Work

Beyond blind faith: overcoming the obstacles to interdisciplinary evaluation

Year: 2006

Type: article

Abstract: This paper examines how panelists serving on interdisciplinary funding panels produce evaluations they perceive as fair, drawing on 81 interviews with panelists serving on multidisciplinary fellowship competitions. We identify how peer reviewers define “good” interdisciplinary proposals and the rules they follow: respect for disciplinary sovereignty, deference to expertise and methodological pluralism. These rules ensure the preponderance of the voices of experts over non-experts. Panelists also adopt strategies to make other reviewers who lack expertise trust that their judgments are disinterested and unbiased, while reviewers who lack expertise are not afraid to make decisions based on idiosyncratic tastes rather than substantive quality.

Source: Research Evaluation

DOI: 10.3152/147154406781776002

Authors: Michèle Lamont, Grégoire Mallard, Joshua Guetzkow

Institutions: Harvard University, Princeton University, École nationale des ponts et chaussées, Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés

Language: English

Topic: Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration

Subfield: Information Systems and Management

Field: Decision Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W2149782686

FWCI: 7.116

Cites: 31

Cited by: 79

Related to: 10