Early-Career Researchers and the Logics in Researcher Assessment

Purpose of this study: One scholarly stream of academic work centers on how researchers are assessed in career junctions, such as academic recruitment processes (Ross-Hellauer et al. 2024; Orupabo & Mangset 2022). Advanced by initiatives, such as the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), discussions center on how assessment should be reformed so that it would better reflect the realities of academic work, recognising all the contributions that researchers make within the scholarly and wider community (Pietilä et al. 2025). In this context, early-career researchers (ECRs) are in a special position as they represent the next generation who will act in evaluative roles, and influence research cultures. While ECRs have their own ideals about what constitutes good academic work, as researchers who typically work in precarious work conditions, they must portray themselves as ‘employable’. Earlier research identifies ECRs as especially vulnerable to external pressures (Herschberg et al. 2018; Hammarfelt & de Rijcke 2015). Vanholsbeeck (2021) describes ECRs as a group being pulled in different directions as they face expectations towards research policy objectives, such as "research excellence" and "the impact agenda". In this paper, we use the institutional logics approach (Thornton et al. 2012) to identify macro-level societal orders that assessment systems draw on and that ECRs identify either as ideal ones or as structures that are seen as problematic and in need of reform. Theoretical background: The institutional logics perspective is fruitful to study researcher assessment and ECRs' reactions to it as institutions are seen both as enabling and constraining action (Thornton et al. 2012). While institutional logics provide actors common frames of reference, it is typical that multiple logics operate simultaneously which partly clash, making it necessary for individuals to balance and negotiate between logics (Smets et al. 2015). In the case of assessment, tensions may emerge when peer-based qualitative judgements coexist with quantitative performance indicators, or when quests for long-term scholarly depth conflicts with pressures to produce short-term measurable outputs. Assessment thus becomes a site where different principles of worth are negotiated rather than a system governed by a single logic. The perspective helps us to understand the simultaneous and competing expectations researchers have to make sense of while balancing with their own ideals. Research design, methodology: For the research data, we used a survey coordinated by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, conducted in 2023. The survey focused on how researchers affiliated with Finnish organisations would like to be evaluated, what kind of skills they think should be considered in assessment situations, and what problems they identify in assessments. For this paper, we use the responses of ECRs affiliated with Finnish universities (N: 104). ECRs are here defined as individuals with a maximum of 10 years’ research experience. In the analysis, we traced the researchers' responses to four open-ended questions with the aim of linking the responses to more macro-level patterns in HE and research that provide researchers meaning to actions and conflicts (cf. Cai & Mountford 2022; cf. Thornton & Ocasio 1999). Based on the data, we identified three main overarching logics. Findings: The first academic logic portrayed by the researchers often as an ideal focuses on the need to primarily assess the scholarly quality of work, such as its methodological rigor and originality. In the responses, this logic is juxtaposed and perceived as being challenged by the overreliance of metrics. Disciplinary norms are central in this logic, researchers emphasising the importance that reviewers have the same academic discipline as the researcher being evaluated. However, in the responses it remains opaque what exactly counts as quality and how the qualitative features of scholarly work can be identified and operationalised in assessment. The second market logic coincides with the broader critique within the HE against over-quantification, short-termism, and performance pressure. The logic is referred to as the market logic, as quantitative indicators are seen to replace professional judgement whereas metrics, such as the number of publications, function as commensuration devices that turn scholarly work into (seemingly) comparable numerical units. The third bureaucratic logic focuses on the procedural aspects of assessment. Many of the ECRs' accounts relate to experiences in which personal networks seem to have affected the outcomes of evaluation, creating unfair conditions especially for "outsiders" in the system. Whereas the first two logics pertain to ideals about who should be involved in the assessment and the assessment methods involved, this logic points to more general principles in evaluation, such as predictability and transparency. Practical/social implications: By analysing how assessment systems are experienced by ECRs, the study sheds light on the incentive structures embedded in contemporary academia. Understanding researchers’ concerns can help identify which elements of assessment systems are seen as constraining long-term research. The study contributes to discussions about how incentive structures might be reconfigured to better support sustained research trajectories. Originality/value of paper: The perceived fairness and functionality of assessment systems are important to guarantee equal access to academic careers. With the framework of institutional logics, the study highlights the competing logics and tensions in assessment as perceived by ECRs. The findings are valuable as they touch upon questions on the (il)legitimacy of assessment systems.