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Short abstract:

I will present a suggestion to define ‘research quality’ as a collective frame of scientific communities for the assessment of the utility of contributions, ground this definition in social theory and discuss its methodologcial consequences for the collection of data on research quality.

Long abstract:

Studies of criteria for research quality and their application have largely proceeded without defining the concept ‘research quality’. This reluctance to define and theoretically position the concept research quality condemns studies to reporting researchers’ opinions about research quality in their fields. Explaining the emergence of such opinions or their effects in particular situations of assessment is impossible without defining “research quality” and positioning it ain a theory. Furthermore, methodological choices about how to collect data on the role of research quality in processes of knowledge production or in the governance of science cannot be supported if a theoretical understanding of the concept is lacking. I will present a suggestion to define ‘research quality’ as a collective frame of scientific communities for the assessment of the utility of contributions. From this definition follows that researchers do not hold fixed notions of ‘research quality’ but construct the ‘quality’ of objects of assessment situatively by enacting collective quality frames in response to specific circumstances. An important methodological consequence of this understanding is that we should be wary of researchers’ opinions on research quality as communicated in surveys or interviews. These methods of data collection create situations in which researchers must communicate their frames to people they perceive as outsiders who are laypersons with regard to their research. Thus, valid data on a scientific community’s quality frames can only be collected in situations in which researchers do enact these frames for each other.