Universities have undergone profound changes in the last decades. A shift towards more accountability and to “new public management” practices in the administration of universities took place and... Show moreUniversities have undergone profound changes in the last decades. A shift towards more accountability and to “new public management” practices in the administration of universities took place and led to an increase of the share of project funds in some countries and to the introduction of performance-based funding systems (PRFSs) in others. In all countries, research evaluation’s importance increases. However, while research evaluation is centralized in some countries, evaluation is organized at the institutional level only in others. Thus, the importance of research evaluation and how it is organised varies across countries. In this paper, we present a typology of national research evaluation systems in Europe that sheds light on the complex issue of national differences in the organisation of research evaluation. We use the data of a two-round Delphi survey among specialists in research evaluation as a basis of our analysis and apply Multiple Correspondence Analysis to create a typology of European research evaluation systems that includes a broad range of countries, including countries, for which not much information is available to the English-speaking research community and takes into account that during the last years also the SSH are more concerned with evaluations but the commonly applied evaluation instruments do not fit their research practices. We identify five types of research evaluation: “non-metric, non-SSH” (with Iceland as the best representor), “non-metric, SSH-specific” (Switzerland, “funding, non-metric” (Norway), “funding, metric” (Denmark) and “metric, English” (Estonia). The main result of this analysis is that the national organization of research evaluation system is a complex issue and the research evaluation landscape in Europe is diverse. Yet some components can be identified that define main types of research evaluation. A secondary result is that different types of research evaluation are linked to different conditions in countries. We therefore recommend, that designers of evaluation systems make a conscious link between the goals to achieve, the incentives to promote and the design of the evaluation system, rather than to strive to the unification of evaluation systems. Show less
In the social sciences and humanities book publishing takes a prominent role, both in terms of communicating with international peers and with a broader intelligentsia (Hicks, 2004; Verleysen &... Show moreIn the social sciences and humanities book publishing takes a prominent role, both in terms of communicating with international peers and with a broader intelligentsia (Hicks, 2004; Verleysen & Engels, 2014). Empirical evidence regarding the evolution of the share of scholarly book publications in the total volume of scholarly publications in a given country is rare. In this study we intend to fill this gap with an analysis of the comprehensive coverage data on the share of peer reviewed book publications (book chapters, edited volumes and monographs) that are available from Flanders and Slovenia for the period 2004 to 2015. We supplement these data with data on peer reviewed book chapters and monographs from Norway for the period 2005-2015 as well as data on all types of peer reviewed book publishing for the period 2009 to 2014 for Poland and 2011 to 2015 for Finland. Show less
Pölönen, J.; Auranen, O.; Engels, T.; Kulczycki, E. 2018
In this paper we investigate how a publication indicator developed for the performance-based research funding system (PRFS) in Finland takes national language publications into account. Our... Show moreIn this paper we investigate how a publication indicator developed for the performance-based research funding system (PRFS) in Finland takes national language publications into account. Our analysis is based on 47423 peer-reviewed SSH outputs from 14 Finnish universities published in 2011-2016. SSH research community in Finland is increasingly concerned about the national language publishing. Incentives for English language journal publishing are attributed to the PRFS for allocating block grant annually to universities. In the Norwegian model adopted also in Finland, the weight of outputs in the funding-scheme is dependent on the quality index of publication channels. Our analysis shows that the rating of publication channels results in a fairly balanced representation of Finnish, Swedish and English language journal articles in the PRFS. The system is more favorable to English than Finnish and Swedish language book publications. Publications in other languages, however, are under-represented in the PRFS. The number of journal articles in Finnish has remained relatively stable. The number of Finnish book publications, however, is declining in both low and high rated outlets. We speculate that in addition to the PRFS, publishing patterns are influenced by increased international competition for positions and project funding, as well as other factors than research evaluation. Show less
