National recommendations for responsible researcher evaluation

The national recommendation presents the general principles of  researcher evaluation as follows: 

1. Transparency. The objectives,  methods,  materials and interpretation of the results must be known to everyone involved in the evaluation. The evaluation must be conducted in a manner that is understood by all parties involved. The evaluation  process and all its stages must be  clearly and transparently described.  The party responsible for the evaluation must ensure that the choices made in the evaluation work are properly reasoned and the evaluation documented in a reliable manner.
2. Integrity. Evaluation must be  conducted in accordance with practices recognized by the research community, such as integrity, diligence, and accuracy.
3. Fairness. All those subject to evaluation must be treated equally and impartially. Evaluation must take into account only relevant factors that  have been brought to the attention of all parties concerned. Characteristics or circumstances associated with persons being evaluated or people close to them that are irrelevant to the objective of the evaluation must not be used as evaluation criteria.
4. Competence. Evaluators must have the necessary substantive competence and knowledge of the  objectives and methods of the evaluation process and with the  principles and practices of responsible evaluation of a researcher. In addition to their qualifications, evaluators must not have a conflict of interest and their  collective expertise should be diverse.
5. Diversity. Evaluation must take into account the diversity of research and outputs.

In addition, the recommendation presents good researcher evaluation practices under the following themes:

• Building the evaluation
• Evaluation of research
• Diversity of activities
• Researcher’s role in the process

Aalto University is committed to the responsible researcher evaluation.