EVALUATION OF THE NATIONAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION RESEARCHER EVALUATION AND RATING SYSTEM IN SOUTH AFRICA: TOWARDS INTERNATIONAL BEST PRACTICE

摘要

The last two decades have seen substantial growth throughout the world in higher education quality assurance systems in general and research evaluation in particular. Evaluation or assessment has emerged as a key issue in many countries where universities are faced with demands for greater accountability and the need of governments to obtain value for money for public expenditure on higher education. In South Africa the National Research Foundation (NRF) is a government research funding agency. NRF, in its effort to promote and safeguard research excellence, operates a researcher evaluation and rating system. This is a benchmarking system, based on peer review, of the recent research outputs and the impact of each applicant's work. Furthermore, NRF supports research at the country's higher education institutions through the traditional approach of inviting researchers to apply for funding according to research proposals. The two approaches are linked, as unrated researchers qualify only for temporary, short term funding. The novelty of the system, and particularly the component of rating individual researchers, has created considerable policy debate in the country. The recent inclusion of social scientists in the NRF system has further exacerbated the relevant debate. The objective of this article is to describe the South African system; compare and contrast it with other similar systems which are based on assessing the past performance of individuals (i.e. the “Performance Based Research Fund” in New Zealand, the National Science Council's “Research Outcome Award” in Taiwan and the “National Researchers System” in Mexico); identify similarities with the traditional approaches used by the research councils in UK, the Australian Research Council and the National Science Foundation in the USA; and provide recommendations based on international best practice. The major findings are as follows: In the South African context the rating system has the potential to become a powerful policy instrument. The instrument, if appropriate modified, has the potential to provide incentives to excellent researchers to remain in the country and to foreign researchers to move to the country. In addition, the instrument can provide incentives to researchers to aim towards excellence and can contribute towards making the academic profession a desirable objective for students. Comparisons of the average size of grants and of the success rates in South Africa, UK, Australia, and USA indicates that NRF grants are substantially smaller than in the comparator countries but the success rate is twice as high. The social costs of the peer review in South Africa appear to be substantial in comparison with the possible benefits. Finally the NRF approach of “negotiating” the size of grants is discussed and assessed. A number of recommendations are developed and are highlighted in the article on the basis of international best practice.