Science and technology metrics for research policy evaluation: some insights from a Moroccan experience

If peer review has been and is continuing to be an acceptable approach for evaluation, Science and technology (S&T) metrics have been demonstrated to be a more accurate and objectively independent tools for evaluation. This article provides insights from an example of a relevant use of S&T metrics to assess a national research policy and subsequently universities achievements within this policy. One of the main findings were that just by setting S&T metrics as objective indicators there was an increasing research outputs: productivity, impact, and collaboration. However, overall productivity is still far low when brought to academic staff size and that a huge difference exists among universities achievements. The reliability of scientometric evaluation’s use as a performance tool is increasing in universities and the culture of this evaluation usefulness in research policy has widely spread. Surprisingly, this evaluation shows that even if S&T metrics have substantially increased, funds execution as means of rate of payment on total budget was less than 15 % due mainly to the high and unusual increase in funding allocations than was before the policy, a fact to which universities were managerially not well prepared. Finally, future evaluation should follow in the very short-term to quantify the impact extent of the policy revealed in this annual evaluation.