On the Role and Assessment of Research at European Universities of Applied Sciences

Abstract

The relevance of the Universities of Applied Sciences (UASs) is growing in a world where practice-based learning and research are essential to meet societal development goals. Public policies for science, technology, and innovation must, therefore, account for an increasingly complex context where higher education institutions of varied shapes co-evolve. On the other hand, the increasing influence of international ranking systems and of bibliometric indicators calls for a critical revision of their adequacy to account for UASs’ key characteristics such as the importance of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches when tackling context-based challenges. This paper examines the roles of UASs in contemporary knowledge-intensive societies and critically addresses dominant research evaluation approaches. It is argued that i) qualitative approaches based on the visualization of bibliometric data can provide useful perspectives on interdisciplinarity, ii) the assessment of stakeholder engagement should be incorporated in rankings such as U-Multirank, and iii) knowledge dissemination at large could be assessed using Altmetrics indicators.