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This paper analyses peer review deliberations in four evaluation panels that differ in terms of scope and disciplinary heterogeneity. Based on evaluation reports and discussions with panel members, it illustrates a variety of ways in which reviewers bridge their epistemological differences and achieve consensus on the quality of research proposals. The analysis demonstrates that peer review panels are forums in which communication across disciplinary boundaries occurs and interdisciplinary judgments arise. At the same time, disciplinary gate-keeping and incommensurabilities may set limits on such communication. The comparison of deliberative processes sheds light on how collective judgments are shaped and constrained by the disciplinary set-up of the panels in which the reviewers operate and in which the intersubjective dynamics of the deliberations unfold. Based on these findings, the paper considers conditions that may enhance disciplinary interaction and complementary judgments in the peer review of proposals, and thereby expands the prospects for interdisciplinary research.This study is concerned with the internal functioning of peer review, the practice through which scholarly work is evaluated by those with demonstrated competence. It analyses the ways in which peer review panels produce consensual judgments on the quality of research proposals and how reviewers are able to bridge their epistemological differences in this process. The topic is of interest, especially for those of us who are concerned with the status and fate of less established forms of inquiry -most typically,

The evaluation of interdisciplinary research is complicated by ambiguity about what interdisciplinarity is and what it should be. The question is topical, as evaluation plays an important role in how science is being shaped and changed today. The chapter performs a meta-analysis of the concept of interdisciplinarity in research evaluation, and gives an epistemic account of what would be involved in such evaluations. First, it discusses the various ways interdisciplinarity can add value to the disciplinary organization of academia and their respective implications for research evaluation. Second, it provides tools for mapping and measuring these value-added properties and illustrates what kind of evidence they can convey to research evaluations. The combined examination of values and indicators enables a more differentiated understanding of what exactly to look at when evaluating interdisciplinary research—and more generally, how to design research evaluations from an interdisciplinary point of view.

Two major science policy issues are the integration of knowledge across academic disciplines and the accountability of science to society. Instead of adding new or external criteria for research evaluation, I argue, these goals can be pursued by subjecting disciplinary priorities and procedures to broader scrutiny from the rest of academia. From a social epistemological perspective, the paper discusses interdisciplinarity as a mode of epistemic accountability across disciplinary boundaries, which promises to make academia more than the sum of its disciplinary parts. Drawing on discussions of interdisciplinarity and accountability in knowledge production, as well as on empirical findings of the evaluation of research proposals, the paper unpacks the notion of academic accountability into three dimensions-the recipients, contents, and practices of accountability-and illustrates the difference interdisciplinarity makes in each dimension. The analysis shows that interdisciplinarity is not simply a category of research, but involves a social epistemic mechanism of coordination, control, and compromise between disciplinary regimes of knowledge. This framing of interdisciplinarity clarifies its role in the changing governance of science while simultaneously solving central controversies over its meaning in research evaluation.

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