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On statistics and virtue: ANVUR’s criteria for the evaluation of research quality (VQR 2020-2024) and the European reform of research evaluation (COARA)

Posted on , updated on by Maria Chiara Pievatolo

The European Union, recognizing that quantitative evaluation of research harms quality for the sake of quantity, urged evaluators, universities, research institutions, and scholarly societies to join together in a coalition (COARA) for the reform of evaluation itself. Even the Italian evaluation agency. ANVUR, joined the coalition and committed itself to reducing bibliometrics to a complement […]

AISA nominates Emanuele Conte for COARA Steering Board

Posted on by Maria Chiara Pievatolo

Professor Emanuele Conte, a member of our Board of Directors, has agreed to be our candidate for the the Steering Board of COARA. We nominated him not only because of his long and significant experience in Open Access scholarly publishing, but more importantly because, as a legal scholar and historian, he could help to steer […]

Taking all the running one can do, to keep in the same place: ANVUR’s complicated relationship with the COARA agreement

Posted on , updated on by Maria Chiara Pievatolo

1. An unpromising starting point In a 2018 article, Alberto Baccini and Giuseppe De Nicolao described the Italian academic system as “an unprecedented in vivo experiment in governing and controlling research and teaching via automatic bibliometric tools”. Italian universities and research institutions are subject to widespread bibliometric measurements. Their use in research evaluation exercises (Valutazione […]

Dicer’s oaths: ORE, COARA and the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems

Posted on , updated on by Maria Chiara Pievatolo

As reported by Roars, the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of University and Research Systems (ANVUR)  has refused to recognize Open Research Europe (ORE) as a scientific “journal” because it does not publish in single, self-contained fascicles and does not practice anonymous peer review. Open Research Europe is an infrastructure provided by the European […]

Why dying for a patent? Compulsory licenses, contract transparency, public health

Posted on , updated on by Maria Chiara Pievatolo

To tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, we need Open Science more than ever. Humanity can only hope to quickly overcome the crisis it is facing by sharing worldwide the knowledge and technologies needed to produce vaccines, drugs and medical devices. Many voices have been raised against the unfair grabbing of vaccines and drugs by rich countries […]

The Italian Libraries Association (AIB) endorses the new EU Copyright Directive

Posted on , updated on by Maria Chiara Pievatolo

The AIB declared itself in favor of the new EU copyright directive in its final version issued by the “trilogue” negotiation, with Italy, Poland, Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands voting against it. Furthermore, along with the Italian publishers and booksellers associations, it undersigned  an open letter to the Italian members of the EU parliament encouraging […]

How Wikimedia helped authors make over 3000 articles green open access via Dissemin

Posted on , updated on by Maria Chiara Pievatolo

Wikimedia projects contributor Federico Leva, frustrated at the number of pay-walled articles linked from the Italian and English Wikipedia, decided to contact their authors directly. Using the available data, almost half a million depositable articles by a million authors were found. An email was sent to each of them where possible: the message thanked them for contributing […]