In this paper, I study the effects quantifying knowledge on the organization of disciplinary fields. Using an original dataset of about 44,000 British social scientists and bibliographic information for their published, peer-reviewed articles, I show that the introduction of standardized research evaluations disturbed local academic labor markets in British higher education, leading to patterns of interinstitutional mobility that altered the epistemic diversity of social science disciplines and the organization of their academic fields. Much like a market-based intervention, research evaluations lead to a form of epistemic matching that has distinct consequences on how knowledge is generated. In particular, when evaluations affect organizational units (such as academic departments) and stress disciplinary norms, they foster forms of isomorphism that lead to reductions in a discipline’s thematic diversity and a more homogeneous structure for the field.
