Palazzo Giusso (Napoli). Wikicommons/Sistermone. Some rights reserved.Over the last few months, a campaign inviting Italian academics to abstain from participating in the latest nationwide research assessment exercise (VQR 2011-2014) has been gaining momentum.
It all started with a petition signed by around 14,000 academics calling for the government to back off on its decision to write off the years 2011-2014 when calculating seniority in service and corresponding pay levels for academics.
The austerity-driven four-year salary freeze affected almost all public sector workers in Italy (with the exception of judges and magistrates), but academics not only were the last category to see their rise in pay restored, but the only ones for whom 2011-2014 were basically written off altogether.
