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Max Weber Stiftung (MWS)

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1 Max Weber Stiftung (MWS)
HIRMEOS-Workshop Metrics and Altmetrics for Open Access Monographs 11. Januar 2019 Dr. Tina Rudersdorf Head of Section for Evaluation, Funding and Public Relations Hello everybody, my name is TR, I am Head of Section for Evaluation, Funding an PR at the head office of the MW Foundation in Bonn As you can see from the job description I am not an expert for open access publications, but I am grateful that my colleague Elisabeth Heinemann has asked me to participate in this workshop, because I think an intersectional and transnational dialogue on how research and in our case especially humanities research is published, annotated and evaluated is crucial and should not be limited to expert circles

2 Let me just very briefly describe my own background, I hold a PhD in Art History and have worked in different capacities for the University of Bonn, the Leibni-Gemeinschaft and since 2010 for the MWF, where one of my tasks is to organize the evaluation of our institutes The MWF was founded in 2002 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Foundation comprises 10 research institutes all over the world, which you can see on this map, you might already have been in contact with the two in Paris, the German Historical Institute and the German Forum for Art History From the 10 institutes of the foundation six are historical institutes, one institute is doing art history, the two institutes in Beirut and Istanbul are rooted in the field of oriental studies and last but not least the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo is a multidisciplinary institute with a focus on social sciences and economics Name

3 Purpose of the Foundation
„The purpose of the foundation is to promote the following: research focusing on history, cultural studies, economics and the social sciences in selected countries and mutual understanding between Germany and such countries.“ (§ 1 MWS Statutes) The MWF has approx. 350 employees worldwide, the yearly budget, which comes from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research amounts to approx. 43 Mio. Euros

4 Quality Assessment in the MWS
The MWS is very proud of its transparent evaluation procedures, rules and regulations are to be found on our website, as are the evaluation reports on the individual institutes,

5 Quality Assessment in the MWS
The evaluation procedure of the MWS is based on the procedures of the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and the German Wissenschaftsrat. It is an institutional evaluation by informed peer-review taking into account the performance of an institute for the past seven years. Which means that each individual institute is evaluated every seven years by a group of external and independant experts, the criteria of the evaluation are clearly defined in the Principles of the Tasks and Processes of Quality Assurance in the MWS, the experts or peers gather their information on the institute from a written status report whose structure is predetermined and from an onsite-visit which lasts two days

6 Quality Assessment in the MWS
The evaluation reports focus on Structure and positioning, overall concept and profile (Development in the past years and strategic work planning for the years to come) Work results (Research and publication achievements, special results, publication concept, additional research-based work results) International forum functionality, events and public image Adequacy of the facilities Staff Promotion of young talent Cooperation and networking Quality assurance Vorlesen, as you can see: only the chapter „work results“ concerns us to day, and in the following I will briefly explain to you, which metrics, or better qualitative and quantitative indicators the MWS uses to support the evaluation of the publications of the institutes and their researchers

7 Quality Assessment in the MWS
Work results (Research and publication achievements, special results, publication concept, additional research-based work results) Quantitative and qualitative indicators used to evaluate publications: Number of publications per type of publication and year Publication strategy also regarding Open Access List of the best 10 publications from the past seven years and reviews thereof List of publications per research focus or department, publication year and type of publication Access numbers/downloads for electronic ressources, databases, digital editions Access numbers for website, social media and subscription numbers for newsletter vorlesen, metrics in the strictest sense are only the number of publications and the access numbers or downloads for electronic ressources which could be open access publications, working papers, or other;

8 Quality Assessment in the MWS
Types of publication: Monographs Edited volumes (Collective works, conference proceedings, special journal issues, etc.) Individual contributions in collective works Institute series (individual volumes) Individual contributions in institute series Lectures as single publications Articles in peer-reviewed journals Articles in other journals Research reports, conference reports, miscellaneous, reviews Working papers (Individual contributions to) blogs These are the types of publications for the structure of the lists

9 Quality Assessment in the MWS
Peers are asked to evaluate the information given in light of the following questions: Are the research results of the institute theoretically and methodologically sound? Is the publication concept convincing? How should the indicators of work performance be assessed (e. g. number of publications depending on the publication culture of the disciplines, especially in peer-reviewed journals, at peer-reviewed congresses, in monographs)? Indicator-based information is given in the status report by each individual institute for the past seven years, but it is the task of the group of experts, that is the evaluation committee, to evaluate the information, according to the evaluation principles they should ask themselves the following questions, experts come from German and international universities and here is where the evaluation culture of the academic displines in Germany comes into play

10 Quality Assessment in the MWS
How should the indicators of work performance be assessed (e. g. number of publications depending on the publication culture of the disciplines, especially in peer-reviewed journals, at peer-reviewed congresses, in monographs)? Peer assessment tends towards „less is more“ (Qualität statt Quantität) Peer-reviewed journals Special journal issues Monographs published by internationally renowned publishing houses tends against Conference proceedings in monographical form The crucial question for a peer-review driven evaluation is indeed „How should the indicators of work performance be assessed?“ When it comes to a discussion of quantitative indicators regarding publications my impression from the discussions I witness is that the consensus seems to be that less is more, following the new rules by the DFG regarding publication lists for funding proposals from 2014 and statements by the German Historikerverband against research ratings by metrics in recent years, there is also a tendency in recent years to value articles in international peer-reviewed journals higher than conference proceedings, although there is no real consensus in German humanities and especially History what a peer-reviewed journal is (I would very much like to elaborate on that, but as we are short of time I leave this very interesting topic aside), (Web of Science or the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences are (if known at all) dismissed as not applicable)

11 Quality Assessment in the MWS
Assessment of individual publications: Close reading Quality and quantity of reviews In order to be able to judge the publications of an institute in a particular era, evaluation committees read the publications and share their assessments, they also consider the reviews of publications

12 Quality Assessment in the MWS
During evaluations Open Access is discussed in the context of the publication strategy of an institute, not in the context of metrics. Access numbers or downloads are part of the required information regarding electronic ressources and social media, but they are so far rarely provided by the institutes (often due to technical problems) and so far not considered important by the evaluating experts. Coming back to the question of metrics for Open Access Monographs I can say that during MWS evaluations…

13 Quality Assessment in the MWS
Strong bias in German humanities against the use of metrics in research assessment Equally strong bias against the use of social media, which means that altmetrics are not regarded as a valid alternative to other metrics Publication strategy is still not always discussed in detail with younger researchers statements of the Historikerverband, professional society of historians, in recent years My findings suggest that there is…

14 Contact Dr. Tina Rudersdorf Rheinallee 6, Bonn Tel.: gab.hypotheses.org mws.hypotheses.org Facebook: maxweberstiftung Vimeo: maxweberstiftung


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