A method to evaluate the scientific activity quality of HEIs based on a scientometric subjects presentation model

Abstract

The study suggests a method of integral assessment of the scientific activity quality of higher educational establishments and other structural research units or organizations dealing in one way or another with scientific activities. This method involves the development of a model for representing scientometric subjects. According to the developed model, it is necessary to evaluate consistently the entire chain of subjects of scientometrics – published works, authors, and journals. Hence, it will produce estimates for each higher education institution. Taking into account that a number of requirements and criteria to be met by each institution of higher education are presented, the expedient task is to develop a method for converting qualitative indicators of scientific activity of institutions into quantitative ones. This can be achieved using a set of activities that underlies the method of assessing the quality of scientific work of HEIs. Having calculated the indicators of the quality of scientific activity for universities, it is possible to obtain prerequisites for the definition of similar indicators for subjects located at the lower levels of the scientific hierarchy. These include structural units of universities, published scientific works and scholars who are the authors of the published scientific works. It can be done by using the metric that is described in this study. The research observations on the assessment of the significance of higher education institutions and research units show that more often than not institutions must follow a certain template of requirements and criteria that is common to all institutions and organizations. It is obvious that such an approach should be considered inappropriate in the view that each higher education institution exists only within its category and institutions are compared as equivalent. Therefore, an urgent need is to categorize higher education institutions, which clearly outlines the boundaries to which one or another institution relies on a number of parameters. It is substantiated that the categorization of HEIs should be carried out using fuzzy logic methods, taking into account the similarity coefficients of the institutions. A sequence of actions is also identified in the study, which should be followed to ensure that the selected HEI categories have been correctly formed under a number of reporting settings