Project Description
Gunnar Sivertsen is Research Professor and Head of bibliometric research at the Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU) in Oslo. His expertise is in policy-oriented studies of research related to statistics, performance indicators, evaluation, funding, and science policy. Sivertsen has advised the development of new systems for research assessment and monitoring in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Flanders (Belgium), Norway and Sweden. He has provided expert advice on research performance indicators for the institutional funding schemes on a regular basis to the Ministry of Education and Research in Norway (since 2004) and the Ministry of Higher Education in Denmark (since 2009).
Sivertsen is presently involved as an expert in a Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) which is organized by the European Commission with 14 participating countries. The focus is on Performance-based Research Funding Systems (PRFS), one of the mechanisms through which countries try to increase the performance of their public-sector research systems. The nature of these systems – based on peer reviews, metrics or a combination of both – varies considerably among countries. The MLE will provide a learning opportunity for countries to better understand the advantages and drawbacks of various options, improve ongoing PRFS and deepen the assessments of the impact of different systems. A report from the project is expected by October 2017. Web page of the project: https://rio.jrc.ec.europa.eu/en/policy-support-facility/mle-performance-based-funding-systems
Most recent relevant publications:
Sivertsen, G. (2017). Unique, but still the best practice? The Research Excellence Framework (REF) in an international perspective. Forthcoming in Palgrave Communications: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/palcomms/.
Zhang, L., Rousseau, R., Sivertsen, G. (2017). Science deserves to be judged by its contents, not by its wrapping: Revisiting Seglen’s work on journal impact and research evaluation. PLoS ONE, 12(3): e0174205.
Sivertsen, G. (2016). Publication-Based Funding: The Norwegian Model. In M. Ochsner, S.E. Hug, H.D. Daniel (Eds.), Research Assessment in the Humanities. Towards Criteria and Procedures (pp. 79-90). Zürich: Springer Open.
Sivertsen, G. (2016). Patterns of internationalization and criteria for research assessment in the social sciences and humanities. Scientometrics, 107(2), 357-368.
Piro, F.N. & Sivertsen, G. (2016). How can differences in international university rankings be explained? Scientometrics, 109(3), 2263–2278.
