Ranking Games

Bruno Frey and Margit Osterloh

CREMA Working Paper Series from Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA)

Abstract: Research rankings based on publications and citations today dominate governance of academia. Yet they have unintended side effects on individual scholars and academic institutions and can be counterproductive. They induce a substitution of the "taste for science" by a "taste for publication". We suggest as alternatives careful selection and socialization of scholars, supplemented by periodic self-evaluations and awards. Neither should rankings be a basis for the distributions of funds within universities. Rather, qualified individual scholars should be supported by basic funds to be able to engage in new and unconventional research topics and methods.

Keywords: Academic governance; rankings; motivation; selection; socialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A10 D02 H83 L23 M50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-hpe, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-mic and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.crema-research.ch/papers/2011-16.pdf Full Text (application/pdf)
https://www.crema-research.ch/abstracts/2011-16.htm Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Ranking Games (2015)
Working Paper: Rankings games (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cra:wpaper:2011-16

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CREMA Working Paper Series from Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anna-Lea Werlen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).