ABSTRACT
The goal is to develop a new, more comprehensive understanding of performance and performance assessment methods in the academic field, focusing on the quality, impact and consistency of researchers’ achievements while also taking into account specific personal contexts. In particular, the conventional performance assessment system gives an advantage to those researchers who work in well-established fields with a long tradition of publication and who pursue publication strategies that emphasise quantity. In addition to the biographical contexts of academics, it also seems to be necessary to broaden performance assessment approaches by including more factors than just research output understood in terms of publication count. Performance measurements focusing mostly on research output also fail to reward important work in teaching and third mission activities. Women, particularly, can find it very hard to meet the demands of academia because their academic portfolios and career paths are often “non-standard”.
