Assessment committee
To the chairman of the assessment committee
What to do first
Non-conforming application
Inclusion of additional material
Deadline
To all members of the assessment committee
Confidentiality
Guidelines concerning the assessment of applicants
Assessment of research qualifications
Assessment of teaching qualifications
Assessment of other qualifications
Summary of the assessment of applicant
Grading
Disagreement
To the chairman of the assessment committee
What to do first
As a chairman you must contact the other members of the committee in order to plan the assessment process. But first and foremost you must brief the committee on the formal basis of the assessment in accordance with the present guidelines and make sure that they have received the material.
If you are in any doubt about the assessment procedure or the interpretation of the job advertisement, please feel free to contact HR in order to clarify the matters.
As chairman of the assessment committee you must see to it that all applications are complete and comply with the job advertisement. If an application is non-conforming, i.e. does not comply with the formalities set out in the job advertisement (e.g. failure to enclose list of publications, documentation for teaching qualifications or other documents stated in the job advertisement), the department can ask the individual applicant to submit the material before the assessment process is initiated.
If you find that the application is still non-conforming, you can ask the department to contact the applicant. However, it is not obligatory to ask for missing material, since it is up to the applicant to make sure that the application meets the formal requirements.
The applications will be evaluated in the form they are submitted. This implies that a manus which by the deadline was categorized as ‘submitted’ will be counted as only submitted, even if you are later informed that it was accepted.
However, if an applicant has published a particularly important scientific work, e.g. in the form of a thesis, or if the applicant has been awarded an academic degree, after the deadline, and if the inclusion of such material in the assessment may be of decisive importance to the outcome of the overall assessment, the assessment committee may decide that the applicant should be given the opportunity of having the material included in the assessment. If the inclusion of additional material is permitted, this applies to all applicants. A deadline must therefore be fixed for the submission of additional material, of which all applicants must be informed, and all additional material submitted by all applicants must be included in the assessment.
The Appointment Order requires that the hiring decision is made no more than six months after the deadline for applications. It is therefore important that the committee finishes it’s work by the closing date. If the deadline cannot be met after all, please inform the department and state the reason for your request for extension.
The assessment must be uploaded to PeopleXS.
Signatures are not required, neither from you nor from the other committee members.
To all members of the assessment committee
You will receive the applications via PeopleXS along with the job advertisement and contact details of the assessment committee members. The chairman of the committee will take the initial contact in order to plan the work of the committee.
Please note that names of applicants and number of applicants are and remain confidential.
The Ministerial Order on the Appointment of Academic Staff at Universities in Denmark:
The assessment committee or the experts decide whether the applicants possess the academic qualifications in research, teaching, communication, etc. stipulated in the job structure and fulfil the other academic and professional requirements stipulated in the advertisement. A non-prioritised,
reasoned and written assessment of the applicants' academic qualifications is submitted to the Dean. In the event of differences of opinion between the members of the committee, this must be stipulated in the assessment.
The formal basis for your work is the job advertisement. You cannot add further qualification requirements to your assessment.
Applicable criteria are primarily documented qualifications, the applicant’s scientific merits, academic breadth and, depending on the circumstances, how long the applicant has taken to produce the scientific output presented etc. In this connection, please disregard any maternity/paternity leaves.
The assessment of the individual applicant is written in a separate document that does not require the reader to consult the application or the applicant’s written work.
The assessment must be sufficiently detailed, clear and thorough to make it possible to follow the thought process from premises to conclusion. The wording of the assessment should be neutral.
Every member of the assessment committee is obliged to familiarize himself with the available material, so that all applicants are assessed by the committee as such. However, a division of work will normally be agreed on as regards the preparation of draft assessments. In the final editing of the assessments, you should, moreover, eliminate any inconsistencies that may be the result of the division of work between you.
Of course each committee members must be able to commit himself to the overall assessment. In cases of strong disagreement on the assessment of the individual applicants, it is possible to have committee members prepare and submit separate assessments.
The assessments are at no point made public by the University of Copenhagen.
Assessment of research qualifications
The assessment of the applicant’s research qualifications is based on material submitted by the applicant.
The publications assessed should be clearly categorised. Typical categorisations would be peer-reviewed articles, other scientific articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, teaching materials, popular articles, and theses (eg. PhD or doctoral thesis). The categorization should be done according to the normal practice within the specific discipline and may thus differ between these. Work in the form of translations, lecture notes etc. may be included in the categorization of the original work. Cited work and other documentable qualifications are assessed to the extent deemed necessary for you to prepare the assessment. This means that you decide how much of the submitted material should be included. The applicant is not entitled to an assessment of all the material submitted.
Bibliometric analysis should be done in the same way for all applicants. The committee can use the applicant’s own bibliometric analysis (you can ask the applicant to do it) or prepare their own
Assessment of teaching qualifications - if required
The assessment should include a detailed and specific description of the applicant's teaching qualifications on the background of the submitted materials. Assessment is made in accordance with the weight placed on the specific areas in the job advertisement.
Other qualifications stated in the job advertisement should be assessed too.
This could be for instance ability to communicate, cooperation with industry etc.
Summary of the assessment of the applicant
The assessment must be limited to the specific position applied for and must never conclude that the applicant is in general competent (or not competent ).
Your conclusion as to whether the applicant is qualified must be unambiguous and unconditional.
Grading
You should not normally grade your conclusion concerning the applicant’s qualifications - simply state wheter the applicant is qualified or not.
However, you may chose to grade your conclusion concerning the applicant's qualifications positively using such terms as “highly qualified” or “qualified”. However, such grading should be seen in relation to the professorship and not in relation to the other the applicants.
You may, after careful consideration, chose to grade your conclusion concerning an applicant's qualifications using such terms as “not yet qualified” or “not qualified based on the present research output”.
In case of disagreement among you, simply state in the assessment ‘[number of] members find the applicant qualified, [number of] members find the applicant not qualified’. Reasons must then be given for the different points of view.
Please feel free to use LIFE’s assessment template.
Karen Vestergaard Petersen, - siden er sidst opdateret d.13. april 2011