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The transformations characterizing the Italian university and research system reproduce a constant oscillation between autonomy and responsibility. A new pathway has been paved with the introduction of evaluation and the creation of an agency with a specific mandate for managing it, the National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR). The process of institutional creation has given rise to a new postbureaucratic model, inspired by independence and professionalism principles. Specific organizational devices have been implemented to this aim, such as the appointment procedures of the agency's Governing Board as well as the introduction of a new officer profile, the technical officer for evaluation, working side by side administrative staff, to serve the evaluation scope. In this paper, the agency's organizational model will be analysed, together with the main characteristics and the principles of the agency in the framework of the Italian university and research system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When coal was king in late nineteenth century Wyoming, the industry was dominated by the Union Pacific Coal Company (UPCC). Operating dozens of mines throughout the high deserts of southwestern and south-central Wyoming well into the twentieth century, the UPCC's economic success was thanks in large part to its practice of creating wage competition among its carefully recruited pool of multinational and multiethnic laborers. Unsurprisingly, the company's first recruited group of Black miners were brought in as strikebreakers. They came to a short-lived coal town called Dana about 150 miles west of Cheyenne. Instead of playing the company's intended role, the Black miners greatly influenced early labor reform efforts and the trend of Black western migration and settlement. This article contributes to the scholarship on Black laborers in the West by examining the story of Dana's Black miners, their role in the passage of fair labor legislation, and their subsequent removal from the historical record. By both building on recent methodologies and utilizing tools of historical interpretation often dismissed or minimized outside the practice of public history, such as genealogy, this article also argues that restoring individual identity augments perception of overall migrant group experience and significance in the evolution of the social and industrial landscape of the U.S. West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research design for the evaluation of the Third Mission in the university context. Given the consulting processes as intermediate outcome mechanisms, the article reports a common theoretical framework that considers the Third Mission as a strategic process integrated, top down and bottom up, with Teaching-Research- Impact/Valorisation of Research, rather than as a isolated and stratified element within the university organization chart. Comparing three different evaluation models, the article finally suggests a set of indicators useful and usable to assure an integrated Third Mission evaluation practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University rankings have raised huge interest in the social sciences because of their methodological foundations and impact. Rankings have also gained popularity in the media system. In this article we analyze the coverage offered by the media to the Italian Research Evaluation exercise-VQR 2004-2010. Even though this evaluation did not have university rankings as its main goal, it did include this kind of information in conformity with the law requirements and intention of the government to use the ranking for the purpose of funding allocation to universities. After the presentation of the results, we examined all the articles published in newspapers, magazines and specialized websites in order to understand what type of information had been extracted from the evaluation exercise and offered to readers. A set of descriptive hypotheses on the structure and dynamics of the media coverage of VQR information at the aggregate level was tested by a content analysis of the articles. We found that the enormous amount of information produced by the VQR project was virtually ignored and that ranking type is the only information that finds its way into the media. The article concludes by suggesting implications for future evaluation exercises and related communication strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This self- ethnography complements the other articles in this special issue by spotlighting a set of key challenges facing international research teams. The study is focused on the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT)-based collaboration and research team dynamics. Our diverse team, drawn from researchers in five countries and three projects, argues that an ironic casualty of the powerful, global phenomena we study, is a lack of insight into what happens to generic research team dynamics, when groups are 'stretched' in terms of geographical distance, generations, cultural beliefs, values and norms, as well as disciplinary/specialist traditions. Good intentions are not sufficient to cope with these challenges. This is because of the emerging complexity inherent in many types of international, interdisciplinary fields of study and the complexity of the career trajectories needed to make these studies a reality. Our study underlines that there are no beliefs, values, norms and practices linked to research team dynamics, that hold across the current territory, generations, disciplines, cultures, organizations and individuals leading and conducting comparative studies-and even less reflection on the implications of this fact. Compounding this lack of awareness is a less-than-perfect understanding of the way in which ICT-based collaboration bears on research team dynamics. We assert that a holistic, critical, long-term approach to emerging insights into the global division of academic labor, serves our field better than folk psychology or the methodological parochialism that sustains convention at the expense of creativity. Careful consideration of emergent processes, relationships and linkages that explain how short-term cooperation- within projects-begins to make sense- over careers-illuminates key focal points, which, in turn qualitatively illuminates the way forward concerning conceptualization and problematization of our practice; and novel methodological routes available for those interested in attaining better outcomes, over the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education institutions increasingly live in environments in which they are subject to evaluation and rankings. We examine the way in which Italian (mostly public) universities adapted to the new landscape created by the official research assessments, which have produced rankings at national level, published in 2013 and 2016. We compare the media coverage of rankings after the first research assessment (covering 2004–10) and the second one (2011–4). By examining the same type of media data longitudinally, replicating regression analysis, and using robustness checks, we discover a remarkable degree of organizational adaptation. After the initial shock following the first research assessment (2004–10), in which universities were mostly passive, universities rapidly learnt how to deal with rankings. After the second exercise, they actively and professionally communicated with the media, building up self-made rankings data aimed at protecting and enhancing their image, using a range of categorization tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Italian Research Evaluation assessment for the period 2004-10 (VQR 2004-10) has analyzed almost 185,000 articles, books, patents, and other scientific outcomes submitted for evaluation by Italian universities and other public research bodies. This article describes the main features of this exercise, introducing its legal framework and the criteria used for evaluation. The innovative methodology that has been used for evaluation, based on a combination of peer review and bibliometric methods, is discussed and indicators for assessing the quality of participating research bodies are derived accordingly. The article also presents the main results obtained at the University level, trying to understand the existing relationship among research quality and University characteristics such as location, dimension, age, scientific specialization, and funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]