Evaluating Academic Legal Research in Europe: The Advantage of Lagging Behind

Abstract

Where rankings, journal impact factors, citation scores and time-consuming peer review processes are increasingly viewed as a nightmare in the natural and social sciences, law still seems to be an oasis of peace and tranquility in certain countries. Nevertheless, this book reveals that law is a discipline in transition, moving from a national towards a transnational focus, from managerial laissez faire towards research programming and output financing, from monodisciplinarity to multidisciplinarity, from implicit quality standards toward more explicit attention for theory-building and methodological accountability. Experts from all over Europe in this volume show how these developments already have a serious impact on the way in which academic legal research is being evaluated throughout Europe. We argue that law has the advantage of lagging behind. Legal scholars can learn from the mistakes in other disciplines. We still have time to develop our own quality indicators, methodological standards and evaluation methods, but action is required.

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