IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/epolit/v32y2015i3p329-357.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An assessment of the first “scientific habilitation” for university appointments in Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Abramo
  • Ciriaco D’Angelo

Abstract

Nations with non-competitive higher education systems and with high levels of corruption, are more exposed to phenomena of discrimination and favoritism in faculty recruitment. Italy is a case in point, as shown by empirical studies, judicial reports and media attention. Governments have intervened repeatedly to reduce the problem, with scarce success. The 2010 reforms to the university recruitment system provided that access to the ranks of associate and full professor would now be possible only through an initial “scientific habilitation” to be awarded by sectorial committees of national experts. The objective of this work is to analyze the relationship of the recent habilitation procedure outcomes to the actual scientific merit of the various candidates, as well as to other variables that are explicative of possible practices of favoritism and discrimination. The analyses identify the presence of potential cases of discrimination and favoritism. Copyright Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco D’Angelo, 2015. "An assessment of the first “scientific habilitation” for university appointments in Italy," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 32(3), pages 329-357, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:epolit:v:32:y:2015:i:3:p:329-357
    DOI: 10.1007/s40888-015-0016-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s40888-015-0016-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s40888-015-0016-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Norris, Michael & Oppenheim, Charles, 2010. "Peer review and the h-index: Two studies," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 221-232.
    2. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2012. "The dispersion of research performance within and between universities as a potential indicator of the competitive intensity in higher education systems," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 155-168.
    3. Natalia Zinovyeva & Manuel Bagues, 2015. "The Role of Connections in Academic Promotions," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 264-292, April.
    4. Marzolla, Moreno, 2015. "Quantitative analysis of the Italian National Scientific Qualification," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 285-316.
    5. Marco Pautasso, 2015. "The Italian University Habilitation and the Challenge of Increasing the Representation of Women in Academia," Challenges, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-16, March.
    6. Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Cristiano Giuffrida & Giovanni Abramo, 2011. "A heuristic approach to author name disambiguation in bibliometrics databases for large‐scale research assessments," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 257-269, February.
    7. Auranen, Otto & Nieminen, Mika, 2010. "University research funding and publication performance--An international comparison," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 822-834, July.
    8. Antonis Sidiropoulos & Dimitrios Katsaros & Yannis Manolopoulos, 2007. "Generalized Hirsch h-index for disclosing latent facts in citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 72(2), pages 253-280, August.
    9. Lokman I. Meho & Diane H. Sonnenwald, 2000. "Citation ranking versus peer evaluation of senior faculty research performance: A case study of Kurdish scholarship," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 51(2), pages 123-138.
    10. Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Cristiano Giuffrida & Giovanni Abramo, 2011. "A heuristic approach to author name disambiguation in bibliometrics databases for large-scale research assessments," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 257-269, February.
    11. Jacques Wainer & Paula Vieira, 2013. "Correlations between bibliometrics and peer evaluation for all disciplines: the evaluation of Brazilian scientists," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(2), pages 395-410, August.
    12. Martin Reinhart, 2009. "Peer review of grant applications in biology and medicine. Reliability, fairness, and validity," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(3), pages 789-809, December.
    13. Giovanni Abramo & Tindaro Cicero & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo, 2011. "The dangers of performance-based research funding in non-competitive higher education systems," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(3), pages 641-654, June.
    14. Li, Jiang & Sanderson, Mark & Willett, Peter & Norris, Michael & Oppenheim, Charles, 2010. "Ranking of library and information science researchers: Comparison of data sources for correlating citation data, and expert judgments," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 554-563.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giulio Marini & Viviana Meschitti, 2018. "The trench warfare of gender discrimination: evidence from academic promotions to full professor in Italy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(2), pages 989-1006, May.
    2. Marzolla, Moreno, 2016. "Assessing evaluation procedures for individual researchers: The case of the Italian National Scientific Qualification," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 408-438.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Abramo, Giovanni & D'Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Grilli, Leonardo, 2021. "The effects of citation-based research evaluation schemes on self-citation behavior," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    2. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2013. "The impact of unproductive and top researchers on overall university research performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 166-175.
    3. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Soldatenkova, Anastasiia, 2016. "The ratio of top scientists to the academic staff as an indicator of the competitive strength of universities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 596-605.
    4. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Anastasiia Soldatenkova, 2016. "The dispersion of the citation distribution of top scientists’ publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1711-1724, December.
    5. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Evaluating university research: Same performance indicator, different rankings," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 514-525.
    6. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Francesco Rosati, 2014. "Career advancement and scientific performance in universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 891-907, February.
    7. Camil Demetrescu & Irene Finocchi & Andrea Ribichini & Marco Schaerf, 2020. "On bibliometrics in academic promotions: a case study in computer science and engineering in Italy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2207-2228, September.
    8. Giovanni Abramo & Francesca Apponi & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo, 2024. "The moderating role of the territorial research infrastructure on the geographic proximity effect in research collaborations: a regional-based view," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(6), pages 3149-3168, June.
    9. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Flavia Di Costa, 2014. "Variability of research performance across disciplines within universities in non-competitive higher education systems," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 777-795, February.
    10. Marzolla, Moreno, 2016. "Assessing evaluation procedures for individual researchers: The case of the Italian National Scientific Qualification," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 408-438.
    11. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Andrea Ciriaco & Grilli, Leonardo, 2016. "From rankings to funnel plots: The question of accounting for uncertainty when assessing university research performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 854-862.
    12. Gagolewski, Marek, 2011. "Bibliometric impact assessment with R and the CITAN package," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 678-692.
    13. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Grilli, Leonardo, 2015. "Funnel plots for visualizing uncertainty in the research performance of institutions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 954-961.
    14. Abramo, Giovanni & D'Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Di Costa, Flavia, 2019. "Diversification versus specialization in scientific research: Which strategy pays off?," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 82, pages 51-57.
    15. Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Haddawy, Peter & Cicero, Tindaro & Hassan, Saeed-Ul, 2017. "The solitude of stars. An analysis of the distributed excellence model of European universities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 435-454.
    16. Alison M. J. Buchan & Eva Jurczyk & Ruth Isserlin & Gary D. Bader, 2016. "Global neuroscience and mental health research: a bibliometrics case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(1), pages 515-531, October.
    17. Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Nees Jan Eck, 2020. "Collecting large-scale publication data at the level of individual researchers: a practical proposal for author name disambiguation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 883-907, May.
    18. Jinseok Kim & Jinmo Kim & Jason Owen-Smith, 2019. "Generating automatically labeled data for author name disambiguation: an iterative clustering method," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(1), pages 253-280, January.
    19. Gianluca Fabiano & Andrea Marcellusi & Giampiero Favato, 2020. "Public–private contribution to biopharmaceutical discoveries: a bibliometric analysis of biomedical research in UK," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 153-168, July.
    20. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo, 2022. "Drivers of academic engagement in public–private research collaboration: an empirical study," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 47(6), pages 1861-1884, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Research evaluation; Recruitment; Bibliometrics; Italy; I230; O380;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:epolit:v:32:y:2015:i:3:p:329-357. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.