Abstract

The New Public Management movement, straight from Anglo-Saxon land, has introduced the idea that public services should be managed like firms and, as a consequence, production indicators be used to measure performance. Research has not escaped this trend and is to be held accountable. This article focuses less on the fundamental question of the freedom of research in universities than on the deviations resulting from the numerical indicators of production to which researchers are now subject. Besides not being adapted to research, these methods risk having a negative impact on creativity. The costs of the obligation to account — loss of motivation by researchers, reinforcement of “normal science”, etc. — might exceed any hoped-for benefits. To improve public research, others procedures, drawn from research in the science of management, are proposed.