ERIC Number: EJ1187837
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Sep
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0026-4695
EISSN: N/A
Situated Knowledge Production, International Impact: Changing Publishing Practices in a German Engineering Department
Kaltenbrunner, Wolfgang
Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy, v56 n3 p283-303 Sep 2018
In this paper, I analyze how recent calls to internationalize publication behavior affect research practices at an automotive engineering department in Germany. Automotive engineering is a field with traditionally rather scarce publication activity and strong connections to industry. Substantial authority to define suitable research problems and ways of organizing knowledge production on a daily basis was therefore reserved for local academic elites as well as corporate partners. However, as engineers are increasingly expected to prove their performance through publishing in international peer-reviewed journals, the judgment as to what should be considered "interesting" or "robust" research is partly relegated to a gradually globalizing community of academic peers. This generates a variety of tensions with established ways of coordinating epistemic work at the department studied here. For example, the thematic interests of journals tend to exert a disruptive centrifugal pull in the context of an otherwise highly modular research culture, and possibilities to publish in international venues are unequally distributed across individual research projects. But while department members agree that there is a lack of fit between current practices and new expectations towards their publishing behavior, their opinions about the conclusions that should be drawn differ significantly. Some researchers argue that profound organizational changes are necessary to foster the academic rigor of German engineering research. Others believe that evaluation criteria should simply be adapted. This situation is arguably characteristic for research areas with a traditionally strong orientation to local stakeholders, and it suggests a need for more deliberative, participatory approaches to research evaluation in such fields.
Descriptors: Engineering Education, Foreign Countries, Auto Mechanics, Scientific Research, Faculty Publishing, College Faculty, Periodicals, Departments, Expectation, Teacher Attitudes, Organizational Change, Academic Standards, Evaluation Criteria, Motor Vehicles
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Germany
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A