A common complaint about the Spanish scientific system is that researchers’ work was evaluated by weight. Incentives such as the six-year term, which required a minimum of scientific publications to receive a salary increase of 125 euros gross per month for full professors and 150 euros for full professors, evaluated scientific papers every six years. The basic measure was the number of scientific publications in scientific journals, classified according to their impact factor. This led to studies that were sometimes not considered important by other scientists and were not cited by them, or works that had no social impact, to be evaluated. This way of measuring science is also the reason for the increasing prevalence of special issues in scientific journals, which charge fees for the publication of articles and created space for irrelevant studies that served to improve the status of the scientist in exchange for public money.
In a first step toward repairing the broken system, the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) on Monday released a draft resolution aimed at changing the criteria for evaluating research six-year periods. Anyone who would like to express their opinion on the initiative or suggest changes can do so for the first time until November 19th.
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On the one hand, the evaluation of the articles will not only be quantitative, with regard to the number of published articles and the impact of the journal. It will also be necessary to explain the value of the contribution with a narrative. In addition, qualitative aspects that have not previously been taken into account will be assessed, such as participation in archaeological excavations, which have not necessarily been reflected in a publication during this six-year period, or studies or reports with social or scientific value.
The new rating system also improves the rating of publications in open access repositories. According to Ángel María Delgado Vázquez, professor of documentation at the Pablo de Olavide University of Seville, “although the idea of evaluating repositories is already present in the Science Law of 2011, there was a lack of correspondence between what was read there and reality .” , because it was evaluated with journals that were not open access.” Isidro Aguillo from the Institute for Public Goods and Policies of the CSIC, who is positive about the changes in the system, warns of a problem that could arise in this section. In addition to Scopus and Web of Science, the duopoly of databases containing abstracts and article citations used for the review, it includes Dimensions, a database linked to Springer Nature, the publisher that publishes the journal Nature and 9,750 Euros per publication requires articles. “It would be better to promote journals that do not have these or abusive allegations, such as those from university journals or scientific associations,” says Aguillo.
Moving from a relatively simple system such as weight assessment to a more complex system with the inclusion of new assessment criteria or the inclusion of a narrative of one’s work will, at least initially, complicate the assessment task of thousands of files (17,000 researchers were evaluated in the last call). Aguillo believes that “creating an appropriate narrative will require increased efforts from researchers to include the right clues and that they will have to resort to the help of university libraries or even consulting firms.” This also increases the work of the evaluation committees, which are sent to others evaluation criteria, which will lead to interpretation conflicts and delays.
After this first contact with the new criteria, which follow the international recommendations expressed in the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and in the agreements and principles of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), they will be used as of Start applying for accreditation as a university professor next year.
Delgado Vázquez believes that although it is a profound and necessary change to break the vicious circle in which the scientific system has fallen, it is a method that will improve the lives of scientists without Pressure to publish a large number of articles that goes nowhere. “Fewer articles are being published, but better ones that say meaningful things and have value,” says the documentary filmmaker. In addition, there will be a transition period during which the previous criteria will continue to be taken into account, so that adaptation to the new system will take place gradually.
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