Research assessment of early careers researchers in funding instruments in Argentina and Chile

LAURA ROVELLI

Londres

Conferencia; Metascience 2025; 2025

University Collegue London (UCL)

In recent decades, different policy ideas and instruments have influenced the configuration of public research funding systems. Globally, the implementation of the evaluation paradigm (Neave, 1990), based on the ideas of competition, accountability—through performance measurement—and excellence, adopts different ideas and instruments that are combined in their operationalisation at the national and/or local level and that influence research governance models. Although there is consensus on evaluation as a fair and appropriate mechanism for distributing public funding, over the last twelve years a set of ideas around greater justice, equity, inclusion and diversity in scientific-university evaluation systems, grouped around the umbrella notion of responsible or fair academic evaluation, has gained influence in the design of new policy instruments. This is an ‘umbrella or generic’ term referring to evaluation perspectives that incorporate, encourage and reward pluralistic characteristics of research and support more diverse and inclusive academic cultures (Curry, et al., 2020). The concept, which is still evolving, has incorporated various components: along with the search for a more qualitative evaluation, supported by situated indicators and interpreted by academic peers (DORA, 2013; Hicks, et. al., 2015), a second-generation requirement has emerged: a set of considerations of justice, equity, diversity, and greater inclusion in research systems (CLACSO-FOLEC, 2022), through evaluation devices and schemes that promote the participation of groups that are traditionally relegated or in a more fragile or unstable position (Rovelli, 2023).Both the ideas and the instruments mentioned above have been developed through a process of reciprocal influence (Capano, 2024), giving rise to different designs, standards, and evaluation processes in different regions and academic evaluation systems. In the university and scientific sphere, these guidelines imply a tension between the objectives of excellence inherent to academic activity and the search for representation of different populations and the distribution of existing resources for their financing in a more equitable manner within ecosystems. Hence, these perspectives also entail a redefinition or a shift from the idea of excellence to that of academic and scientific quality, constructed in a situated manner, where issues of justice, equity, inclusion, and diversity are perceived as its main components (Lebel and Mc Lean, 2021; Sutz, 2021). In this context, and from a global perspective, those in the early stages of their careers are one of the groups most vulnerable to the distortions of current evaluation systems, compounded by the global increase in doctoral-level graduation and the lack of new job opportunities in academic and/or professional fields, which results in greater job instability and precariousness (Mc Alpine, Amundsen, & Turner, 2013; Miranda-Nieto, et. alia, 2022, de la Fare and Rovelli, 2021). The notion of initial or early careers adopts varied criteria and configurations in each national evaluation system and is linked to the possibilities of achieving greater stability and promotion (Melkers, Woolley, and Kreth, 2024; among others). In the field of research, the early career generally covers three distinct stages: doctoral and postdoctoral training, entry into the career, and the transition to independent researcher (Vanholsbeek, 2022). In Latin America, this category refers to a population that obtained their doctorate over a longer periodand includes researchers who have a master´s degree or are studying for a doctorate while engaged in research activity, as this is more representative of the configuration of the academic career in some countries in the region (Miranda-Nieto, et. alia, 2022).The purpose of the presentation is, first, to systematize and update the main research background and recent international debates on the evaluation of initial or early careers and to place the discussion in the recent Latin American context. Secondly, it analyses a set of research promotion tools aimed at the target population of this study to explore the scope of the evaluation; the methodologies and/or evaluation indicators used and the intersectorality with other prioritised dimensions and their impact on strengthening initial careers.The survey focused on the following three instruments from two countries in the Southern Cone: the presentation to early-stage researchers in the call for Scientific and Technological Research Projects (PICT) of the National Agency for the Promotion of Research, Technological Development and Innovation (Agencia I+D+i) in Argentina and the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FONDECYT), in the Postdoctoral and Initiation calls for proposals of the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) in Chile.This is an exploratory, qualitative study based on a survey of documentary sources, interviews with authorities and experts in evaluation from the agencies involved and associations that brings together research staff, and an analysis of the calls for evaluation of the selected research funding instruments. The analytical approach draws on studies of science and university policy and contributions from the sociology of evaluation.To conclude, some reflections are offered on the impact of academic evaluation on early careers in the Latin American countries analyzed, and a collaborative, open-access tool for improving evaluation aimed at these populations is presented, developed within the framework of the PISAC-CTI-CLACSO. Some of the results of the survey show the existence of predominantly individual approaches in the research promotion instruments analyzed oriented towards early careers, with a focus on peer evaluation in different forms, where the use of quantitative indicators based on the impact factor of scientific publications in the main circuits persists and where a certain intersectorality with gender equity dimensions is increasingly being adopted.