Aldis GEDUTIS - Short Time Scientific Mission ENRESSH (Cost Action 15137)

The STSM examines the ethical aspects of the research assessment, starting by analyzing the ethical aspects of research. The first step concerns the analysis of the guidelines for the ethics of research that are available, such as The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity published by The European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, ALLEA, a behavioral code for the scientific community, which mainly highlights the principles that researchers should observe. In the second step, the different research evaluation situations are highlighted: a) review of papers to accept /reject for publication in scientific journals or call for papers; b1) institutional evaluation by the Ministry of Education or by an institution itself, b2) national habilitation procedures; c) ex-ante evaluation in attribution of competitive research funding. A part of this step will be the analysis of the guidelines published by the United Nations Evaluation Group, mainly devoted to the UN agencies, UNEG Ethical Guidelines for Evaluation, but appropriate also for the activity of scientific research evaluation. The UNEG guidelines highlight the ethical principles of research evaluation: integrity and reliability of evaluators, accuracy of assessment and presentation of evidences. Moreover, the STSM will try to interpret the ethical guidelines in research evaluation applying the tools of most influential ethical theories.