TY - JOUR
AU - Merton, Robert
AB - HARRIET ZUCKERMAN AND ROBERT K. MERTON Patterns of Evaluation in Science: Institutionalisation, Structure and Functions of the Referee System THE referee system in science involves the systematic use of judges to assess the acceptability of manuscripts submitted for publication. The referee is thus an example of status-judges who are charged with evaluating the quality of role-performance in a social system. They are found in every institutional sphere. Other kinds of status-judges include teachers assessing the quality of work by students (and, as a recent institutional change, students officially assessing the quality of performance by teachers), critics in the arts, supervisors in industry and coaches and managers in sports. Status-judges are integral to any system of social control through their evaluation of role-performance and their allocation of rewards for that performance. They influence the motivation to maintain or to raise standards of performance. In the case of scientific and scholarly journals, the significant status- judges are the editors and referees. Like the official readers of manu- scripts of books submitted to publishers, or the presumed experts who appraise proposals for research grants, the referees ordinarily make their judgements confidentially, these being available only ~o the editor and usually to the 
TI - Patterns of evaluation in science: Institutionalisation, structure and functions of the referee system
JF - Minerva
DO - 10.1007/BF01553188
DA - 2005-04-08
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/patterns-of-evaluation-in-science-institutionalisation-structure-and-J8ymqkV611
SP - 66
EP - 100
VL - 9
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -