The Research Quality Assessment exercises
VQR is carried out by ANVUR (Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes) every five years, according to the law No. 232/2016, art. 1, paragraph 339. The Minister of Education, University and Research has to issue a special decree establishing the guidelines and providing for the resources needed to carry out the research assessment exercises. The evaluation process is performed "by Area", based on the 16 academic disciplines areas.
The VQR exercises aim at providing an up-to-date assessment of the state of research in the various scientific fields, in order to promote the improvement of research quality in the assessed institutions and to allocate the merit-based share of the Fondo di Finanziamento Ordinario (FFO) - the financing fund of the Italian university system.
The evaluation of the research outputs is entrusted to a Group of Evaluation Experts for each Area, appointed by ANVUR. The evaluation takes into account the results of a bibliometric algorithm for some scientific areas and the opinions of external experts (peer review) for the others. Peer reviews are also used when the bibliometric algorithm provides ambiguous results.
On January 3rd 2020 l’ANVUR implemented the Ministerial Decree n. 1110/2019 (Linee Guida MIUR per la valutazione della qualità della ricerca) and n. 444/2020 (Integrazione delle Linee Guida per la valutazione della qualità della ricerca (VQR) 2015-2019) publishing the VQR call. For more details, please refer to:
On January 31st 2020 the call for participation in the Groups of Evaluation Experts (in Italian Gruppi di Esperti della Valutazione or GEV) was published. Expressions of interest for participating in the VQR 2015-2019 as members of the GEV can be submitted from February 5th to March 2nd, 2020.
The documents relating to the evaluation criteria of the research outputs, as defined by the GEVs will be published by January 29, 2021.
- Evaluation criteria for research outputs