Evaluation of the quality and quantity of research results in higher education

The evaluation of the quality and quantity of research results in higher education, both at an institutional and an individual level, has become a must in today’s competitive environment. Universities use sets of indicators validated at national or international level, in order to measure research results and to set goals, but sometimes they need specific systems that are more appropriate in order to reach their strategic objectives. Based on the system of evaluation used by a Romanian medium-sized university, in the first part of the case study from this article, it is mathematically proven that the measurement itself has a great impact on the research results’ dynamics because of the changing behaviour of the academic staff. The model could be applied and customized to any set of indicators used by different universities, and our results prove that a good set of indicators could be a useful tool to increase research performance and to achieve specific goals and strategic objectives in universities. In the second part of the case study, we tried to answer the following question: From a set of indicators used to quantify research activity in higher education, which ones are critical indicators? In order to find an answer to this question, we used the topic of hierarchization of the research indicators in higher-education as a multiple-criteria decision-making problem. The criteria used in the case study are funding from the state budget and from other sources, and national and international visibility of the research results.