Academic promotion in Italy
Academic promotion in Italy
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意大利学术推广
作者：
G. Gaetani;A. Ferraris
主席先生--在意大利，正式教授级别的终身职位的任命不是通过当地特设搜索委员会或在国际科学期刊上刊登广告来处理的；相反，所有空缺都提交给罗马的大学和科学研究与技术部(MURST)，该部每四到五年宣布一次全国所有学科的竞争。这种特殊的程序对意大利学术机构岌岌可危的健康状况造成了不利影响。例如，1988年，在医学院的数百个终身职位空缺中，有5个是内科专科的教授职位。一个由该专业的五名教授组成的委员会对16名申请者进行了评估，其中一人担任主席。州法律要求这些委员会只通过检查申请者的科学成果来确定申请者的“完全科学成熟度”；没有其他要求或具体指导方针，候选人永远不会被面试。委员会的自由裁量权几乎是无限的。因此，涉及教学、研究和临床实践的繁重责任和职责的终身职位的候选人，在评估时可能不考虑申请者以前的教学经验、临床技能和对拨款申请的熟练程度。关于最佳五人组的最终决定终于在1989年11月达成。几个月后，委员会的会议记录就出来了，但没有提到用来评估申请者“科学成熟度”的标准。因此，我们决定检查广泛应用的基于文献计量学分析的研究评估指标是否支持该委员会的选择。对五名成功的候选人(获胜者)和四名在科学界特别受欢迎的被拒绝的申请者(失败者)进行了搜索。MED LINE数据库提供了1966至1988年间所有出版物的清单。然而，发表量只是对研究成果总量的一种衡量，并不能说明工作的质量。由于引文频率分析在科学评价中的应用越来越多，因此对每个候选人的引文进行了搜索。从科学引文索引(SCI)数据库中获得1965-1988年的引文，其中候选文献是第一作者或最后作者。这种方法至少在一定程度上克服了在常规搜索中将引文授予
SIR-In Italy, appointments to tenured positions at the full professor level are not handled through local ad hoc search committees or advertisements in international scientific journals; instead, all vacancies are submitted to the Ministry of University and Scientific Research and Technology (MURST) in Rome, which every four to five years announces a national competition for all disciplines. This peculiar procedure contributes adversely to the precarious state of health of academic institutions in Italy. For example, in 1988, among the several hundred tenured positions vacant in schools of medicine, five were for professorships in a specialty branch of internal medicine. A committee of five professors in that specialty, with one acting as chairman, evaluated 16 applicants. The committees are asked by state law to ascertain only the" full scientific maturity" of applicants, through examination of their scientific output; there are no other requirements or specific guidelines and the candidates are never interviewed. The discretionary powers of a committee are almost unlimited. It is therefore possible for candidates for a tenured position involving heavy responsibilities and duties in teaching, research and clinical practice to be evaluated without taking into consideration the applicants' previous experience in teaching, clinical skills and proficiency in grant applications. A final decision about the best five was finally reached in November 1989. The committee's proceedings were available after several months, but there was no mention of the criteria used to evaluate the applicants'" scientific maturity". We therefore decided to check whether widely applied indicators for evaluation of research based on bibliometric analysis did support the choices of that committee. A search was made on the five successful candidates (winners), and on four rejected applicants (losers) who are especially well thought of in the scientific community. The MED LINE database provided the list of all publications from 1966 to 1988. However, a publication count gives only a measure of the total volume of the research output and does not indicate the quality of the work. Because citation frequency analysis has been increasingly used in the evaluation of science, a search was made of the citations for each candidate. Citations from 1965 to 1988 were obtained from the Science Citation Index (SCI) database for the articles where the candidates appeared as first or last author. This approach overcomes, at least partly, the criticism that in a routine search citations are awarded to