Suchergebnisse

The convergences of science, technology, and soci ety (STS) may be better specified as the interaction of policy, research, and democracy. From the perspective of a long-time participant in the process of federal policy making, the author puts STS as a research and education enterprise into its broader cultural context. He addresses how, in the information age, STS promotes participation in a democracy through human resource development, paths to science literacy, and federal funding of science and technology.

Grants peer review is a family of ex ante methods used by federal agencies to select research proposalsforfunding. This article draws on Chubin and Hackett's 1990 book, Peerless Science: Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy, to examine both the assumptions and theory underlying peer review as an evaluation methodology and the issues that arise in the operation of peer-based systems at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The article discusses criticisms of peer review, the various criteria that agencies must balance in interpreting evaluations of expert peers, and outstanding issues to be addressed in the refinement and reform of peer review systems. The article concludes with suggestions on how to redress the shortcomings of peer review in decision making, especially the allocation of scarce public monies.

The quantitative evaluation of science, now in its second generation, has become a policy-oriented specialty. Second-generation bibliometrics, as represented by several new approaches, has transformed the analysis of publication and citation data into a sophisticated tool for comprehending the complexity of the scientific enterprise and for addressing practical issues on the national and world science policy agenda. By developing quantitative measures of research performance, second-generation bibliometrics has improved the scope and relevance of science output indicators and, to a lesser degree, indicators of the institutional structures that mediate science and society. These improved output measures are essential components of social impact of science (SIS) indicators, which represent in quantitative terms the conjunction of science indicators derived from second-generation bibliometrics and available social indicators.