This book arose from a conversation between Lars Engwall and Richard Whitley during the 2003 European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium in Copenhagen about important topics for future research. We agreed then, and this has been amply confirmed by subsequent events, that the proliferation of research eval- tion schemes, especially in Europe, was an important feature of the changing re- tionships between the state, universities and scientific research more generally, which needed systematic and comparative analysis. With the support of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, this discussion led to workshops in Uppsala and Manchester involving colleagues from Australia, Germany and the Netherlands at which the main framework for such an analysis was developed. This framework then formed the basis for the conference at Bielefeld in 2005 at which earlier versions of most of the papers in this volume were presented and extensively discussed. We are very grateful for the support of the PRIME network of the European Commission and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science for this c- ference, as well as the invaluable efforts of Peter Weingart of the University of Bielefeld. We are also greatly indebted to the members of the Editorial Board who commented on various drafts of these papers as well as to Aant Elzinga, Stefan Kuhlmann, Philippe Laredo, Arie Rip and Nic Vonortas who acted as referees.