2 février 2015. Michel Dubois. “Invisible community and peerless science : case studies from Morocco and India”. IFP Talk Series. Nehru Conference Hall French Institute of Pondicherry

How do scientists working in the same area become a collective? When do academics start believing in their own collective existence and consider themselves as “peer” among others “peers”? The noun “peer” (in the context of science and evaluation) is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “one equal in civil standing or rank; equal in any respect”. This simple definition emphasizes the normative dimension of the Peer Review Mechanism (PRM). For PRM to exist, scientists have to be confident in the fact that their colleagues consider them as equal in value and thus produce an objective assessment of their work. In this talk, I develop a case study on the attitudes of Indian’s scientists toward PRM. After recalling some of the main teachings of the sociological studies devoted to PRM, I analyze a corpus of scientific correspondence and opinions extracted from the Indian interdisciplinary journal Current Science. It shows that PRM is a key thematic for scientists to debate about the general state of Indian science.

en savoir plus sur l’Institut français de Pondichéry : http://www.ifpindia.org

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