Letter: The unbearable lightness of the evaluation of research projects: do we need to regularize the professional activity of research evaluation?

This letter aims to highlight severe inconsistencies in the scientific evaluation of regionally publicly funded research projects, uncovering structural failures related to the public management of science that go beyond technical aspects of bibliometrics. This problem is exemplified through an illustrative case study (the public grants program to emerging research groups funded by the regional government of the Valencian region, Spain, NUTS-2), describing three complementary aspects of this call (the evaluation system, the evaluation process, and the communication of the evaluation). The problems illustrated by this case study lead to a general problem related to the nonstrategic use of science. Finally, the national and international regularization of the professional activity of research evaluation in general, and bibliometrics in particular, is proposed as a route to avoid mismanagement of science (and scientific evaluation).