A few days before New Year’s Eve, I submitted together with Steve Woolgar and Mario Biagioli a proposal for an open panel about academic valuation for the upcoming 4S conference in Boston, Aug 30 – Sep 2. We hope that it, if accepted, will attract a wide variety submissions about the multifaceted valuation practices within academia. (We will get notice of acceptance within a few weeks.) Here is the proposal text:

Academic evaluation in an age of “post truth”

STS has made major contributions in respecifying the key concept of “values”. We can no longer take for granted that values are given or that they straightforwardly determine action. We know instead how much is involved in making, articulating, enacting and manipulating values. In academic work, such practices abound: we know that determinations of academic value involve contingent practices of evaluating, rating and ranking performance.

What are the implications of this understanding of academic evaluation in the contemporary situation, where standards of truth are allegedly undergoing significant modification? In a situation of “post truth” (nominated as OD’s new word of 2016) what contributions can our pragmatist orientation to evaluation make, and how? Is it possible or important to retain symmetry, impartiality, and agnosticism with a phenomenon which so close to home? Is this simply to replay the contention that critique has run out of steam or are we witnessing the emergence of practices of evaluation that are inherently external to regimes of truth and thus of critique? Can STS make interventions that can make a difference?

This panel invites papers which address the practices and transformations of academic evaluation in the age of post truth. These practices include, but extend considerably beyond, the use of diverse metrics and indicators. For example, the panel invites discussion of peer reviewing, grant proposal assessments, paper grading, appointments and promotions, awards and prizes, book endorsements and other professional practices. We welcome papers which discuss more (or less) appropriate future modes of academic evaluation.