Research performance evaluation in the German university sector

Daniel, Hans‐Dieter; Fisch, Rudolf

doi:10.1007/bf02020698

Cited by 25 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…In other words, the distribution of publications is heavily and negatively skewed. The study of this phenomenon was pioneered by Lotka (1926) and the regularity known as 'Lotka's law' (the number of people producing n papers is approximately proportional to 1/n 2) has been noted repeatedly since that time (Daniel andFisch 1990, Price 1986). This leads to the third main theme of this area: the fact that, although average output is impossible to estimate exactly, it is not high.…”

Section: Previous Studies Of Research Productivitymentioning

confidence: 98%

Describing and explaining research productivity

1994

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Abstract. This article describes results from a study of academic productivity in Australian higher education. It estimates the output (in terms of quantity of publications) of individual staff and academic departments across different subject areas and types of institution. Concerning research productivity, Australian academics resemble their colleagues in other countries: the average is low, while the range of variation is high. Most papers are produced by few academic staff. Several potential correlates of productivity, including level of research activity, subject area, institutional type, gender, age, early interest in research, and satisfaction with the promotions system, are examined. A model linking departmental context to personal research performance through departmental and personal research activity is developed and tested. The results support the view that structural factors (such as how academic departments are managed and led) combine with personal variables (such as intrinsic interest in the subject matter of one's discipline) to determine levels of productivity. There is also evidence that research and teaching do not form a single dimension of academic performance.A defining characteristic of a university is its commitment to scholarly activities leading to the production of knowledge and ideas. Probably the most critical indicator of research productivity is publication. Widely regarded as the main source of esteem, as a requirement for individual promotion, as evidence of institutional excellence, and as a sine qua non for obtaining competitive research funds, publication is central to scholarly activity and recognition. Indeed, it can be argued that research work only becomes 'a work' in the academic world when it takes on the conventional, physical form of a published paper or its equivalent, and that the most fundamental social processes of science are the communication and exchange of research findings and results (Fox 1983). Consider the time and effort that leading universities expend in publicizing the quantity of their members' books and articles; the growing use of numbers of publications as an indicator of a department's performance; the chief topics of conversation on any tenure, appointments and promotions committee. In the culture of the university, it seems, academic distinction and publications go together.This article has two main objects. It estimates and reports the rate of productivity (as measured by scholarly publication) of Australian academics in the years 1985--1989. Secondly, it considers some factors that are associated with different levels of productivity in the Australian system. Both these objects relate to matters of pivotal importance in contemporary Australian and British higher education policies. These include a deep concern with the quality of higher education provision across the system, greater emphasis on the regular assessment of individual academics' proficiency, policies for linking resource allocation to research output using performance indicators, a...

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Section: Previous Studies Of Research Productivitymentioning

confidence: 98%

Describing and explaining research productivity

1994

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“…Although bibliometrics are now widely seen as having an important place in the evaluation of research (Narin and Hamilton 1996;Daniel and Fisch 1990;van Raan 1993) they are still viewed with suspicion by some of those being evaluated (Collins 1991). It is desirable, therefore, that they should cover many different aspects of research outputs (Martin 1996) and that the evaluees can play a part in helping to create appropriate methodology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New bibliometric techniques for the evaluation of medical schools

Lewison

1998

Scientometrics

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Bibliometrics have been used in novel ways to assist with the evaluation of two medical schools, one in England and one in Sweden. The first evaluation was intended to allow the relative strengths in 26 subfields of five component campuses to be estimated. Selective filters for each subfield were defined, many of them with the help of the school's research staff, so that relevant papers could be retrieved from a database on the basis of their title keywords and specialist journals. The campus outputs were then analysed by the research level of the journals (clinical/basic) and their influence. In the second evaluation, nine different indicators of research output were produced so that the school could be compared with four others in Scandinavia. The indicators included measures of output, co-authorship, journal esteem and citations by papers and by patents_

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“…To promote high-quality research further, more competition in higher education, academic recognition, excellence in research and teaching as well as research funding need to be activated (Daniel and Fisch 1990). Competitive funding fostered a new institutional culture encouraging increased inter-institutional interactions, improved project quality through better monitoring, a broadened research agenda along the value chain, international collaboration and spill-ins as well as more effective research-education linkages (Rajalahti, Woelcke, and Pehu 2005).…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 98%

Explaining strengthening mechanisms, institutional orientations and problematic challenges of university agricultural research in Iran

Sharifzadeh

Abdollahzadeh

2009

Education, Knowledge and Economy

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According to empirical evidence and noted implications of sustainable agricultural development as a systemic and multi-actor process, integration of the research function of higher agricultural education in Iranian agricultural research systems seems to be an ongoing and considerable necessity. With the aim of identification and analysis of institutional orientations, strengthening mechanisms and problematic challenges of university agricultural research in the agricultural research system of Iran, this explanatory research was carried out based on survey strategy. The population of this research consisted of all faculty members of public agricultural faculties and colleges of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT). Using a multi-phase sampling method, 183 faculty members were selected in order to participate in the research by completing the questionnaires used as a research tool. Collected data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Based on the calculated coefficients of variation, two groups of institutional orientations (structural/institutional arrangement and functional targeting) were ranked separately. According to the results of analyzing the strengthening mechanisms, five components were extracted, which explained 75.02% of the total variance. The explanatory factor analysis of problematic challenges extracted four principal components, which explained 75.026% variances of the analyzed set of problematic challenge items. Based on the percentage of variance explained by each of the factors extracted from the factor analysis results, a force field analysis is used to investigate the interaction of two opposing sets of forces, both driving and restraining forces of an agricultural research system that influence any change in the current situation.

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Research performance evaluation in the German university sector

Cited by 25 publications

References 5 publications

Describing and explaining research productivity

Describing and explaining research productivity

New bibliometric techniques for the evaluation of medical schools

Explaining strengthening mechanisms, institutional orientations and problematic challenges of university agricultural research in Iran

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