"Urgent Need to Improve Performance Evaluation System; Current Methods Suppress Creativity"

Jung Jin-ho: "Urgent Need for a New Evaluation System Focused on Innovation and Social Impact"
Forum Highlights the Importance of Qualitative Assessment in Research Performance
Proposals Include Advancing the Evaluation System and Developing Support Tools

On June 26, Jung Jin-ho, President of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, stated, "It is urgently necessary to shift to a new performance evaluation system that prioritizes innovation and social impact."

President Jung made this remark while announcing Issue No. 114 of "The Voice of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology" on the same day. He said, "The current evaluation method, which relies on quantitative indicators such as the number of papers, journal impact factor (IF), and citation count, suppresses researchers' creativity and the realization of long-term visions."

Cover of The Voice of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology No. 114. Provided by the Korean Academy of Science and Technology

"The Voice of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology" is a policy proposal published to establish a long-term vision and development strategy for national science and technology, as well as to present scientific and technological approaches and solutions to national and social issues. It is distributed to the government, the National Assembly, and relevant organizations.

This issue of "The Voice of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology" summarizes the discussions from the forum held in February, co-hosted by the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and the Young Korean Academy of Science and Technology (YKAST), under the theme "How Should the Value of Research Outcomes Be Evaluated?"

Recently, as the complexity and diversity of research outcomes have increased, there have been ongoing concerns that the current research performance evaluation system is facing limitations.

In response, "The Voice of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology" emphasized the influence and importance of operating a system that fairly evaluates researchers' creative and innovative achievements throughout the academic ecosystem. It also proposed directions for improvement, including strengthening qualitative evaluation, advancing the evaluation system, improving evaluator management, developing evaluation support tools, and establishing evaluation guidelines.