VQR 2004—2010 (Valutazione della Qualità della Ricerca, Evaluation of Research Quality) is the Italian research assessment exercise that ANVUR (the National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research system) is carrying out on behalf of the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR). With more than 100 participant organizations, almost 70,000 contributors, and an expected total of 240,000 research products to be evaluated, VQR is by far the most ambitious research evaluation exercise ever attempted in Italy.

Official start of VQR was Nov. 7, 2011. Publication of first reports is expected in the late spring of 2013.

For research organizations, like FBK, that are not directly supervised by the Ministry, participation in the evaluation exercise is voluntary and subject to fees. On Sep. 29, 2011, participation of FBK to VQR was formally approved by the Foundation's Board of Directors. Also, the Center for Information Technology and the Center for Materials and Microsystems were identified as the two FBK's departments taking part in the exercise.

The (clickable) timeline above provides a synthetic overview of deadlines and relevant events associated with VQR. The scheme reflects the current situation, as it unfolds day by day to manage unforeseen problems or participant's special needs. Stay tuned on this, since actual dates and deadlines may differ significantly from those originally published in the Ministry decree and the official VQR call.

FBK Relevant Milestones

FBK's Contributors

Authors' participation to VQR is regulated by a set of rules (see the call, Sec. 2.3) establishing who can (or, better, should) contribute to the exercise, how many research products each contributor is expected to submit depending on her/his professional position, contract, role, etc.. While rather unambiguous for the (Italian) university environment, the same rules don't apply verbatim to non-academic organizations like FBK. Some amount of interpretation was thus required to account for FBK's specificities, while preserving the comparative purpose of the exercise.

Overall, 138 authors shall contribute to the FBK's participation in the VQR, for a total of 640 research products to be submitted for evaluation.

Research products have been selected and assigned to authors with the aim of maximizing the FBK's expected overall score. Simulations are accessible here (login required).