Disciplines display field-specific ways of valuing research contributions, and these different ‘styles of valuation’ influence how academic careers are assessed and formed. Yet, differences in how research is evaluated are also prevalent between different levels of assessment: collegial and organizational. Consequently, we employ a multifaceted two-dimensional approach for studying styles of valuation where both horizontal (across domains) and vertical (organization levels) variations in assessment practices are examined. For this purpose, we make use of 16 faculty guidelines and 112 referee reports concerning candidates for becoming ‘docent’ (Habilitation) from four broad domains: the humanities, the social sciences, medicine and the natural sciences (including technology). By inductively identifying five broad dimensions used when assessing publication merits: (1) Attribution of work, (2) Qualities of content, (3) Publication channel, (4) Publication impact, and (5) Publication volume we can distinguish specific styles of valuation for each of our four domains. Moreover, by extending the analysis to an organizational level we detect opposing ways in which the evaluations are justified—what we call ‘disharmonic styles of valuation’. Thus, when developing insights on ‘quality understandings’—and their operationalization through styles of valuation—in academia we need to put less emphasis on their origins and rather focus on how they come to travel between and co-exist within specific evaluative contexts.

Föreliggande rapport är resultatet av ”Studie för att undersöka hur frågor om publiceringskanaler och OA hanteras i meritvärdering på olika lärosäten och i olika discipliner med särskilt fokus på docentvärdering”. Undersökningen är en del av Kungliga bibliotekets utredningar om öppen tillgång till vetenskapliga publikationer. Den utgör ett av underlagen för utredningen om Meriterings- och medelstilldelningssystemen i relation till incitament för öppen tillgång. Vi vill tacka Björn Hammarfelt för värdefulla kommentarer på manuskriptet under arbetets gång och Lisa Olsson, Stockholms universitetsbibliotek som granskade manuskriptet före tryck. Vi riktar också ett tack till Beate Eellend, samt Kungliga biblioteket för samordningen av uppdraget. Kungliga biblioteket har gett ekonomiskt bidrag till delar av rapportförfattandet.

One way to dignify academic recognition and visibility for theresearcher and the higher education institutions (HEIs) is throughthe award of the Docent title, lending its holder the right toindependently conduct research and supervise doctoral students.The Docent (associate professor) title is an important step in theacademic career in several countries, yet there are - at least inSweden - no national guidelines for Docent evaluation. Instead atthe faculty level, each HEI has its own regulations andguidelines. Based on guidelines for docent promotion, wedeveloped a taxonomy of evaluation criteria, identifying authorposition, specimen, publication channel, impact, and volume asimportant factors in the assessment of publication merits(Joelsson, Nelhans & Helgesson, 2020). The assessment ofmerits for the Docent title generally includes the applicants’research, teaching, and third stream activities, where the researchdimension is awarded the highest merit value. In this research,we contribute to the understanding of the national tradition ofevaluation criteria for the docent title by focusing on differentdisciplinary domains on the one hand, and different types ofHEIs, on the other. A comparison between broad-based(comprehensive) established universities, specialised universities,new universities, and university colleges will be performed. 74guidelines from Swedish higher education institutions werecollected and subjected to qualitative data analysis with the aid ofthe computer software ATLAS.ti.