Changes in Methodology for Assessing Performance of Research Organisations and Influence of Such Changes on Researchers' Behaviour

• Main Authors: Luboš Marek, Stanislava Hronová, Richard Hindls
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Czech Statistical Office 2017-12-01
• Series: Statistika: Statistics and Economy Journal
• Subjects: Assessment methodology; test of significance of the changes; public universities
• Online Access: https://www.czso.cz/documents/10180/45606529/32019717q4004.pdf/e4ade488-2be7-4351-8877-524c4c23f356?version=1.0

Assessing quality of research results on an international scale is a basis for evaluating the level of scientific activities pursued in research organisations. In the past 15 years, significant changes have occurred in the Czech Republic in research management and, in particular, the methodology of assessing research results. The methodology of assessment and its modifications should always be focused on increasing quality of research results; the rules of assessment have their effects on researchers' behaviour. This paper studies a question of whether the changes applied to the methodology of assessing research results in the Czech Republic have supported higher quality research results, i.e., results published in high-quality international journals. The authors have developed their own statistical test to measure significance of such changes, as well as other statistical tests of hypotheses. The main source is represented by the results of assessing public universities in the Czech Republic according to "Methodology for assessing results of research organisations" in 2010 and 2013. Our tests have not proven any statistically significant differences in the numbers of papers published in the journals monitored in the Web of Science and Scopus databases.