Research Excellence

The last few years, the focus of public research funding is orientated increasingly towards programs of excellence. At national as well as supra national level, centers of excellence emerged and various grant opportunities were directed towards high profile researchers. The 6th framework program by the European Commission introduced Networks of Excellence to strengthen excellence in specific research areas. The focus on excellence was continued in the 7th framework program with the introduction of the Advanced Grants by the European Research Council. At Flemish level, two new and distinct excellence programs, Methusalem and Odysseus, aim at providing long term support at leading scientists.
The implementation of various excellence programs raises questions on the nature of research excellence. This ECOOM track goes into issues like what does excellence in research entail, what criteria determine the selection of top scientists and to what extent can bibliometric techniques be supportive for the detection of outstanding output performance. Moveover, excellence funding is often aimed at individual researchers, which brings about particular challenges as to the demarcation of adequate output sets, the choice of proper benchmarks and the usability of existing quantitative measures.
Developing a case study, using an existing long running foreign excellence program, allows us to analyze the profile of top researchers and to search for valid excellence indicators which can be applied at micro level. The aim is to develop metrics, profiles and methods that can be transposed onto the Flemish academic context.