Will someone please inform Marek that "the competitive nature of scientific advancement" (sic!), which seems so dear to him, is quite probably "a fundamental driving force" also for a host of behaviors that—fundamentally AND likely irreparably—corrupt science. Thank you. I really don't know why I am saying this... real mystery.

https://twitter.com/jelena3121/status/1626146883981701127?s=20

Our article on the legitimation of university rankings is now out in 'Research Evaluation' (open access)

Spreading the Gospel: bit.ly/3Cewxuf

Here's a brief tour of what we argue in it 🧵 1. University rankings are such a bore. I’ve been writing about them for years now and believe me, I am tired of it as well.

But we can’t, or we shouldn't, just pretend rankings are not there.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of 'Higher Education', @cant_b and I discuss the enduring interest of higher education studies in the problem of change and the way this has been shaped by the field's 'dual orientation'.

Here it is: bit.ly/3SQ4SH2 (open access) The article should be of interest to scholars of higher education, especially when reflecting on how knowledge in the field has been and is being produced.

We need more discussion on tensions emerging from the field's dual orientation and what this means for our own research.

We talk a lot about rankings here: what we think & how we feel about them, why we (dis)like them, what’s wrong with them, and so on.

In this 🧵 I will try to disentangle the phenomenon.

So, buckle up y’all, for a sociological ride through the world of rankings ⬇️ 1. Rankings are *comparisons of performances*.

Think of rankings as a stage on which actors perform, in front of a jury (ranker) and an audience. Like in figure skating.

Only here, it’s the jury who *creates the stage* by putting actors on it and having them play by its rules.

Erasmus isn't just an EU programme. It is an institutionalised expression of a genuinely modern phenomenon - travel abroad for the sake of it.
#Erasmus #Brexit In this sense, the emergence of Erasmus marked a historical continuation of an increasingly more common practice, which - much like higher education itself - had once been the privilege of the elite few.

What is a citation?
Are all #citations equal?

Do, for example, self-citations from one's own preprints also count? There are scholars with huge Google Scholar citation count because they self-cite a lot, but when you look them up on Scopus, they practically don't exist.

https://twitter.com/Marek_Kwiek/status/1313817775908024321

There are also people who cite only celebrity scholars because they think that's what will make them look smart.

There are people who cite mostly stuff published in recognised journals because they think that's more reliable, "proper science". Plus, some are lazy.