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"Preface" [2019] ELECD 449; in van Gestel, Rob; Lienhard, Andreas (eds), "Evaluating Academic Legal Research in Europe" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) ix

Book Title: Evaluating Academic Legal Research in Europe

Editor(s): van Gestel, Rob; Lienhard, Andreas

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781788115490

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Preface This book on the evaluation of legal research follows prior research projects in both Switzerland and the Netherlands. The Swiss Rectors Conference (swissuniversities) was the first body to provide a strong incentive for this debate by funding a research project to study the state of the art with respect to the evaluation of legal research in Switzerland, but with an eye open to developments abroad. A research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation enabled us to bring academics from different European countries together and conduct surveys. The surveys of legal academics in Switzerland and the Netherlands were among the first in Europe to collect data about how legal scholars feel their research should be evaluated by journals, publishers, funding bodies, law faculties, and local or national research assessment exercises. One of the striking similarities in both countries appeared to be a strong distrust of quantitative assessment methods, such as citation counts. The surveys in Switzerland and the Netherlands taught us that evaluation cultures and practices in the field of law might also reveal strong differences throughout Europe. This fuelled the idea of a book that would present the evaluation practices applied and the debates underway in different countries. We are very grateful to each expert who took the effort to participate in this project. We also want to express our gratitude for all the work done by Karin Byland, who was responsible for a large part of the project organization, but also for contributing content for the book, ...