Collective Health is a complex disciplinary field which demands evaluation mechanisms capable of recognizing this plurality of models and discourses converging in the concern over the health of populations. We highlight the incompatibility between overvaluing of articles published in high-impact journals, the vast majority of which in the fields of Biomedicine or Epidemiology, and the very complexity of the Collective Health field. To question this association ascribing rationality and objectivity to a form of knowledge on the basis of its sanctioning through use (citations) by the scientific community, we use the distinction between profession and discipline as established by Stephen Toulmin in Human Understanding. Based on this distinction, we ask: "Does the existing form of evaluation (professional authority) help defend the legitimate intellectual aims for development of Collective Health as a discipline?"
Collective Health; Social Sciences in Health; evaluation criteria