A fatally efficient machine. Insights into the ‘banality’ of the research evaluation exercise in Italy

Abstract

This study is framed in the debate concerning the measurement of academic performance, and particularly the strand of studies that explores the risks associated with the metrification of research. The objective, guided by the conceptual framework of the banality of evil (Arendt, 1964), is to delve into how research evaluation can shape banal and unoriginal evaluative practices. These practices, in turn, can trigger a fatally efficient machine within the academic system and institutions, and among researchers.

The paper focuses on examining the recently concluded Research Quality Assessment 2015–2019 (VQR3) exercise in Italy, using an autoethnographic approach. The results highlight the risks stemming from the growing dependence of research quality assessment on automatisms, which can cause its commodification at the cost of intellectual innovation and, eventually, force actors to conform to the rules of the game.

This work contributes to the ongoing academic debate by offering an innovative and multilevel (i.e. macro, meso and micro) theoretical perspective. Not only does this perspective conceptualise and present the dynamics, processes, instruments and actors at play in the phenomena under scrutiny but also provides a deeper understanding of the dynamics that promote the widespread application of research evaluation systems, despite their well-known weaknesses and potentially undesirable practical and ethical effects.