Arlette Jappe, David Pithan and Thomas Heinze, Author at Social Science Space

Arlette Jappe, David Pithan and Thomas Heinze

Arlette Jappe is senior researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT) at the University of Wuppertal. Her research interests include research organisations and institutional renewal, bibliometric research methods, sociology of professions, and research capacity development in sustainability sciences. David Pithan is a PhD student at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Wuppertal. His research interests include qualitative and quantitative research methods, network analysis, neo-institutional theory, and historical discourse analysis. Thomas Heinze is full professor of organisational sociology and deputy director at IZWT. His research interests include the emergence and diffusion of scientific breakthroughs, public research organizations, research evaluation, theories of institutional change, organizational theory, and comparative historical sociology.

Have We Outsourced Impact Measures to Database Providers?

Arlette Jappe, David Pithan and Thomas Heinze find that the growth in the volume of ‘evaluative citation analysis’ publications has not led to the formation of an intellectual field with strong reputational control. This has left a gap which has been filled by commercial database providers, who by selecting and distributing research metrics have gained a powerful role in defining standards of research excellence without being challenged by expert authority.