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Article dans une revue Social Science Information Année : 2019

Evaluations as Value-Measurement Links: Exploring Metrics and Meanings in Science

Felicitas Hesselmann
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Cornelia Schendzielorz
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Résumé

This contribution seeks to gain a more detailed insight into the entanglement of value and measurement. Drawing on insights from semiotics and Bourdieusian perspective on language as an economy of linguistic exchange we develop the theoretical concept of value-measurement-links and specify the three processes of operationalization, nomination, and indetermination as forms in which these links can be constructed. We illustrate these three processes using (e)valuation practices in science, particularly the journal impact factor, as an empirical object of investigation. As this example illustrates, measured values can function as building blocks for further measurements, and thus establish chains of evaluations, where it becomes more and more obscure which values the measurements actually express. We conclude that in case of measured values such as impact factors these chains are driven by the interplay between the interpretative openness of language and the seeming tendency of numbers to fixate meaning thus continually re-creating, transforming and modifying values.
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Dates et versions

halshs-02390290, version 1 (03-12-2019)

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Felicitas Hesselmann, Cornelia Schendzielorz. Evaluations as Value-Measurement Links: Exploring Metrics and Meanings in Science. Social Science Information, 2019, Theorising measures, rankings and metrics, 58 (2), pp.282-300. ⟨10.1177/0539018419850771⟩. ⟨halshs-02390290⟩
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