College of Economic & Management Sciences

NRF appoints Unisan as chair of evaluation and rating panels

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Prof Kerstin Jordaan

Prof Kerstin Jordaan from the Department of Decision Sciences has recently been appointed chairperson of the National Research Foundation (NRF) evaluation and rating panels. 

Jordaan served as a convenor of the NRF Specialist Committee for Mathematical Sciences rating panel in 2020 and 2021. The specialist committee covers the various disciplines in the humanities, natural, social and medical sciences, and engineering.


How the NRF rating process works

"Serving on the NRF Specialist Committee for Mathematical Sciences and as convener of this committee for several years gave me valuable experience in seeing how the NRF rating process works," says Jordaan. Adding: "I realised that there are some commonly held misconceptions and that the process is much more complex than I initially realised."

She says one common misconception is that the specialist committee decides on a rating for an applicant. In this regard, Jordaan says: "The role of the specialist panel is to select suitable reviewers for each applicant and, once the review reports come in, it assesses the quality and interpret the comments made by each reviewer to see how the reviewer sees the standing of the applicant."

"The specialist committee members then meet to discuss their assessments and interpretations of reports to reach a consensus for each review report," she explains. Jordaan says the NRF rating panel for a particular discipline consists of the specialist committee in the field, a chairperson and an independent assessor who is not from that discipline. "The independent assessor's role is to ensure consistent application of procedures across different panels, and the role of the chairperson is to facilitate discussion and fair application of processes and procedures. This panel makes recommendations on the rating for each applicant," Jordaan says.  

She adds: "What many people do not realise is that the decision on a rating is based on three interpretations of the review report recommendations, namely the interpretation of the chairperson, the independent assessor and the combined consensus interpretation of the specialist committee."

She explains that the decision is thoroughly discussed until a consensus is reached. Therefore, the role of the chairperson of NRF evaluation and rating panels, who leads these discussions, is essential. "I am honoured to be appointed chairperson, but I realise it is a tremendous responsibility. I hope I can do justice to the trust placed in me by ensuring that evaluations of researchers' academic standing are made as fairly as possible," Jordaan concludes.

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* Submitted by the College of Economic and Management Sciences

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Publish date: 2023/09/11

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