Governing Science: How Science Policy Shapes Research Content

This review explores contributions by science policy studies and the sociology of science to our understanding of the impact of governance on research content. Contributions are subsumed under two perspectives, namely an impact ofperspective that searches for effects of specific governance arrangements and an impact onperspective that asks what factors contribute to the construction of research content and includes governance among them. Our review shows that little is known so far about the impact of governance on knowledge content. A research agenda does not necessarily need to include additional empirical phenomena but must address the macro-micro-macro link inherent to the question in its full complexity, and systematically exploit comparative approaches in order to establish causality. This requires interdisciplinary collaboration between science policy studies, the sociology of science, and bibliometrics, which all can contribute to the necessary analytical toolbox.