How to Stop Worrying and Start Loving Refereed Journals: Bibliometric Debates

Abstract

This discussion of the Moscow Philosophical Circle is devoted to issues of bibliometrics in the Russian humanities. It examines the strategies of extra-academic authorities to find the most effective tools for funding scientific research and the response of academic authorities focused on maintaining the status quo. Despite the declared status of bibliometrics as a sociological tool for adequate evaluation of scientific effectiveness, representatives of the Russian humanities academy believe that de facto formal adherence to bibliometric indicators not only does not correspond to the idea of separating high-quality from low-quality science but, on the contrary, produces research of low scientific value, carried out merely for bibliometrics itself. The debate questions whether bibliometrics will lead to the death of the scientific traditions, including the national one. Is the practice of bibliometrics a tool for destroying research in local languages and styles of thinking? How is it possible today, in the era of scientific globalization, to speak of science in terms of tradition, individual schools, and the like? Does this practice conceal much more serious problems facing the humanities than that of bibliometrics itself?