Responsible assessment and open science: reform agenda

Abstract

Both globally and regionally, academic and research evaluation systems have been the focus of questioning in recent years, while the gradual but sustained transition towards open science entails a series of changes not only in the models of production and circulation of knowledge, but also in the criteria, methodologies and practices of evaluation. Using a qualitative and descriptive approach, based on the collection of primary documentary sources, the paper synthesizes the main trends in the international policy agenda on academic and research evaluation. On the other hand, it describes various diagnoses on evaluation systems in the Latin American region and the central challenges they face. In an overview, some recent research assessment reform initiatives in three countries in the region are introduced. The central argument of the paper argues for the existence of a more or less broad consensus around a set of principles of evaluative reform, with an impact on the global and regional science and higher education policy agenda, which at the local level are reconfigured through a diversity of competing rationalities, methodologies and instruments.