Principles for the assessment of research and researchers at the University of Oulu

Assessment of the quality of research at the University of Oulu is primarily based on its scientific content and qualitative evaluations, in which peer reviews are central. The criteria and indicators used must be carefully selected on the basis of the purpose, objective and discipline of the assessment, and on the available data. Publication metrics may be used to support the overall assessment when relevant to the discipline and available data, but they should never replace qualitative evaluation. Qualitative assessment should focus on the content and quality of the research and not on the reputation of the authors or the publication channel such as the journal or its publisher.

Popularizing research results, active engagement in public discussions and interaction with various stakeholders outside academia, as well as open access to research results, all promote visibility and contribute to creating societal impact. Societal impact and openness should be the objects of any assessment of research and researchers. Teaching and supervision tasks, together with the skills and merits accumulated in connection with these, are seen as an essential part of a researcher's work, as are other activities in the university and science community.

Any assessment will affect those assessed. The University of Oulu expects all participants involved in the assessment of research, whether they are assessors or assessees, to behave with integrity and to conform to the TENK recommendations for the responsible conduct of research.

Compliance with ethical principles, research integrity, equality and avoidance of discrimination on the grounds of gender or age, for example, is ensured at all stages of the assessment. The data used are compiled in such a way that they cover the matters to be assessed as well as possible, so that fair comparisons can be made.

Both quantitative and qualitative assessments of research have their advantages and their limitations. The sources of publication data for quantitative analysis must be selected on the basis of their reliability, accuracy, quality, transparency and coverage, and all limitations related to data sources must be explicitly acknowledged. Quantitative indicators are used judiciously, selecting only those that are most appropriate for the purpose of the assessment. The quality of research is complex and cannot be described in terms of a single indicator.

Differences between disciplines, e.g. in publishing and citation practices and interdisciplinarity must be taken into account. Research and researchers must be assessed as representatives of their own field of research and in relation to the objectives of the assessment, and therefore the suitability of the indicators used and any potential disciplinary biases in these should be explicitly acknowledged. As a member of CoARA and a signatory to DORA, we value a wide range of research outputs (such as data, software and methods), that will be considered taking into account the diversity of research fields and results.

Assessment activities should be tailored to the scale of the research being assessed. Thus particular caution should be used when interpreting quantitative indicators in the assessment of an individual researcher. Particular attention should be paid to the researcher’s discipline, career stage and differences of career paths, and also to any possible effects of the language in which the research took place and the time of its publication.

The objectives of the assessment, the methods and data used and the interpretation of the results should all be transparent. All the stages in the assessment process should be described in a transparent manner and the choices made must be clearly justified and documented.