Penser la valeur d’usage dans l’évaluation des résultats de la recherche

Over the last few years, in the context of the rise of scientific production’s measurement, there has been a strengthening demand for alternative evaluation tools covering “a broader spectrum” and taking into account the societal “impact” of scientific production. The present article consequently questions the emergence of a new descriptive open category of science’s activity and its externalities: the use value of research. In order to address this issue, it first examines the debates on the nature of productions and science’s uses in various areas (scientometry, technology transfer and relations between science and society) and clarifies their influences on the scientific assessment’s conceptualisation (balance between “internalist” and “externalist” perspectives of science). The article then questions the opportunities and limits of the shift from a measurement of sciences trough the societal impact of their results to one based upon the value of their uses as attributed outside the scientific community. Based on a Swiss case-study, the article analyses how these problems are formulated at the institutional and political levels, how they are specifically addressed and which political answers they prompted. These various elements enable us to specify the issues of research’s political and social legitimization generated by such external framing and assessment.