Applying the analytic hierarchy process to evaluation of the national nuclear R&D projects: The case of Korea

Researchers, institutes, and government involved in research and development (R&D) are faced with the problem of performing R&D project evaluations. As a real-world case of evaluation, we elicited and reproduced the evaluation process of the national nuclear R&D projects, using a specific case study of Korea for the year 2001. In the methodology, the analytic hierarchy process is employed to evaluate and rank the selected nuclear R&D projects which have a wide range of evaluation objectives and characteristics. This article presents a derivation of a wide range of objectives, evaluation viewpoints from research professionals and evaluators, and evaluation criteria. To structure and quantify the criteria and research performance of some selected projects, we elicited strategic objectives, then refined and structured them into a hierarchy. The method and implications can be easily understood and applied by practitioners since they follow the standard practice of evaluation and relative comparisons of performance using evaluation procedures.