Page 289 - Becoming Metric Wise

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Research Evaluation

8.10.1 Research Level and Contributions
Under this heading the following points are considered: Orientation, tasks
and key results. Orientation and task: the lab is classified as a basic
research lab or an applied research lab. It has a clear statement of goals
and means, and knows its priorities. It is capable of taking on major tasks
for the government and has high productivity.
Key results: the lab presents five research results which fall within the
scope of the lab’s (scientific and/or technological) orientation and goals.
These results are the best ones obtained over the latest five years. Basic
research and applied research labs are evaluated according to different
standards.
For basic research the requirements include:
• doing research on the frontier of science.
• publishing original articles in international journals with high impact.
• publishing monographs.
• giving keynote speeches at important international conferences.
For applied research the corresponding requirements are:
• developing new methods and ideas of importance for the national
economy, social development or national safety.
• making considerable progress in experimentation.
• doing innovative work, especially in key technologies.
• obtaining patents.
• building up a repertoire of new techniques with high potential for
industrial applications.

8.10.2 Increasing Scientific Capacity
This point refers to the research capacity of individual scientists as well as
the lab as a whole. It is subdivided into three sets of requirements. The
first relates to the lab director and upper-level researchers. Here the CVs
of the top persons are presented. The reason for including these in the
evaluation is that labs should be directed by top-level scientists and aca-
demic leaders, not by mediocre scientists, administrators or politicians.
The director must have the intellectual capacity and the time to work in
their lab as a scientist (not just as an administrator), and play a central
scientific role. The upper-level researchers must be researchers with a
known reputation in the field. The second point relates to the personnel
structure and aspects of team-building. Here the internal structure and
collaboration (teamwork) are evaluated. This structure should be such