Each year, the Law Faculty focuses on the research performance of one of its five departments. While doing so, the Faculty relies on the principles in Chapter 4 of the QAD Guidelines for the Faculty of Law (PDF, 4.0 MB).
The Law Faculty's research evaluation concept is based on results from various research projects on the evaluation of legal research. One central finding was that legal research differs fundamentally in several respects from other research disciplines, such as the natural sciences.
Results of the study regarding the possibilities and limitations of the evaluation of legal research were published as a book: The Stämpfli-Verlag published the book at the beginning of 2016. Oxford University Press also published an article in English about this matter in July 2018 (publication).
Another project was devoted to investigating evaluation procedures and criteria from an international and comparative perspective. In February 2017, a workshop with experts from 12 European countries took place in Bern, Switzerland, where the experiences of the previous practices of research evaluations in the respective countries were presented. The anthology with contributions by the experts on research evaluation in their countries and a comparative synthesis were published in April 2019 by Edward Elgar (UK).
Scientific Integrity
The Faculty is committed to the Code of Conduct for Scientific Integrity, an updated version of which was reissued by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences in 2021. The code contains basic principles of scientific integrity and their implementation and violations. The basic principles include reliability, honesty, respect and accountability. These are prerequisites for the independence and credibility of science and its disciplines, the traceability and reproducibility of research results, and their acceptance in society.
