OPERAS-P Deliverable D6.6: Report on quality assessment of innovative research in SSH

This report aims to present the result of the work conducted in task 6.6 (Quality assessment of SSH research: innovations and challenges) of the OPERAS-P (Open Scholarly Communication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities – Preparation) project. Our task aimed to better understand the ways in which peer review works in actual SSH practices. In the present report, we analyse key aspects of peer review that normally remain hidden from analysis. This work supports the development of the relevant OPERAS activities and services by informing them about current trends, gaps and community needs in research evaluation. This entails 1. teasing out the underlying reasons behind the persistence of certain proxies in the system (such as the 'impact factors of the mind' that continue to assign tacit prestige to certain publishers and forms of scholarship) and 2. the analysis of emerging trends and future innovation in peer review activities within the Humanities domain. This comprises two areas: innovation in peer review workflows (different flavours of openness, novel practices and tools) and the peer review of digital scholarly objects (such as digital critical editions, data, software etc.).

A visual summary of the study can be found here: Tóth-Czifra, Erzsébet. (2021, March). Quality assessment of SSH research: innovations and challenges – workshop slides. Zenodo: <http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4596396>.