Peer Review in Academia

In this chapter, we outline the notion of peer review and its relation to the autonomy of the academic profession and the contract between science and society. This is followed by an introduction of some key themes regarding the practices of peer review. Next, we specify some reasons to further explore different practices of peer review. Briefly, the state of the art is presented. Finally, the structure of this volume and its individual contributions are presented.

“Disciplining” Educational Research in the Twentieth Century

Educational research expanded rapidly in the twentieth century. This expansion drove the interested “amateurs” out of the field; the scientific community of peers became the dominant point of orientation. Authorship and authority became more widely distributed; peer review was institutionalized to monitor the flow of ideas within the scientific literature; reference lists in journals demonstrated the adoption of cumulative ideals about science. The historical analysis of education journals presented in this chapter looks at the social changes which contributed to the ascent of an “imagined” community of expert peers in the course of the twentieth century. This analysis also helps us in imagining ways in which improvements to the present academic evaluative culture can be made.

Is Peer Review Fit for Purpose?

Peer review is endemic to judgement in higher education. It is assumed that when we need to make a judgement on the quality of something—student performance, academic employment, teaching, research and publication—then we may rely on the assessment of peers, whether they be fellow students, lecturers or more senior academics. This chapter will illustrate and challenge this assumption, and assess how ‘fit for purpose’ peer review is in twenty-first century academe. It will focus on different practices of peer review in the contemporary higher education system, it will also question how well they work, how they might be improved and what the alternatives are. The examples to be discussed include refereed journal articles, the assessment of doctoral degrees and the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF).

The Many Faces of Peer Review

In academia peer review is an essential and multifarious form of evaluation in relation to both research and educational activities. Further, peer review practices are continuously developing alongside institutional changes and reforms. This chapter sheds light on how peer review as an evaluation concept has developed over time and discusses which roles peer review play today. A typology distinguishing between classical peer review, informed and standards-based peer review, modified peer review and extended peer review is developed. A finding is that peer review today is found with all these faces. Further, peer review practices play many roles, including decision-making, rewarding, naming and shaming, learning and improvement as well as legitimating activities and leadership.

Performance-Based Evaluation Metrics: Influence at the Macro, Meso, and Micro Level

This chapter aims to critically engage with the performative nature of bibliometric indicators and explores how they influence scholarly practice at the macro, meso, and individual levels. It begins with a comparison between two national performance-based funding systems in Sweden and Norway at the macro level, within universities at the meso level, down to the micro level where individual researchers must relate these incentives to knowledge building within their specialty. I argue that the common-sense “representational model of bibliometric indicators” is questionable in practice, since it cannot capture the qualities of research in any unambiguous way. Furthermore, a performative notion on scientometric indicators needs to be developed that takes into account the variability and uncertainty of the aspects of research that is to be evaluated.

Peer Review in Academic Promotion of Excellent Teachers

While research merits have long been the priority in the recognition of institutions and scholars, teaching is often downplayed, appearing as a practice of less worth in Academia. To counteract this tendency, various systems to upgrade the value of education and to promote teaching excellence have been introduced by higher education institutions on a global scale. In this chapter, we explore the values and beliefs unveiled in the promotion of academics in such a system. We employ empirical data collected from an inquiry into the promotion of distinguished university teachers at a comprehensive university in Sweden. An analysis of reviewers’ judgements and legitimations shows that the intersection between promotion, peer review, and excellent teaching affects not only the peer review process, but also the notion of the distinguished university teacher.

Bureaucratic, Professional and Managerial Power in University Tenure Track Recruitment

In this chapter, our interest lies in analysing the different powers in recruitment and, particularly, how they are manifested in the new tenure track model in technical fields in Finland. Traditionally, recruitment in higher education has mostly relied on the bureaucratic application of processes and on academics, representing professional power, evaluating academic merit. The new university legislation, granting universities more autonomy in recruiting, has allowed the development of increasingly strategic recruitment models. The novel tenure track recruitment criteria exceed traditional notions of individual merits to include assessments of the strategic visions of universities and departments. We see the use of the tenure track model as a shift both in the recruitment for identity building related to the technical university’s strategy and as a shift in using more managerial power in recruitment. We use a case study approach where we look at recruitment in a similar field in two different kinds of universities utilising tenure track, and we examine how bureaucratic, managerial and professional powers are manifested in the processes. The comparisons are used to highlight the powers in the tenure track process in a technical university.

Peer Review in Public Administration: The Case of the Swedish Higher Education Authority

The aim of this chapter is to explore the method of peer review as it has been practised within the framework of the Swedish national system for quality assurance of higher education. By highlighting and comparing examples from two reviews, 1997–1998 and 2016–2017, we want to show how the method of peer review has evolved over time and in what way has it been affected by changes made in the system. The study shows that the national system for quality assurance of higher education with peer review as a central method has changed surprisingly little in Sweden during the period studied (1995–2017). Over time, the demands for transparency, predictability and equivalence have increased, which has to some extent undermined the authority of the assessors. At the same time, it is a development which is a logical consequence of—not a break with—the coherent national system for quality assurance of higher education that was put into effect as early as the mid-1990s.

Assessing Academic Careers: The Peer Review of Professorial Candidates

The reputation of an academic is dependent on their recognition among a wider community of peers, which means that the research field, rather than the institution, is the venue where careers are valued. This chapter looks at discipline specific practices for evaluating publications oeuvres in three fields; biomedicine, economics and history. The material consists of reports, written by independent referees, commissioned by Swedish universities when hiring for new professors. The approach is to study how ‘value’ is enacted with special attention to the kind of tools—judgements, indicators and metrics—that are used. The chapter concludes by relating the findings to a broader context of how academics are assessed, and the implications that such practices may have for knowledge production and careers are discussed.

Typecasting in the Recruitment of Full Professors

The recruitment of full professors is critical for the formation of academia. The professorship is critical not only for the prosperity of the HEIs, but especially so for the establishment, development and communication of the discipline. In this chapter, we analyze the initial step of the typecasting process in the recruitment of full professors. We use a few cases to illustrate how the intellectual and social organization of the field of education science(s) is manifested in publicly posted job advertisements. The analysis shows that the field is characterized by heterogeneity and no longer has a basis in one single discipline. New relations between research, teaching, and society can be observed, as well as a narrowing of authority of the professorship but an increase of responsibilities.