Evaluation as a source of unhappiness in academia—unpacking the boundaries of responsible research assessment

Abstract The study conceptualizes research evaluation as an affective practice and shows that researchers’ experiences of unhappiness associated with evaluations broadly align with the main themes of Responsible Research Assessment (RRA). However, RRA cannot fully address the emotional tensions embedded in evaluation processes. The findings indicate that this misalignment arises from the inherently subjective nature of research assessments. The study expands the understanding of RRA’s boundaries by illustrating how the procedural level of evaluation, particularly its reliance on peer review, alongside organizational constraints, contributes to this complexity. The study, set in the Finnish context draws on survey data to explore researchers’ preferences for evaluation practices and the types of skills and expertise they believe should be recognized and rewarded. To further examine the emotional dimensions of these experiences, the study draws on affect theory and focuses on the survey’s open-ended questions, specifically responses from researchers in the Social Sciences and Humanities (N = 181). From this perspective, research evaluation emerges not merely as a technical task, but as an affective practice shaping how researchers experience academic work. To promote sustainable research culture, it is essential to recognize evaluation’s dual role in researchers’ experiences of unhappiness, encompassing both its fundamental ranking and resource allocation functions and its procedural level, where RRA offers potential for improvements. If development work on RRA fails to acknowledge evaluation’s inherent subjective nature, it risks disconnecting researchers’ experiences from policy ideals. Without confronting these limitations, reform efforts may drift towards an idealized vision of evaluation that ultimately becomes self-perpetuating.