Evaluation of Research Quality

The Research Quality Assessment exercises (in Italian Valutazione della Qualità della Ricerca or VQR) aim at evaluating the research outcomes of public universities and research institutes.
 
VQR is carried out by ANVUR (Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes) every five years, according to the law No. 232/2016, art. 1, paragraph 339. The Minister of Education, University and Research has to issue a special decree establishing the guidelines and providing for the resources needed to carry out the research assessment exercises. The evaluation process is performed "by Area", based on the 16 academic disciplines areas.
 
The VQR exercises aim at providing an up-to-date assessment of the state of research in the various scientific fields, in order to promote the improvement of research quality in the assessed institutions and to allocate the merit-based share of the Fondo di Finanziamento Ordinario (FFO) - the financing fund of the Italian university system.
 
The evaluation of the research outputs is entrusted to a Group of Evaluation Experts for each Area, appointed by ANVUR. The evaluation takes into account the results of a bibliometric algorithm for some scientific areas and the opinions of external experts (peer review) for the others. Peer reviews are also used when the bibliometric algorithm provides ambiguous results.