A Guideline for Assessment of Research Units and Personnel to Achieve Academic Excellence

Abstract

Assessment of research units and personnel has widely been conducted using various different criteria. Since many of the utilized indicators are much qualitative in nature, a guideline that involves the use of clear and easily assessable quantitative indicators are desired. This article presents a guideline for assessment of research units and personnel to achieve academic excellence. In the case of research units (especially those affiliated with universities), the following indicators may be used: (1) number of publications in Scopus-indexed journals (or TCI-indexed journals in the cases of humanity- and social science-based research units) and number of granted patents; (2) quality of research publications as determined by the number of Scopus-based citations; (3) extramural grants; (4) number of master’s and doctoral graduates and (5) results that have been practically implemented. In the case of research personnel, the following indicators may be used: (1) number of publications in Scopus- indexed journal – both the total number of publications and number of publications in first- and second-quartile journals may be considered; (2) number of Scopus-based citations; (3) h-index as calculated from Scopus- based citations; (4) number of extramural grants, both the total number of grants and number of grants served as principal investigators; (5) number of outputs that have been practically implemented along with their impact. The proposed guideline is partially in accordance with the criteria used by QS and Times Higher Education World University Rankings, so it should be readily implementable and well accepted.