INFORMAZIONI UNIVERSITARIE

Authors: Pierre Régibeau, Katharine E. Rockett. Economic Policy, Volume 31, Issue 88, October 2016, Pages 611–652.
Many countries perform research assessment of universities, although the methods differ widely. Significant resources are invested in these exercises. Moving to a more mechanical, metrics-based system could therefore create very significant savings. We evaluate a set of simple, readily accessible metrics by comparing real Economics departments to three possible benchmarks of research excellence: a fictitious department composed exclusively of former Nobel Prize winners, actual world-leading departments, and reputation-based rankings of real departments. We examine two types of metrics: publications weighted by the quality of the outlet and citations received. The publication-based metric performs better at distinguishing the benchmarks if it requires at least four publications over a six year period and allows for a top rate for a very small set of elite reviews. Cumulative citations received over two six-year review periods appear to be somewhat more consistent with our three benchmarks than within-period citations, although within-period citations still distinguish quality. We propose a simple evaluation process relying on a composite index with a journal-based and a citations-based component. We also provide rough estimates of the cost: assuming that all fields of research would be amenable to a similar approach, we obtain a total cost of about £12M per review period. (F: Abstract del saggio 28.02.20)