The report on the evaluation of the quality of Italian research (VQR) for the period 2020-2024 was presented today in Rome. The evaluation exercise is managed by the National Agency for the Evaluation of Research (Anvur), which sets the timelines and provides the supporting IT systems, together with the Ministry of University. The Meloni Government has recently intervened to modify the agency’s governance, raising no small criticisms.
Research in our country is largely produced in the form of articles in specialized journals, books, and patents, both in universities and specialized research centers. Since the beginning of this evaluation exercise (back in 2014), the system’s actors (number of universities, research centers) have remained stable, but the products to be evaluated by experts have increased enormously (from 1 to 4 per structured researcher). This has greatly slowed down the process without increasing its efficiency or effectiveness.
From the statistical results presented in the report, it is clear that if each structured researcher submitted only 1 research product, the best one, the statistical result would not change. The VQR report shows that large universities have more resources, manage to produce more results, and that the Italian race to publication has serious distortions. The quality of research is evaluated based on the impact of the contribution, the reputation of the journal or publisher, and originality. However, these criteria are not the basis of the career progression system in universities, so in many scientific fields the quality of research of professors who have been promoted is actually lower than that of those who have not been promoted.
Interdisciplinarity is another serious problem in academia; stepping outside one’s own patch is detrimental to career advancement, limiting scientific freedom and reducing research quality. Just think of the mathematicians who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, who would not have obtained any professorship in Italy. The evaluation of research quality is also carried out over a limited time span (the latest considers publications from 2020 to 2024) and its outcome influences ministerial funding. A longer-term project is therefore ‘killed,’ as my students say.
The problem of how to evaluate research quality without creating further distortion affects all countries that publicly fund universities. In Great Britain, the Research Excellence Framework is subject to criticisms very similar to those in Italy. I have no solution to offer the reader, but I observe that after the end of the PNRR funding binge, tough times await us and this evaluation exercise does not seem to offer any decisive insights.
The Meloni Government is rewriting the rules for the recruitment of university professors, but we will deal with this when we know the ‘new’ rules.
