Evaluation of science as consultancy?

The current discourse on institutional research evaluations has been shaped by a dominant thesis. As an externally initiated form of performance monitoring, evaluations are considered to be both the expression of and drivers of a comprehensive deprofessionalization of the academic profession. Both evaluating and evaluated researchers assume they will have to adjust their value and evaluation systems in keeping with external benchmarks. Our empirical analysis of evaluation processes at a microlevel contrasts with this thesis, and shows that the academic profession’s central values persist, and continue to structure the ways in which the profession makes decisions and acts. One of these values is that evaluations should not just serve to monitor performance and sanction, but instead provide collegial consultancy and feedback. But how is consultancy possible in a performance-monitoring context whose consequences are potentially serious? We address this question by analyzing the decisions and actions of evaluating and evaluated researchers in the context of the German Leibniz Association’s evaluation procedure.