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

次级项目8侧重于为研究资助目的评价科学质量的证据做法。在当代科学体系中，高科学素质--通常被框定为卓越--既成为科学和政治活动的关键目标，也成为许多争议的中心。例如，如何定义、衡量、比较和彰显卓越？在研究的第一阶段，相关项目AP2研究了欧洲研究理事会(ERC)的审查员如何感知和引导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做法和决策过程。AP2强调了审查员的原则和做法之间的严重紧张关系：一方面，他们在访谈中抽象地讨论优秀时，将卓越的愿景宣传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，他们在描述如何在ERC评估过程中实际评估提案和简历时，将重点放在标准化业绩指标上。对于研究单元的第二阶段，我们现在将把分项目TP8的重点转移到科学家在准备ERC申请时所从事的证据实践。我们将在当代科学中更广泛的动态和变化的背景下进行这一分析，这些变化导致了破坏和重新稳定科学质量概念的过程--ERC的创建本身就是这样的过程。评价者和申请者都需要面对如何让研究想法和科学传记的质量显而易见的挑战。子项目8将分析当研究人员试图为他们的建议和简历的卓越之处生成证据以供ERC审查时，他们从事哪些实践。它将进一步探讨这些做法可能产生的认知、规范和体制影响。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过程的大学人员进行面谈；分析申请文件；并在ERC申请者的辅导活动中进行参与性观察。这个子项目将研究研究人员如何为他们的工作和学术传记的质量产生证据，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身性分析，这对资源的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