[ Reproduïm a continuació l'article editorial aparegut la revista Notes & Records of The Royal Society (octubre de 2008) on es recull l'opinió d'una cinquantena de revistes d'història de la ciència de tot el món sobre els problemes que comporta una política arbitrària en la valoració d'impacte dels articles publicats en revistes de recerca de l'àmbit humanísitic i social. Podeu veure en text original a http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/x503128311743u02) ]
This
text has been agreed upon by the editors of over 50 journals of the
history of science, technology, and medicine across the world. It is to
appear in each of the journals listed as a protest against the European
Science Foundation's initiative for a European Reference Index for the
Humanities. The protest is not against the colleagues who have
undertaken the grading or the particular evaluations they have put out.
It is against the very principle of grading of journals, whoever
performs the task and whatever principles are adopted. The editors who
have signed ‘ Journals under threat' believe that such a process is
unnecessary and potentially damaging to the interests of scholarship.
They ask for their journals to be withdrawn from consideration for the
purposes of the ERIH.
We live in an age of metrics. All around us, things are being standardized, quantified, measured. Scholars concerned with the work of science and technology must regard this as a fascinating and crucial practical, cultural and intellectual phenomenon. Analysis of the roots and meaning of metrics and metrology has been a preoccupation of much of the best work in our field for the past quarter of a century at least. As practitioners of the interconnected disciplines that make up the field of science studies we understand how significant, contingent and uncertain can be the process of rendering nature and society in grades, classes and numbers.
