The Role of Bibliometric Research Assessment in a Global Order of Epistemic Injustice: A Case Study of Humanities Research in Denmark

In this paper, we consider, from critical perspectives, the ways in which research assessment governs the production of academic knowledge and can contribute to epistemic injustices. This issue is examined through a fieldwork study in 2018 of the implications of the Danish Bibliometric Indicator for research in a humanities department of a research-intensive Danish university. We draw on Connell's Southern Theory in conjunction with Bourdieu's work on language and power to show how humanities research in the Danish language is pushed onto the periphery of global disciplinary fields. The paper highlights that regimes of governance such as bibliometric research assessment affect not only what is published and where but also what is recognised as scientific or academic language. Such regimes can contribute significantly to the generation and reproduction of epistemic injustices through limitations on how, and by whom, legitimate knowledge is defined, produced and promulgated. We argue that it is time to recognise this as the colonisation of research.