Paper short abstract:

The valuation regime of the sciences has reached the humanities and questions its marginality. The problematization of this “intrusion” articulates valuation’s fictional character in form of futurity (young scholars’ career-chances) and the capitalisation of inconsistencies (ranking system).

Paper long abstract:

The metric valuation regime of the sciences reached the humanities in the last ten years. Problematizing the price of the humanities anew (Färber et al 2015) may be read as a struggle for its "prophecy" to be fulfilled. The introduction of its techniques and technologies in form of ICT-processed peer review and generalised journal rankings (see Pontille/Torny 2015) were problematized in two dimensions: Not participating in this kind of scientific metric meant to be marginalised a) in the academic field mostly with respect to the social sciences, b) within the disciplines compared to those who do account for their research in this valuation regime. In the proposed contribution I draw on two German journals in the humanities to show how marginality was articulated and negotiated regarding this "intrusion" of scientific metrics. Fiction (see Meinicken/Sjögren 2015) in form of futurity play/ed a major role in this problematization: The introduction of the new valuation regime with its very techniques would improve the future of young scholars. Not being able to give proof of being evaluated within this regime would lead to their professional marginalisation. This moral argument stresses the futurity that is encapsulated in the valuation regime. While the CV as account of these values materialises this fictional quality editors negotiated their agency at the margins of the regime in different ways: peer review was declared an individual choice of authors; or the inconsistencies of the European ranking system were capitalised and the fictional character of this valuation regime put into action.