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This article deals with the practice of journal ranking begun by the Agency for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (AERES). The article examines the aims, means and repercussions on the organization of the scientific field, of that ranking process. Analyzing the AERES’s practice of favoring a quantitative approach to assessment, the article shows that the aim is to make the results of assessment more readily utilizable by administrative and political management organizations. This thus robs the universities of their independence and introduces the management of research and higher education by outside bodies.