and thus marginalize scholars in both the geolinguistic periphery (Lillis & Curry, 2010) and the social sciences and humanities. We conclude with some thoughts about the importance of maintaining a critical stance about what goes into the construction of bibliometric indicators, how they are used, and what academia stands to lose from their widespread (and uncritical) use.
The chapter will be published in: Curry MJ and Lillis T (eds) Global Academic Publishing: Policies, Perspectives, and Pedagogies. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. A flyer of the book is attached to the document.
This drive towards a security governance based on digital mass-surveillance raises, however, several issues: Are the resulting infringements of privacy and other human rights compatible with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union or the EU data protection framework and the values of demo- cratic societies? Does security necessarily depend upon mass-surveillance? Are there alternative ways to frame security? Do surveillance technologies address the most pressing security needs, and if so, are they the most efficient means to do so? In other words, the promotion and adoption by state authorities of mass-surveil- lance technologies invites us to ask again if the argument of increasing security at the cost of civil liberties is acceptable, and thus to call into question the very idea that this would be necessary to preserve democratic societies.
Focusing on the citizens’ perspective on surveillance, privacy and security, this volume contributes new insights from empirical research and theoretical analysis to a debate, characterized by evident tendencies to provide simplified answers to apparently multidimensional and correspondingly complex societal issues like security. This book tries to further nurture a debate that challenges the assumption that more security requires less privacy, and that more surveillance necessarily implies more security (Bigo et al., 2008). A key motivation is the wish to incorporate into new analyses the perspectives, attitudes and preferences of citizens, understood as being the main beneficiaries of security measures, while at the same time potential and actual targets of mass-surveillance programmes conducted in the name of responding to imminent security threats.
Visibility is structurally linked to invisibility, and together they configure the different modes of in/visibility allowing for the very functioning of surveillance. However, the in/visibility dyad, rather than merely describe surveillance, contributes to its operations and stabilisation. In order to better understand and unpack surveillance it is thus necessary to tackle its practices, not only in search of who watches whom, or what, but also by studying what is concealed through in/visibility, through both hiding and exposing, and what is left out of the scene (or being pushed away) in these processes.
In a dialogue with Surveillance Studies and critical security studies, this contribution examines the disappearance of bodies in the deployment of security scanners and post-Snowden developments to illustrate the productivity of dis-appearance and the emergence of surveillance’s ob-scene. Against this background, the paper argues that through the lens of the ob-scene it is possible to grasp surveillance’s ripples, and open up their political discussion.
Nonetheless, this conversation has tended to revolve around a rather too disembodied image of doing research, where the everyday practice of researchers is often side-lined. Yet, researchers do do research: they work materially, socially, and cognitively. They select sources, they engage with their research objects, they publish analyses, they teach classes, they speak publicly, etc. As such, researchers are mediating nodes between various circulations, feedback loops, translations, or fields of critique.
This special issue focuses on the practices of doing and mediating critique within CSS. Doing and mediating refers to the ways in which researchers are both consumers of 'sources', such as interviews, reports, and other scholarly publications, but also producers of 'sources' when their work becomes a textual, visual, and/or material artifact.