Skýrsla ríkisendurskoðunar

Hér er skýrslan, vissulega er þetta ekki mat á gæði vísinda þessara deilda, enda virðist það ekki vera hugmyndin, held ég.  

Athugasemdir

[Luca Aceto, 12.6.2007 kl. 23:42]

Sæll Pétur,

Maybe I misunderstood the aim of this exercise. (Actually, does anybody know what the aim was?) However, whatever its aim, the assessment seems to be based on numbers only. The title mentions the keyword "quality" in university teaching. I find it hard to believe that this can be measured purely quantitatively. As you may know, we are waiting for the results of the accreditation process for our degrees in engineering. The accreditation is done by experts chosen by the Ministry. I suspect that it will be more informative than this report.

Let me also say that I believe that, e.g., Table 6.6 on page 63 will be seen by uninformed observers as providing an objective evaluation of the quality  of computer science research in Icelandic universities. I would trust it more if there was any indication of what papers we are talking about and where they appeared.

Cheers,

 Luca 

[Pétur Henry Petersen, 13.6.2007 kl. 10:13]

I must admit I have not studied this report, but I think it mainly focuses on how govermental money is spent in these fields. I think it has good points such as lack of people with academic status etc. but I dont think  they go into any detail into quality of research.  I agree. And however unscientifically it sounds, if computer science at HR does not look good in that report then something is wrong or give it a few years :)  

[Luca Aceto, 13.6.2007 kl. 11:54]

Pétur,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

Let me state at the outset that I am not at all whining about the report. In fact, it gives some of us at HR ammunition to argue even more strongly for certain points regarding the development of HR we have been making for a while.

For instance, I agree with the report in that the number of staff members with a PhD at the department of CS at HR was way too low in 2003-2004, and only acceptable in 2005. No university department worthy of its name can have a majority of its academic staff members without a PhD, and not involved in research. It really bothers me to hear people talk about research vs teaching, as if the two were unrelated and conflicting. People employed in a university department should try to contribute to both activities within their abilities, not to mention admin and outreach amongst other duties. How can we build a proper MSc and PhD programme without a large percentage of research-active members of staff? We can't!

You are right; we need to grow over the years. In this respect, I was pleased to see that the report shows a positive trend in the hiring policy of CS at HR and in the number of publications. I believe that CS at HR right now is in a much better shape than in 2005, and that we are entering a virtuous circle. (See http://www.ru.is/luca/csstaff.html for info on the current state of the CS department at HR. I can give you similar data for HÍ if you wish ) However, much remains to be done if we are to achieve our aim to be a known CS department in the Nordic countries.

Finally, I am really looking forward to having our first proper research evaluation. This will give us really constructive feedback from top-notch academics that can be used to improve further.

[Indridi Indridason (IP-tala skráð) 13.6.2007 kl. 15:10]

Somehow I can't help but smile when scientists advocate the use of qualitative measures.   Though I suspect the disagreement is about the kind of bean counting that should take place.  

[Indriði H. Indriðason, 13.6.2007 kl. 15:11]

Somehow I can't help but smile when scientists advocate the use of qualitative measures.   Though I suspect the disagreement is about the kind of bean counting that should take place.  

[Luca Aceto, 13.6.2007 kl. 17:11]

Indriði, 

Of course, there is no perfect way of measuring academic quality and the path is littered with those who have tried to come up with the "right equation" to do so. (If you want to see an elaborate evaluation system, look at the way departments are evaluated in the British Research Assessment Exercise 2008. You will be able to find specific evaluation plans for each discipline at http://www.rae.ac.uk/panels/.)

At the very least, however, I would like to see a system in which the numerical value of a paper is weighted in some way by the impact of the outlet in which it appears, the citations it has had etc. It makes no sense to me to give X points both to a paper that appears in the "Mickey Mouse Journal of Computer Science" and in the "Journal of the ACM" (one of the most prestigious journals in computer science).

According to pure bean counting, a researcher who writes 41 mickey mouse papers brings more points than, say, Timothy Gowers (Cambridge mathematician who won the Fields Medal---the most important prize in mathematics for mathematicians under 40) because Gowers has written fewer than 40 papers, or so I believe. A system which gives this kind of result cannot be one that we want to use. 

Anyway, I think that it is really worthwhile  for any department to undertake a research evaluation every five years, say. A lot of the gain is in the process of looking back at one's work, put it into perspective, evaluate whether one has achieved what one wanted to achieve, and decide what one wants to do in the future. An outside opinion on the performance, the structure and the aims of a department can only help it to grow scientifically, improve and set itself goals that are both ambitious and achievable. 

At the end of the day, this is much more important than any numerical value assigned to a department.