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The humanities display a strong skepticism toward bibliometric evaluations of their quotation practices. This is odd, since their citations partly serve the same purpose as they do in the sciences: They can indicate a beneficial influence on one’s own work. In Literature, a still-stranger observation asks for an explanation: Even in the most important journals, the articles receive only an astonishingly few citations. This paper presents some facts about the quotation culture, the low levels of citation and the databases involved. It shows that the low numbers are not a product of deficiencies in data, but should be subject to analysis. In the final discussion, this paper offers two explanations: Either Literature is, in fact, no discipline that should be treated as academic; or Literature is a discipline facing its own imminent intellectual death. Yet it is hoped that other explanations will be found; however, this issue requires further research on the practices in Literature and related fields.

In this article, I outline the evaluation process established by the European Research Council (ERC) and present results of the ERC’s funding calls between 2007 and 2012. Because of its European added value, the ERC is a unique funding organization in the European research landscape. Based on a rigorous evaluation process, the ERC dedicates a considerable share of its budget to the social sciences and humanities.

In a period, in which many things seem uncertain and yet everything is calculated and measured, the humanities can hardly avoid the evaluative quality measurement. However, a look into the world of benchmarks, ratings and rankings reveals that the oftentimes culture-specific performances of humanities research and teaching are almost immaterial therein. From the perspective of a private research funder, among others the following questions are traced: To what extent do international standards of quality exist in the humanities? Which criteria are suitable? Do assessment methods exist that allow for an adequate evaluation of performances in the humanities? To what extent should the humanities get involved with the construction of a publication and citation industry? What chance of survival do the humanities have in a world predominantly characterized by science and engineering?

This paper will start with a presentation of the legal French framework for research evaluation, concentrating on the individual level; this first part will also summarize the main oppositions to the idea of evaluation, as they are expressed mainly by unions and other researcher associations. In a second move, we will review the main French actors and practices of evaluation, separating the ‘traditional’ forms of assessment still in use in the CNU, and the recent evolutions caused by the introduction of a dual financing system (through ANR), of an external evaluation of research units by an independent agency (AERES/HCERES) and by the building of a database in the CNRS. In the light of criticisms that can be formulated about all these practices, we will introduce the projects DisValHum and IMPRESHS, dedicated, respectively, to a study of dissemination strategies in the SSH and to case studies of the impact of the research in the SSH. The third part of the paper will therefore be occupied by a description of our methodology and of a few results.

The author, a professor of English linguistics at Freiburg University, was a member of the German Council of Science and Humanities () from 2006 to 2012 and, in this capacity, was involved in this advisory body’s rating and assessment activities. The present contribution focusses on issues arising in the rating of research output in the humanities and is informed by his dual perspective, as planner and organizer of the ratings undertaken by the and as a rated scholar in his own discipline, English and American Studies.

In their joint contribution, the president of the German Association for English Studies (Deutscher Anglistenverband), Klaus Stierstorfer, and the president of the German Association for American Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien), Peter Schneck, describe the central motivations behind the decision to actively support the pilot study for the research rating of the German Council of Science and Humanities () despite some fundamental skepticism among the associations’s members. On the basis of five basic propositions—different in each argument—they both insist that the assessment of research quality in the humanities inevitably requires the central involvement of the disciplines assessed in order to reflect on and formulate the central categories, standards and procedures best suited for such assessments. Such a process must take into account the complexity of research processes and results in the humanities whose qualitative dimensions cannot be fully measured by quantitative methods.

The pilot study is the first implementation of the in the humanities. This chapter presents the findings and conclusions of the rating. It consists of three parts: First, the results of the rating, first published in December 2012, are presented, as well as the conclusions drawn by the German Council of Science and Humanities. Second, Alfred Hornung who chaired the review board reflects on the from the point of view of the chair of the review board as well as an scholar. Third, Barbara Korte writes about the from her perspective as a member of the review board and scholar.

This article reports on a large-scale peer-review assessment of the research done in English departments at German universities, organized by the German . The main aim of the paper is to take a critical look at the methodology of this research assessment project based on a detailed statistical analysis of the 4,110 ratings provided by the 19 reviewers. The focus lies on the reliability of the ratings and on the nature of the criteria that were used to assess the quality of research. The analysis shows that there is little variation across raters, which is an indication of the general reliability of the results. Most criteria highly correlate with each other. Only the criterion of ‘Transfer to non-academic addressees’ does not correlate very strongly with other indicators of research quality. The amount of external funding turns out not to be a good indicator of research quality.