Journals Under Threat: A Joint Response from History of Science, Technology and Medicine Editors

We now confront a situation in which our own research is being subjected to putatively precise accountancy by arbitrary and unaccountable agencies. Some may already be aware of the proposed European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH), an initiative originating with the European Science Foundation. The ERIH is an attempt to grade journals in the humanities--including ‘ history and philosophy of science' . The initiative proposes a league table of academic journals, with premier, second and third divisions. According to the European Science Foundation, ERIH ‘ aims initially to identify, and gain more visibility for, top-quality European Humanities research published in academic journals in, potentially, all European languages' . It is hoped ‘ that ERIH will form the backbone of a fully-fledged research information system for the Humanities' . What is meant, however, is that ERIH will provide funding bodies and other agencies in Europe and elsewhere with an allegedly exact measure of research quality. In short, if research is published in a premier league journal it will be recognized as first rate; if it appears somewhere in the lower divisions, it will be rated (and not funded) accordingly.