Archivi istituzionali: possibili sviluppi nelle scienze umane

Research assessment is going to play a new role in university governance moving from evaluation of results as a tool for resource allocation towards policy design. In this respect "measuring" implies a different approach to quantitative aspects as well as to an extimation of qualitative criteria so difficult to define. Bibliometrics became so popular, in spite of its limits, just offering a simple solution to complex problems. Indeed there are some fields of science where quantitative indicators are very difficult to apply due to the lack of databases and data, in few words the credibility of existing information. Humanities and social sciences (HSS) need a coherent methodology to assess research outputs and the current projects are not very convincing. Institutional repositories could offer to evaluators a lot of information about research carried out in universities and data and usage statistics to measure the real use and impact of a work.If measuring of research in the HSS is possible now, comparability with other institutions (that is the basis for evaluation) depends on distribution and adoption of institutional repositories as evaluation tools. To this scope it is a long way