A bimonthly publication of AQU Catalunya

47

March 2010

AQU Catalunya has been working since July 2009 on producing the empirical profiles of candidates for non-civil servant tenured teaching positions who applied for pre-selection reports and those applying for research accreditation in the Humanities and Social Sciences, using the information given in their curriculum vitaes (approximately 5,000 have been submitted since 2003).

The study has various objectives:

• To establish an empirical database to assist the work of evaluation by review panels.
• To produce general publication listings. General journal lists contain all of the titles of journals in each field for the different bibliometric indices used, including their position. They are not journal lists used by AQU review teams for assessment purposes.
• To have more available evidence for constructing benchmarks in these areas, such as the required minimum number of articles, the lists in which a journal should be referred to, and whether or not it should be the same number in each field.
• To have benchmarks that are recognised by all quality assurance agencies so that procedures for the mutual recognition of assessment results can be set up.

The envisaged date of completion for the study is September 2010, and the preliminary conclusions were presented at the Workshop on Research Assessment in the Humanities and Social Sciences (University of Barcelona, 28-29 January 2010). These are as follows:

• Thought needs to be given to the criteria and standards so that there is a more explicit frame of reference that enables candidates to be more certain about their possibilities of passing the assessment.
• The information needs to be set out in a predefined CV model so that an initial assessment can be made of certain details that are provided.
• An empirical data gathering system needs to be developed to allow for the periodic adaptation of the criteria.
• This information should be used for other research assessment processes.

 Study of the merit profile for the accreditation of non-civil servant tenured teaching positionc in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Esteve Arboix, AQU Catalunya