Ranking Games

Osterloh, Margit; Frey, Bruno S.

doi:10.1177/0193841x14524957

Cited by 125 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 152 publications

(215 reference statements)

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“…This is a novel and important finding as it suggests how ‘normal economic science’ is connected with a particular type of economist, who is focused on his or her own achievements. It is important because it might shed some light on the concerns of insiders (Colander ; Osterloh and Frey ; Heckman and Moktan ) on how the character of economics has changed and has become more focused on internal questions. A likely force seems to be the publish‐or‐perish culture that many sciences have implemented as their selection mechanism.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Values of Economists Matter in the Art and Science of Economics

Dalen¹

2019

Kyklos

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Summary What role do personal values play in the practice of economists? By means of a survey among economists working inside and outside academia in the Netherlands, we present novel insights on their personal values, how these differ from the average citizen, and how values impact their economic views and their methodological choices. Three overarching values summarize the value structure of economists: achievement, serving the public interest, and conformity to rules. Subsequent tests are performed to see whether these values affect (1) their opinion on economic propositions and (2) their attitudes towards methodological principles in economics. For the majority of economic propositions, personal values matter. Especially the value of serving the public interest has a strong effect on their economic view. Furthermore, it seems that economists who value achievement are the ones who are more likely to embrace mainstream methodological principles: thinking predominantly in terms of efficiency, rationality, and competition, believing that economic knowledge is objective and transparently produced and in agreement with Milton Friedman's view on positive economics. Female economists are at some notable points less convinced of market solutions and have more trust in the government in serving the public interest.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Apparently Dutch economists do not share the findings of the empirical literature which suggests that the existing peer review systems (cf. Osterloh and Frey ) is far from perfect.…”

Section: Do Values Affect the Scientific Practice Of Economists?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Values of Economists Matter in the Art and Science of Economics

Dalen¹

2019

Kyklos

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“…The issue seems also urgent: exploration in science may be on the decline (Foster et al 2015) and the reliance on impact factors may hinder not just exploration (e.g. Alberts 2013) but also the desire to become scientists in the first place (Osterloh and Frey 2015). In this paper, we have proposed the neophilia ranking as a constructive way to start addressing these issues.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neophilia ranking of scientific journals

Packalén

Bhattacharya

2016

Scientometrics

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The ranking of scientific journals is important because of the signal it sends to scientists about what is considered most vital for scientific progress. Existing ranking systems focus on measuring the influence of a scientific paper (citations)—these rankings do not reward journals for publishing innovative work that builds on new ideas. We propose an alternative ranking based on the proclivity of journals to publish papers that build on new ideas, and we implement this ranking via a text-based analysis of all published biomedical papers dating back to 1946. In addition, we compare our neophilia ranking to citation-based (impact factor) rankings; this comparison shows that the two ranking approaches are distinct. Prior theoretical work suggests an active role for our neophilia index in science policy. Absent an explicit incentive to pursue novel science, scientists underinvest in innovative work because of a coordination problem: for work on a new idea to flourish, many scientists must decide to adopt it in their work. Rankings that are based purely on influence thus do not provide sufficient incentives for publishing innovative work. By contrast, adoption of the neophilia index as part of journal-ranking procedures by funding agencies and university administrators would provide an explicit incentive for journals to publish innovative work and thus help solve the coordination problem by increasing scientists' incentives to pursue innovative work.

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“…Here, the same set of tastes is applied for the selection of submissions worthy of being published. We therefore witness a reciprocity of boundary work between scholars and publication outlets, framing what counts as good or inferior research (see Osterloh and Frey 2015). Since the methods used are linked with research paradigms, we expect that the methodological divide to be reflected in tastes for certain paradigms in different sociology journals (RQ2a).…”

Section: Theoretical Concepts and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Methodological Divide of Sociology - Evidence From Two Decades of Journal Publications

Schwemmer¹,

Wieczorek²

2018

Preprint

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Past research indicates that Sociology is a low-consensus discipline, where different schools of thought have distinct expectations about suitable scientific practices. This division of Sociology into different subfields is to a large extent related to methodology and choices between qualitative or quantitative research methods. Relying on theoretical constructs of boundary work, taste for research, and the academic prestige economy, we examine the methodological divide in generalist Sociology journals. Using automated text analysis for 8.737 abstracts of papers published between 1995 and 2017, we find evidence for this divide, but also for an entanglement between methodological choices and different research topics. Moreover, our results suggest a marginally increasing time trend for the publication of quantitative research in generalist journals. We discuss how this consolidation of methodological practices could enforce the entrenchment of different schools of thought, which ultimately reduces the potential for innovative sociological research.

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Ranking Games

Abstract: We suggest as alternatives careful socialization and selection of scholars, supplemented by periodic self-evaluations and awards. The aim is to encourage controversial discourses in order to contribute meaningful to the advancement of science.

Cited by 125 publications

References 152 publications

Values of Economists Matter in the Art and Science of Economics

Values of Economists Matter in the Art and Science of Economics

Neophilia ranking of scientific journals

The Methodological Divide of Sociology - Evidence From Two Decades of Journal Publications

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