The facility between certification and accreditation.

Abstract

The market, and therefore the inevitable need to produce and sell products and services, encourages companies to try to ensure that they themselves and their products can be recognized and characterized. It thus follows that the producer's activities must be qualified with special certificates. Over the last few years the number of companies wishing to qualify their organization and their products has increased considerably. This phenomenon also affects organizations that conduct research, i.e., those defined as contract research organizations, which provide a research service to a limited, demanding clientele, and that have long seen in these certifications not only simple compliance with their legal obligations, but also a tool for persuading the market of the validity of their "products." For management it may, at times, be difficult to find the way through the jungle of certifications because the purpose, aims and actions related to the different types of attestation (accreditation, certification, registration, etc.) are often little known or misunderstood. An investigation has been carried out to clarify the whole scenario of necessary, possible, and useful certificates and qualifications for research organizations today, as well as the terminology used. In addition, an attempt was made to find possible similarities between the various recognitions analyzed.