LIBRI DI FERRUCCIO BIOLCATI RINALDI

Although bibliometrics and research evaluation seem to be almost identical, bibliometrics is an autonomous discipline that can have various forms when used as an instrument of quantitative research evaluation. The quantitative evaluation of publication and citation data is now performed in almost all nations around the globe. This is done for various purposes and by various stakeholders. Bibliometrics is used in research performance evaluation, especially in university and government labs, and is also used by policymakers, research directors and administrators, information specialists and librarians, and researchers themselves.

Meccanismi e valutazione: un confronto tra approcci - The paper introduces theory-oriented evaluation, a set of approaches that argue for a stronger role of theory in evaluation. Theory-oriented evaluation criticizes mainstream objectives-inputs-outputs evaluation for poor contribution to knowledge cumulation due according to these authors - to the overwhelming role played by method. The paper develops a comparison between the two most influential approaches in theory-oriented evaluation, i.e. Carol Weiss’ theory-based evaluation and its concepts of program theory and implementation theory, and realistic evaluation by Ray Pawson and Nick Tilley, based on the concepts of context, mechanism and outcome. For each of them principal features and problems will be discussed; moreover, a strict comparison will be worked out to define similarities and differences.

Key words: theory-based evaluation, realistic evaluation, mechanism, context, implementation, perfect and bounded rationality

Parole chiave: valutazione basata sulla teoria, valutazione realistica, meccanismo, contesto, implementazione, razionalità assoluta e limitata

Ranking e valutazione: il caso delle classifiche delle università - Abstract The paper consists of two parts. The first is more general: it introduces to university ranking, shows the leading international ranking, discusses the uses people make of rankings. The second focuses on Italian ranking Censis-la Repubblica developing two different kinds of analyses: after considering indicators validity and reliability, principal components analysis and cluster analysis are applied to a partial replication of Censis-la Repubblica data. A list of points to pay attention comes out of these analyses: it can be useful when defining rankings of complex institutions such as universities.

Key words: ranking, university ranking, Censis-la Repubblica, validity and reliability, normalisation and combination of indicators.