Quality control
Quality control
Quality and quality control are fundamental concepts in scientific research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The basic principle of the latest policy plan of the Research Council, covering the period from 2001 to 2006, is to provide for high-quality scientific research conducted by researchers who assume their full responsibility in society.
Guarding over quality means, among other things, that we ensure that our researchers can work under conditions that are conducive to high-quality scientific work. One of the measures taken in this respect was the extension of the Research Council's regulations in 2001 with a view to securing successors of the discontinued permanent research fellowships of the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen). Since then, a separate contingent of VUB fellowships has enabled excellent researchers to devote themselves almost completely to research for a period of ten years. The fellowships are awarded on the basis of an international competition.
Various measures to stimulate and enhance performance in this area have been built into the internal allocation of research funds. A key decision in this respect is the principle, reviewed in 2001, of fair appropriation among the three large domains of science: the Human Science; the Basic, Natural and Applies Sciences; and the Biomedical Sciences. Criteria that reward performance were added, though without affecting the principle that these three domains must maintain equal shares.
Of course, there can be no high-quality research without paying sufficient attention to deontology and research culture. In 2002, clear internal procedures were drawn up for handling suspected cases of scientific misconduct with due care. However, it must be noted that these problems are clearly much less of an issue in Flanders than, for instance, in the United States.
To make researchers familiar with the VUB research culture from the beginning, particular care is taken to focus on these aspects in the guidance of doctoral students. In 2003, a comprehensive and coherent set of measures related to these issues was adopted by the Governing Council.
Back to topQuality Assessment
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel can look back on a long tradition of quality and general assessments, many on the occasion of applications for research funding. Moreover, since 1997, there have been ongoing systematic quality audits of all the VUB research teams, in which all the disciplines are assessed in turn. These quality audits are conducted by international experts. The whole procedure is geared towards enhancing the quality of research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Back to topThe Impact of VUB Research
Our efforts in the area of quality control are clearly bearing fruit. This is shown by a bibliometric study that confirms the high impact and social relevance of our research.
Over a period of ten years (1992-2001), the Centrum voor Wetenschaps- en Technologiestudies of the University of Leiden studied the publication impact of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, i.e., the degree to which authors of items in scientific periodicals refer to articles of VUB researchers. This impact is no less than 16% above the global average.
"Counts for the Special Research Fund show that, in the same period, and at international level, an average of 9.64 references is made to VUB articles, while scientific articles of KULeuven, Universiteit Gent and Universiteit Antwerpen, for instance, were referred to 9.37, 7.63 and 9.23 times, respectively."