Valutazione della qualità della ricerca in scienze della comunicazione

This project aims at constructing an instrument that allows measuring research output in the field of Communication sciences, and that will then be transfered to the field of Educational sciences, analysing thus its potential as instrument for measuring research output also in other fields of social sciences.As in social sciences in general, also in Communication sciences it is not possible to measure research output only through publication activity for different reasons, including the availability of corresponding databases, but also the importance of other types of activities; other dimensions have therefore to be taken into account. In the project, we include among ohters other aspects of reputation in the scientific community (measured for example through membership in boards of academic societies) or knowledge transfer towards society, but also towards public and private organisations and through teaching activities. In this project, different descriptors and indicators are developed. They allow building profiles of individual research units, which can then be compared over time or with other research unit.The instrument is constructed in strong collaboration with the community in order to assure its acceptance within the community: an expert group composed of professors in the field representing different universities in the country as well as the scholarly association in the field accompanies the project in regular meetings. The developed descriptors and indicators are tested in a survey covering the whole field of Communication sciences in Switzerland, and will be adapted to the field of Educaitonal sciences in a second step.