Paper long abstract:

Evaluation approach dominated almost all kinds of human activity in the developed countries or countries aspiring for this status. The science is (not free of trend) also touched by this trend - the phenomenon today highly criticized by important part of the scientific community. Loss of scientific autonomy, negative effects of publish or perish rule, focus on a high citations-impact as the main goal of the young scientists career strategy, these are changes observed in the universe of scientific work.

The evaluation of scientific publications has become the key criteria in official accounting system of evaluating individual achievements. The ranking of scientists based on citations rate has become a tool of evaluation applied by people who ignore the field. In other words, opinions about the “quality” of scientists are produced by non-scientists and are based merely on algorithms of citation rate.

This presentation is not a simple repertoire of critics addressed to the system of scientific achievement evaluation. Rather, I shall propose a reflection on the process of evaluation in science. How does it proceed?

What kind of mechanism is applied to evaluation of creative, scientific work? Does this official system of evaluation work also within scientific communities? How do scientists themselves evaluate their peer achievements?

Using Hughesian concept of the auxiliary characteristics I will show phenomena of selections and processes of evaluation, which are observed in ethnographical studies, which can be called informal in opposition to the formal and well known citation impact based on evaluation. The relationship between formal and informal practices constitutes the central problem analyzed in this presentation.