Evaluation of the Luxembourg Research Institutes

In 1987, the country of Luxembourg established public research centres (CRPs), mainly to support applied research to meet business-sector needs. During the last decade, CRPs have increasingly focused on more strategic applied (and occasionally oriented basic) research. Recently performance agreements between the ministry in charge and the CRPs were introduced, two CRPs merged into LIST (Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology) and the other two, LISER (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research) and LIH (Luxembourg Institute of Health, the result of the integration of the Integrated Biobank of Luxembourg with the former Health Science Institute) were restructured and renamed. As a consequence, the autonomy of CRP chief executives to implement the strategy defined by their board and to take all decisions relating to the day-to-day management of the CRP was increased. CRPs now receive a block grant, in the form of indicator based funding.  

External evaluations are part of the management cycle of the funding. These evaluations are the first to be performed as part of the cycle and are both summative as well as formative. The evaluations are peer review based (1 peer team for LISER, 5 for LIH (4 at department level, 1 at institute level) and 4 for LIST (3 at department level, 1 at institute level)). The information for the peers mainly comes from structured self-assessments by the institute departments and the institutes.  

Technopolis Group is providing a  structure and support to the peer review teams and the institutes, and is amongst others analysing performance (including a bibliometric study by ECOOM), surveying the staff and providing benchmarks.Technopolis Group is also providing advice on the governance of the CRP system at country level.