Portfolios of Worth: Capitalizing on Basic and Clinical Problems in Biomedical Research Groups

Abstract

How are "interesting" research problems identified and made durable by academic researchers, particularly in situations defined by multiple evaluation principles? Building on two case studies of research groups working on rare diseases in academic biomedicine, we explore how group leaders arrange their groups to encompass research problems that latch onto distinct evaluation principles by dividing and combining work into "basicoriented" and "clinical-oriented" spheres of inquiry. Following recent developments in the sociology of (e)valuation comparing academics to capitalist entrepreneurs in pursuit of varying kinds of worth, we argue that the metaphor of the portfolio is helpful in analyzing how group leaders manage these different research lines as "alternative investment options" from which they were variously hoping to capitalize. We argue portfolio development is a useful concept for exploring how group leaders fashion "entrepreneurial" practices to manage and exploit tensions between multiple matrices of (e)valuation and conclude with suggestions for how this vocabulary can further extend analysis of epistemic capitalism within science and technology studies.

Re-disciplining Academic Careers? Interdisciplinary Practice and Career Development in a Swedish Environmental Sciences Research Center

“…This insight also qualifies a recent argument David Stark (2011) has made for the advantages of a broad set of heterarchical registers of value in organizations. In his analysis, the optimal conditions for commercial but also intellectual innovation apply whenever actors have the possibility to switch between registers in a flexible manner, thereby giving them the possibility to construct and exploit opportunities that would not emerge in a singular hierarchy of value (Rushforth et al 2018). In our own case, the use of resource buffers, portfolios, and multi-purpose applications can be seen as a way of flexibly tapping into a variety of funding possibilities, which in principle are associated with incommensurable registers of worth, such as different forms of societal relevance and the ideal of academic excellence.…”

Temporality in Academic Evaluation

“…More generally, we might ask how the rather narrow definitions of being a 'good' or rather 'hire-able' researcher expressed here might influence the lives of those being evaluated. What does it take to perform a career that fits with the ideal trajectory in these documents; how is the life of biomedical researchers shaped by the pressure to perform according to this script; and does it dissuade biomedical researchers from pursuing work which is possibly more clinically relevant but less likely to lead to career advancement and stability (Rushforth et al 2019)?…”

“…Our focus on academic biomedicine is motivated by it being a large and resourceful field in which debates about evaluation, specifically (mis)uses of metrics, have been prevalent in recent years (Alberts et al 2014;Benedictus et al 2016). The increasing influence that performance measures and indicators have on research has been documented in a range of studies (Weingart 2005;Burrows 2012;de Rijcke et al 2016), and more specifically the epistemic consequences of indicator uses in the field of biomedicine has been highlighted (Rushforth and de Rijcke 2015;Müller and de Rijcke 2017;Rushforth et al 2019). As might be expected, much of the information extracted from these biomedical CVs took the form of relatively crude indicators, such as the h-index and the journal impact factor, as well as even more simple outputs in the form of publications and funding.…”

Managing budgetary uncertainty, interpreting policy. How researchers integrate “grand challenges” funding programs into their research agendas

“…When particular sequences of tasks are highly routinized, they can be automated or transformed into ready-made methods, which in turn makes it possible to use one and the same activity as a basis for multiple projects (Fujimura 1987, 277). Creating diversified research portfolios is a common strategy to spread the risk that comes with reliance on short-term funding, and as such has been described in a range of previous studies (Hackett 1990;Leisyte 2007;Rushforth, Franssen, and de Rijcke 2018). Much less understood, however, are the implications of diversification for the innovative substance of grand-challenges research agendas.…”