European Reference Index for the Humanities

As historians of ideas, we agree with our colleagues in the History of Science who have recently protested against the creation of a European Reference Index for the Humanities by the European Science Foundation. The creators of the Index present it as an effort to rank journals—including historical journals—by objective criteria. Theoretically, it grades journals not by subjective qualities but by the breadth of their readership, their methods of peer reviewing and the like, in order to provide a "research information system for the Humanities." In fact, however, the Foundation nowhere makes clear how it chose the members of its ratings committees or what measures it took when gathering the information that enabled them to sort journals into three categories. Journals of very similar age, quality and standing receive different ratings—a symptom of arbitrary procedures and one that saps faith in the results. Yet the use of terms like "top-quality" and "first-rate" inevitably creates the impression that these rankings correspond in some way to the scientific importance of journals. Worst of all, journals published in English and addressed to a large readership are clearly granted precedence over journals published in other languages and devoted to more specialized subjects and limited publics—a violation of the basic principle that, as our colleagues write, "Great research may be published anywhere and in any language. Truly ground-breaking work may be more likely to appear from marginal, dissident or unexpected sources, rather than from a well-established and entrenched mainstream." As presently conceived and executed, this exercise will harm the humanistic disciplines that it seeks to serve.