Andrea Vargiu

According to literature, scientific research has undergone very profound and rapid changes in the last decades which implied, among other things, the emergence of the need for responsible scientific practices and attitudes. Accordingly, the European Commission has recently launched a specific Action Plan centred on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). The paper discusses some of the implications of the possible declinations of the term responsibility by schematically recalling such notions as answerability, imputability, liability in order to highlight the relational character of responsibility as a result of a complex interplay of expectations and anticipations about actions and their fallouts...

S. CHESSA - A. VARGIU, University evaluation and institutional changes in Europe. The paper deals with the theme of university evaluation in the light of institutional changes that European academies are presently facing. Some key factors of those changes as well as critical elements concerning them that are to be found in literature are discussed. In the paper, a distinction is made between macro, meso and micro levels at which changes are taking place. As to the macro level, the role of the European research and higher education policies is taken into account with a particular emphasis on the Open Method of Coordination. At the meso level, the main directives of National policies carried out in the different European member States are presented and discussed particularly by referring to accountability and autonomy. Whereas what is here defined micro level is dealt with by briefly discussing the links between the diffusion of new public management, university governance and evaluation. Following such premises, some proposals are made as to the ambits and modes of university evaluation that do not appear sufficiently developed. Key words: Higher education, Research, Europe, Evaluation, Accountability.