Assessing Quality in R&D Laboratories: Bibliometrics, Peer Review and Organizational Surveys

Abstract

A review of R&D evaluation outlines six approaches: strategic audits, constituency reviews, peer reviews, cost-benefit analyses, organizational assessments, and bibliometric indicators. To study the quality of research outputs, the authors present a comparative research plan combining peer reviews, bibliometric indicators, and organizational assessments. They provide results of peer reviews, bibliometric analyses, and organizational assessments. Using data collected from 53 laboratories around the world, they advance a taxonomy of laboratories as an additional guide to the selection of appropriate criteria for R&D performance evaluation. A clustering technique identifies six unique types or profiles of laboratories: regulation/control, project management, science frontier, service, devices, and survey.