ShareThe CAR approves measures to guarantee equality and work-life balance in the evaluation of teaching and research staff
At the last meeting of the 2024 Research Evaluation Committee, the two new professors who will be part of it from January 1, 2025, were also presented.
The Research Assessment Commission (CAR) met online yesterday for its second meeting of 2024. The meeting began with the presentation of the report by the president of the CAR, Maria Pau Ginebra, and the secretary of the CAR, Esteve Arboix Codina, which focused on the adaptation of the commission's activity to the mandatory regulatory changes resulting from the approval of the Organic Law of the University System (LOSU). In this new regulatory context, the CAR has had to adapt the criteria for issuing research and advanced research accreditations to the new regulatory framework. The application schedule for these new criteria foresees that they will be approved in January, that February will be the last month in which the research and advanced research accreditations currently in force can be requested, and that during the month of March the procedures and applications will be adapted to the new criteria so that the call with the new criteria will open in April.
Subsequently, the commission approved the criteria for evaluating the research activity of contracted teaching and research staff (PDI) and civil servant PDI for 2025. The commission annually approves a resolution with the criteria for evaluating the research activity, also known as the six-year research period, for contracted PDI. On this occasion, the CAR adopted the agreement to apply the same evaluation criteria that the National Commission for the Evaluation of Research Activity (CNEAI) applies to civil servant PDI. The next item on the agenda was the approval of the procedure for evaluating the research activity of civil servant and contracted PDI for periods ending no later than December 31, 2024. The resolution was then approved, which publicizes the procedure and certification of the assessment of individual teaching and management merits of civil servant and contracted teaching and research staff of Catalan public universities, accrued until December 31, 2024.
Finally, the agreement of the Research Evaluation Committee was approved on measures tgo guarantee equality and work-life balance in the evaluation of teaching and research staff. The CAR has been taking the gender perspective into consideration in its activities for years. For this reason, it has reflected and debated in depth on several occasions on the impact of gender in research evaluation processes and has carried out different actions that can be consulted here. The agreement now approved updates and formalizes the measures that have been carried out since the beginning of 2024 to take into account equality and the reconciliation of personal, family and work life in the field of evaluation procedures for university teaching and research staff. Specifically, the agreement states that in relation to the procedures for accrediting the merits of associate professors and full professors, special situations arising from maternity and paternity leave, sick leave or sick leave, or any other justified personal circumstance that has resulted in an irregular research and teaching career will be taken into consideration. Regarding the evaluation of the research activity of civil servant and contracted teaching and research staff, applicants for a research section who justify that they are in special situations arising from maternity and paternity leave, sick leave or any other justified personal circumstance that has resulted in an irregular research and teaching career will have the right to have certain measures applied to them. This involves including in their application for the evaluation of research sections the periods and contributions published in these years during which they have been in special situations; presenting four contributions, instead of the required five, and being granted the research section if they obtain at least 24 points.
The CAR meeting also saw the introduction of the two new members appointed by the AQU Catalunya Governing Council at its last meeting, on 10 December, who will officially join the CAR on 1 January. They are Drs María Isabel Muñoz Gracia, Professor of Ecology at the University of Barcelona, and Dolors JuvinyàCanal, Professor of Nursing at the University of Girona. In addition, the CAR members were informed that the Agency's Governing Council has renewed Dr Eva Anduiza Perea, Professor of Political Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who had completed her first term as a member, for a second non-renewable term.