Creation of an observatory to evaluate the scientific activity of the university system

Abstract

The research in the university plays a key role in the scientific and technological progress, and its undeniable importance from both a quantitative and qualitative. In Spain, research activities of universities represent about 65% of the total scientific production. However, Spanish universities have not shown the expected efficiency, since it is a small percentage of teachers responsible for most of the research. Among the causes we must mention the limited and late recognition of research tasks within the university, and the lack of adequate control and adapted from this activity through a process of regular and systematic evaluation. The aim of this work is the development and joint application of indicators to determine accurately and from different aspects of research activity of Spanish university system. To do this, we analyzed the scientific activity of the Spanish public universities over a period of 8 years from 2002 to 2009. This has allowed creating profiles of universities and implementing an Observatory from a web portal with the most significant indicators of each variable analyzed.