Konstruksjon av store forskergrupper som ny norm for god forskning

摘要

Using institutional ethnography of the evaluation of social research in Norway (SAMEVAL) in 2017, the paper shows how this new form of evaluation constructs a norm for quality based on the practice of the natural sciences, where research is organized in large hierarchical groups with international partners. In this tradition all collaborators from professors to laboratory personnel co-author the publications. The new form of evaluation constructs large research groups as a common norm for organising scientific research, including social research. Research projects in the social sciences and humanities are normally carried out by one or two researchers, sometimes cooperating with an international partner. In the evaluation, research groups were defined as large, well-established groups with a designated leader, cooperating over time with enough resources to carry out large projects. Therefore, in SAMEVAL the disciplines had to politically construct large research groups by using colleagues from the same and nearby fields to meet the requirements of the evaluation’s definition of research groups.