Ricerc@Sapienza

In this paper, we propose the adoption of moral philosophy and in particular normative ethics, to clarify the concept of “good” evaluation of “research practices”. Using MacIntyre (1985)’s notion of a practice we argue that research is a form of social practice. As a result of this characterization, we claim that research practice typically requires three typologies of researcher: the leader, the good researcher and the honest researcher.

Research assessment exercises have enjoyed ever-increasing popularity in many countries in recent years, both as a method to guide public funds allocation and as a validation tool for adopted research support policies. Italy’s most recently completed evaluation effort (VQR 2011–14) required each university to submit to the Ministry for Education, University, and Research (MIUR) 2 research products per author (3 in the case of other research institutions), chosen in such a way that the same product is not assigned to two authors belonging to the same institution.

Research assessment exercises have now become common evaluation tools in a number of countries. These exercises have the goal of guiding merit-based public funds allocation, stimulating improvement of research productivity through competition and assessing the impact of adopted research support policies.