L'importanza della riforma della valutazione della ricerca

Abstract

The presentation began with an introduction on the twenty-year context of international declarations and coalitions for Open Access and Open Science; a context, this one, that saw its first beginnings with the Budapest OA Initiative in 2002 and which culminated with the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information in 2024 (of which UNIMI was one of the first Italian universities to sign), and in which are also included the Dichiarazione di Messina - to whose twentieth anniversary this speech was presented - and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment. It was precisely the European reform of research evaluation that was the main focus of the talk, outlining its main stages and emphasising how such a rapid development and massive adherence can be read as an indication of the need for such a reform. In addition, it was emphasised that the coalition members pledged to work together to enable a systemic reform in order to go beyond an exclusively bibliometric evaluation, to recognise the multiplicity of expressions of research and to focus on open science practices and quality rather than quantity. The signatories also undertook to fulfil the commitments made when signing the ARRA (Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment). Indeed, the second part of the presentation focused on the principles and commitments set out in the ARRA, highlighting - for each of these - what has been done and what is being done both in the foreign context and - above all - in the Italian context. Among the examples given was the creation of a dashboard on the collaborations of UNIMI authors and departments based exclusively on OpenAlex open data. Lastly, the Italian national chapter was presented, with its organisation and the actions taken (such as the launch of the dedicated website, the Italian translation of the ARRA and the launch of a new working group), to close with an open discussion on the actions still to be taken to make the reform truly effective, including the need for collaboration and dialogue with ministerial bodies.