How Quality Is Recognized by Peer Review Panels: The Case of the Humanities

This paper summarizes key findings of our research on peer review, which challenge the separation between cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of evaluation. Here we highlight some of the key findings from this research and discuss its relevance for understanding academic evaluation in the humanities. We summarize the role of informal rules, the impact of evaluation settings on rules, definitions of originality, and comparisons between the humanities, the social sciences and history. Taken together, the findings summarized here suggest a research agenda for developing a better empirical understanding of the specific characteristics of peer review evaluation in the humanities as compared to other disciplinary clusters.