Recenzje naukowe jako materiał badawczy
Academic Reviews as Research Material

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents academic reviews as a special sort of research material, with unique value for the sociology of scientific knowledge. They are relatively easily available and conventionalized to large extent, which makes them a very effective source of data in terms of their use. Of course the strategy of interpretation of the data included in reviews depends on the structure of the research problem. The material may be usefully analyzed in terms of micro processes that regulate the access to academic degrees; it may be interpreted in terms of cultural and institutional mezzo processes, such as, e.g., scientific educational institutions; and last but not least, it may be used as data for studying macro processes that affect shifting research priorities or blurred boundaries among disciplines. My aim is to illustrate a ‘density’ of texts of reviews, mainly for phenomenological and ethnomethodological analysis. Such a direction makes it possible to explore empirically not only practical relations between scientific (here: sociological) perspectives and structures of everyday reasoning, but their connections with ideological contexts, other professional perspectives and scientific disciplines as well.

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