ROUND TABLE ED.2013

Italian and European experience in scientific research assessment: a mutual comparison

September 13, 2013 (from 11.30 am to 1.15 pm)

How to create a coherent methodology to assess the research in industrial engineering produced by European universities? Research  assessment  can  play  an  important  role  in  improving  performance  and  quality of scientific works, providing a relevant social and economic impact, differentiating research missions, attracting new talented researchers and driving university and research careers. At European level, there is a host of ranking and assessment systems which, regardless of the country-specific motivations, have been triggered by the common need to make countable what intrinsically has evident elements of intangibility.

By capitalizing on the different time scales of the experiences so far conducted, a mutual comparison, and acquisition of “lessons learned”, between the assessment practices adopted in the major European countries could be beneficial above all for those research systems, as for the Italian case, which only recently have been adopting more formalized assessment criteria.

The roundtable, organized within the Summer School sponsored by AIDI (the Italian academic association of professors and researchers in industrial engineering), aims to gather representatives from twin academic associations operating in major European countries in order to share the main assessment practices and discuss the main issues and opportunities for getting towards their harmonization at the European level.