L’évaluation de la recherche : l’exemple de trois pays européens

• Main Authors: Séverine Louvel, Stefan Lange
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires du Mirail 2010-02-01
• Series: Sciences de la Société
• Subjects: academic research; evaluation; research policy; international comparison; Germany; Italy
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/sds/2726
• ISSN: 1168-1446; 2275-2145

Research evaluation is at the heart of considerable controversy in Europe. This article compares the evaluation procedures in use in the UK (the Research Assessment Exercise introduced in 1986), in Italy (the Valutazione Triennale della Ricerca conducted between 2001 and 2003) and in Germany (the Excellenz Initiative launched by the Federal Government; the Ranking of institutions and disciplines by the German Science Council – both started in 2004). It analyses these reforms with the help of two ideal-types defined from the knowledge base and the link between such knowledge and public action (Gläser, 2007; Whitley, 2007; Gläser, Lange et al., 2010). National evaluation systems can be predominantly qualified as « intrusive evaluation systems » or « competitive evaluation systems » with a strong or weak impact on research. However, various forms of hybridization reveal the tensions inherent to all research evaluation systems and the difficult decisions as to which kinds of knowledge which should be given priority.