The new governance and accountability approach in higher education demands “highly professional management and a rethinking of the university’s business concept - the way in which the university creates value and how it assesses its value” (Jongbloed, Enders &  Salerno 2008, p. 304).

In response to the demand to assess the quality of research produced across Europe, and taking into account its diversity, the Expert Group on Assessment of University-Based Research, under the direction of the European Commission (EC 2010), developed a Multi‐dimensional Research Assessment Matrix that links specified users with their defined purposes and objectives to data, quantitative and qualitative indicators, and assessment methods. This methodology aims to enable institutional benchmarking, contribute for the improvement of research quality and for the development of a comparative assessment of European institutions.

In light of these developments,” institutions are increasingly setting up internal research  assessment processes, and building  research management information  systems. These are based on a variety of relevant input and output measures of the  performance of individual research units  within an institution, enabling managers  to allocate funds within the institution  according to the past performance of the  research groups” (Moed 2011, p.3).

At this level, Reidpath & Allotey (2010) stress the role of evaluative and regulatory frameworks of the assessment exercises by demonstrating how data collected with the purpose of resource allocation in mind can also be analysed by institutions to inform research strategy development and Welsh, Nunez & Petrosko (2006) reinforce the need to assess and cultivate support for strategic planning by searching for best practices in a reform environment.

This study intends to design an evaluation framework to be used as the starting step to monitor and regulate the quality of research an institutional level by understanding and conceptualizing research quality from different perspectives in order to facilitate the development of effective management strategies at all levels: allocating resources, driving research mission differentiation, increasing regional/ community engagement, improving research performance, assessing value‐for‐money or cost‐ benefit of research, encouraging international co‐operation and increasing multi-disciplinary research.

Our major aim is to explore the relationship between policy and the practices of assessment, evaluation and accountability and add significantly to our understanding of what can be done to improve the quality of research in the areas of research engagement/resources and institutional culture, productivity/ performance and innovation, quality/merit and impact and sustainability/ support.

European Commission (2010). Assessing Europe’s University-Based Research Expert Group on Assessment of University-Based Research. Brussels: European Commission. Jongbloed, B., Enders, J. & Salerno, C. (2008). Higher education and its communities: Interconnections, interdependencies and a research agenda. Higher Education, 56, 303–324 DOI 10.1007/s10734-008-9128-2 Moed, H (2011). Section 1: Research Assessment - Research Assessment 101: An introduction. Research Trends, 23 (May 2011), 3-5. Reidpath, D. & Allotey, P.(2010). Can national research assessment exercises be used locally to inform research strategy development? The description of a methodological approach to the UK RAE 2008 results with a focus on one institution. Higher Education, 59, 785–797. Welsh, J. Nunez, W. & Petrosko, J. (2006). Assessing and cultivating support for strategic planning: searching for best practices in a reform environment, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(6), 693-708.