FOLEC – CLACSO launches regional and international survey on the evaluation of the financing of research oriented to development problems
On August 30, the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) launched a survey on the ways of evaluating research proposals aimed at finding solutions to development problems, both in Latin America and in South Asian countries. The initiative is part of a research project that has funding from the International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada and that is based in the Latin American Forum for Scientific Evaluation (FOLEC) of CLACSO.
Karina Batthyány, Executive Secretary of CLACSO, points out that since 2019 FOLEC-CLACSO has been building a space for debate on the meanings, policies and practices of academic evaluation processes in the region. “After a first stage of diagnosis in 2020, in which proposals and guiding principles were developed through different working documents, meetings and activities, at present we want to analyze how various approaches and methodologies to evaluate research proposals affect the way in which funding is allocated and distributed in the Global South ”, says Batthyány.
“We work from an open, collaborative and public domain perspective of knowledge and we seek to strengthen democratizing and sustainable approaches and models of science and its evaluation, committed to the problems of our societies”, highlights Pablo Vommaro, CLACSO Research Director. For this project, we formed a broad and diverse research team made up of institutions and researchers based in different institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean and India. In the regional survey, Natalia Gras and Judith Sutz, researchers from the University of the Republic (UDELAR) in Uruguay, have collaborated in a very valuable and committed way in the design of this instrument. “With this questionnaire we want to gather information on the forms of evaluation of research proposals aimed at finding solutions to development problems, their characteristics, processes and evaluation criteria by scientific and / or higher education organizations in countries of the Global South ”, says Laura Rovelli, Coordinator of FOLEC and the project together with Pablo Vommaro, Dominique Babini (CLACSO) and Gabriel Vélez Cuartas (COLAV-Colombia).
“It seems important to us at this time of great global challenges from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing socio-environmental crisis and local critical situations, to be able to identify situated, relevant and quality ways to evaluate the proposals of research for their financing and that they are better aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) ”, mentions Rovelli. “We are very excited about the interest in the project; undoubtedly, it is an opportunity to make visible experiences and share innovative and inclusive forms of evaluation of research located from the Global South and influence future decisions on financing on a global scale ”, estimates Vommaro. Finally, Batthyány highlights that a selection of the initiatives that participate in this research will be invited to present their case at the 9th. Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Social Sciences, to be held in Mexico City from June 7 to 10, 2022.
To participate in the survey, you can access https://es.surveymonkey.com/r/CLACSOIDRC or write to [email protected]
