Evaluating science is a difficult task which requires meaningful indicators and their smart interpretation. There is no international standard of such indicators. Measuring concepts should rather consider the context, the mission, and the specific tasks of the relevant scientific organisations. For this, a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches is necessary.
Since a couple of years, the Ukraine faces the challenge to develop and apply an evaluation scheme for the institutes of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine. Thereby, the evaluation scheme of the Leibniz Association in Germany serves as a role model. The Leibniz Association evaluates their institutes using a sophisticated evaluation concept with the objective to ensure scientific excellence within the Leibniz Association.
What are the experiences made in Ukraine using the Leibniz evaluation model? Has it been possible to convince the scientists and other actors in Ukraine form this evaluation approach? Can the Leibniz approach serve as a role model for other so-called transition economies? These and other questions were dealt with in a German-Ukrainian team in the project “Eval-Science”. The project was led by Jutta Günther (University of Bremen) and by Igor Yegorov (National Academy of Science of Ukraine, Institute for Economics and Forecasting). It was financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Science and Education. The results are presented in the recently published brochure “Evaluating Science”.
We would like to thank all project partners for excellent cooperation and the BMBF for funding this insightful project.