Abstract
Although the national evaluation of university research has been institutionalized since the 1980s in some countries, these systems are now plagued with controversies and are undergoing reforms. These changes necessitate not only methodological modifications but also a re-thinking of the role of university research evaluation in the new form of governance of science that includes multi-relationships between government ministries, universities, industries, and other stakeholders. In this paper, we first observe the recent changes in the evaluation system in the U.K., Australia, the Netherlands, and Japan, and then discuss the focus of the controversies destabilizing the evaluation systems during each stage of planning: (1) prioritizing the objectives of evaluation to reduce work load, (2) setting the scope and unit of object to be evaluated for maximizing the cost-effectiveness of evaluation, (3) expanding the model of university research to include the socio-economic effects of university research, (4) deciding upon the reference points of valuation (comparative evaluation vs. absolute evaluation), and (5) making a choice with regard to the measurement methods (peer-review vs. metrics). These points should be discussed explicitly among the stakeholders to stabilize the evaluation system.
