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

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

Open Access
|Sep 2018

Abstract

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.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/tilr.6 | Journal eISSN: 2211-0046
Language: English
Published on: Sep 14, 2018
Published by: Ubiquity Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2018 Rob van Gestel, Karin Byland, Andreas Lienhard, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.