arXiv subjects

Giovanni Abramo

Publications and source records attributed to Giovanni Abramo.

133 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

On tit for tat: Franceschini and Maisano versus ANVUR regarding the Italian research assessment exercise VQR 2011-2014

The response by Benedetto, Checchi, Graziosi & Malgarini (2017) (hereafter "BCG&M"), past and current members of the Italian Agency for Evaluation of University and Research Systems (ANVUR), to Franceschini and Maisano's ("F&M") article (2017), inevitably draws us into the debate. BCG&M in fact complain "that almost all criticisms to the evaluation procedures adopted in the two Italian research assessments VQR 2004-2010 and 2011-2014 limit themselves to criticize the procedures without proposing anything new and more apt to the scope". Since it is us who raised most criticisms in the literature, we welcome this opportunity to retrace our vainly "constructive" recommendations, made with the hope of contributing to assessments of the Italian research system more in line with the state of the art in scientometrics. We see it as equally interesting to confront the problem of the failure of knowledge transfer from R&D (scholars) to engineering and production (ANVUR's practitioners) in the Italian VQRs. We will provide a few notes to help the reader understand the context for this failure. We hope that these, together with our more specific comments, will also assist in communicating the reasons for the level of scientometric competence expressed in BCG&M's heated response to F&M's criticism.

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arXiv2018

The relationship among research productivity, research collaboration, and their determinants

This work provides an in-depth analysis of the relation between the different types of collaboration and research productivity, showing how both are influenced by some personal and organizational variables. By applying different cross-lagged panel models, we are able to analyze the relationship among research productivity, collaboration and their determinants. In particular, we show that only collaboration at intramural and domestic level has a positive effect on research productivity. Differently, all the forms of collaboration are positively affected by research productivity. The results can favor the reexamination of the theories related to these issues, and inform policies that would be more suited to their management.

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arXiv2018

Who benefits from a country's scientific research?

When a publication is cited it generates a benefit. Through the country affiliations of the citing authors, it is possible to work upwards, tracing the countries that benefit from results produced in a national research system. In this work we take the knowledge flow from Italy as an example. We develop a methodology for examination of how the knowledge flows vary across fields, in each beneficiary country. We also measure the field comparative advantage of countries in benefiting from Italian research. The results from this method can inform bilateral research collaboration policies.

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arXiv2018

Selection committees for academic recruitment: does gender matter?

Underrepresentation of women in the academic system is a problem common to many countries, often associated with gender discrimination. In the Italian academic context in particular, favoritism is recognized as a diffuse phenomenon affecting hiring and career advancement. One of the questions that naturally arises is whether women who do assume decisional roles, having witnessed other phenomena of discrimination, would practice less favoritism than men in similar positions. Our analysis refers to the particular case of favoritism in the work of university selection committees responsible for career advancement. We observe a moderate positive association between competitions with expected outcomes and the fact the committee president is a woman. Although committees presided by women give more weight to scientific merit than those presided by men, favoritism still occurs. In fact, in the case the committee president is a woman, the single most important factor for the success of a candidate is joint research with the president; while in the case of male presidents, it is the years together in the same university.

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arXiv2018

The combined effects of age and seniority on research performance of full professors

In this work we examine the relationship between research performance, age, and seniority in academic rank of full professors in the Italian academic system. Differently from a large part of the previous literature, our results generally show a negative monotonic relationship between age and research performance, in all the disciplines under analysis. We also highlight a positive relationship between seniority in rank and performance, occurring particularly in certain disciplines. While in Medicine, Biology and Chemistry this result could be explained by the "accumulative advantage" effect, in other disciplines, like Civil engineering and Pedagogy and Psychology, it could be due to the existence of a large performance differential between young and mature researchers, at the moment of the promotion to full professors. These results, witnessed both generally and at the level of the individual disciplines, offer useful insights for policy makers and academia administrators on the role of older professors.

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arXiv2018

Accounting for gender research performance differences in ranking universities

The literature on the theme of gender differences in research performance indicates a quite evident gap in favor of men over women. Beyond the understanding of the factors that could be at the basis of this phenomenon, it is worthwhile understanding if it would be appropriate to conduct the evaluation per population in a manner distinguished by gender. In fact if there is some factor that structurally determines a penalization of performance by women researchers compared to men then the comparative evaluation of organizations' performance that does not take gender into account will lead to an advantage for those that employ more men, under parity in the capacities of their staffs. In this work we measure the differences of the performance and the rank of research institutions as observed when gender is taken into account compared to when it is ignored. The study population consists of all Italian universities and the performance measured in the hard sciences for the period 2006-2010.

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arXiv2018

The determinants of academic career advancement: evidence from Italy

In this work we investigate the determinants of professors' career advancement in Italian universities. From the analyses, it emerges that the fundamental determinant of an academic candidate's success is not scientific merit, but rather the number of years that the candidate has belonged to the same university as the selection committee president. Where applicants have participated in research work with the president, their probability of success also increases significantly. The factors of the years of service and occurrence of joint research for the other commission members also have an effect, however of lesser weight. The specific phenomenon of nepotism, although it exists, seems less important. The scientific quality of the commission members has negligible effect on the expected outcome of the competition, and even more so the geographic location of the university calling for the competition.

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