Evidently excellent? Evidence practices in the preparation of scientific research and biographies for applications for ERC Starting and Consolidator Grants

分项目8侧重于为研究供资目的评价科学质量的证据做法。在当代科学体系中，高科学质量--通常被定义为卓越--已经成为科学和政治活动的一个关键目标，也是许多争议的中心。例如，如何界定、衡量、比较和证明卓越？ 在研究的第一阶段，相关项目AP 2研究了欧洲研究理事会（ERC）的评审员如何看待和引导ERC的科学评价过程，以及哪些规范和价值观指导他们的证据实践和决策过程。AP 2强调了评审员的原则和实践之间的一种重大紧张关系：一方面，当他们在采访中抽象地讨论卓越时，他们将卓越视为一种高度异质性和依赖于背景的科学工作质量;另一方面，在一个实施例中，当他们描述他们在ERC评估过程中如何实际评估提案和简历时，他们讲述了对标准化绩效指标的关注。对于研究单元的第二阶段，我们现在将把子项目TP 8的重点转移到科学家在准备ERC申请时所从事的证据实践上。我们将在当代科学更广泛的动态和变革的背景下进行这种分析，这些动态和变革导致了去稳定和重新稳定科学质量概念的过程，ERC本身的创建就是这一过程的标志。审稿人和申请人都需要面对如何使研究思想和科学传记的质量明显的挑战。子项目8将分析研究人员在试图为ERC审查其提案和简历的卓越性提供证据时所从事的实践。它将进一步探讨这些做法可能产生的认识、规范和体制方面的影响。该项目将通过定性的社会科学调查来回答这些问题。我们将与研究人员和旨在支持其申请流程的大学工作人员进行访谈;分析申请文件;并在ERC申请人的辅导活动中进行参与式观察。该分项目将研究研究人员如何为他们的工作质量和学术传记提供证据，从而为高质量和可信的科学创造和排练新的标准和标准。鉴于科学知识在一系列社会领域的证据实践中发挥的核心作用，我们认为，对科学中的证据实践进行反思性分析，这对资源分配和学术尊重至关重要，是该小组研究计划的重要组成部分。

Sub-project 8 focuses on evidence practices in the evaluation of scientific quality for research funding purposes. In the contemporary scientific system, high scientific quality – often framed as excellence – has become both a key goal of scientific and political activities and the center of many controversies. How, for example, can excellence be defined, measured, compared and made evident? In phase 1 of the research, the associated project AP2 studied how reviewers for the European Research Council (ERC) perceive and navigate scientific evaluation processes at the ERC, and which norms and values guide their evidence practices and decision-making processes. AP2 highlighted a significant tension between reviewers’ principles and practices: on the one hand, they promoted a vision of excellence as a deeply heterogenous and context-dependent quality of scientific work when they discussed excellence in the abstract during the interview; on the other hand, they recounted a focus on standardized performance indicators when they described how they actually evaluated proposals and CVs during the ERC assessment process. For phase 2 of the research unit, we will now shift the focus of sub-project TP8 to the evidence practices scientists engage in when they prepare applications for the ERC. We will conduct this analysis against the backdrop of broader dynamics and transformations in contemporary science that lead to processes which de- and restabilize notions of scientific quality – processes for which the creation of the ERC itself is indicative. Reviewers and applicants alike need to face up to the challenge of how to make the quality of research ideas and scientific biographies evident. Sub-project 8 will analyze which practices researchers engage in when they attempt to generate evidence for the excellence of their proposals and CVs for review at the ERC. It will further explore which epistemic, normative and institutional implications these practices might have. The project will answer these questions by means of qualitive social science inquiry. We will conduct interviews with researchers and with the university personnel who aim to support their application processes; analyze application documents; and conduct participatory observations at coaching events for ERC applicants. The subproject will study how researchers generate evidence for the quality of their work and their scholarly biographies and thereby create and rehearse new criteria and standards for what counts as high-quality and thus credible science. Given the central role that scientific knowledge plays in evidence practices in a range of social arenas, we believe that such a reflexive analysis of evidence practices in science, which crucially regulate the distribution of resources and academic esteem, is an important element of this group’s research program