AAA – Annual Academic Achievements: start of 2023 reporting

The Annual Academic Achievements process (AAA) for the 2023 reporting period was opened in ETHIS at the start of November. The aim of this annual process is to collect comprehensive academic reports from professorships, departments and study programmes in order to provide relevant information for internal and external use.

The AAA process, which has existed since 2010 and can be found in ETHIS in the “Lehre & Forschung” section, facilitates a differentiated overview of ETH Zurich through three different types of report. The reports of the professorships are largely automated, while those of the departments and study programmes are compiled in text form in order to guarantee maximum flexibility. The reports are continuously adjusted to new requirements in order to ensure that they provide valuable and up-to-date information.

Around 1,200 users are authorised to participate in this bilingual AAA process. All persons entered in the organisational database as heads of AAA-reportable units are automatically authorised to submit reports. They may delegate permissions for editing the reports in ETHIS under “Persönlich”. The currently authorised persons to participate in AAA have already been informed of the opening by e-mail.

The 2022 AAA reporting period closed successfully and the report response rate was 100%. A total of 810 reports were processed and submitted. Automatically completed data can now be reviewed and information supplemented or amended for the 2023 reporting period. The submission deadline for the 2023 reporting period is 31 January 2024.

What’s new in the 2023 AAA reporting period?

There are a few changes being introduced in the 2023 AAA reporting period. Research contacts can now for the first time be classified as scientific policy advice, thereby enabling the Science-Policy Interface unit (VPWW) to coordinate its activities more effectively.

A new structure has been introduced for the “Internal bodies and offices” question based on the recommendations of the working group of the rETHink implementation project “Workload of professorships”. This serves to facilitate the separate recording of offices and tasks at ETH and departmental level. The aim is to maintain as complete and systematic data acquisition as possible of the offices and tasks assumed at both levels. This will enable the department managements to be provided with clear and comparable information about the commitment of the individual professorships within the department. Some of the entries will be automatically generated based on the persons recorded in the organisational database. The other offices and tasks must be entered manually.

The two questions concerning quality assurance and feedback on infrastructure have been removed from the study programme report. Two new questions have been added concerning the PAKETH project and the ETH Competence Framework. The question about the introduction of new forms of teaching has also been expanded. These changes are taking place in consultation with the Rectorate.

What is the information being used for?

The AAA process plays an important role in answering a range of questions, supports ETH in decision-making processes and contributes to internal and external reporting. Information is collected within the scope of this process that is of decisive importance for fulfilling the tasks of the Executive Board. The submitted reports provide a record of the academic performance of professorships and departments for the Executive Board and other relevant bodies. In addition, the information collected for a department is made accessible to the department management in the form of a graphic time series analysis in ETHIS.

The varied subsequent use of the data from the AAA process is of significant benefit for ETH. For instance, the reports serve to supplement regular departmental evaluations and support dialogue with the Executive Board. The information collected is also used for accountability reporting towards external bodies such as the ETH Board. The research contacts are included in the International Knowledge Base that allows all ETH members to identify potential new contacts. The private sector contacts support Industry Relations in promoting the interface between research and industry. The Library’s Research Collection (RC) receives important structural information from AAA about the organisational units of the authors of publications, thereby enabling the AAA process to make a significant contribution to the RC’s quality assurance. The confirmation of outside activities as part of the AAA process also facilitates the fulfilment of compliance requirements.

The quality assurance of the source systems is a central aspect of the AAA process that transparently displays information from different systems and enables potential data shortcomings to be rectified. Many of the questions in the reports are automatically filled with data in order to minimise the manual effort.

Contact and further information

The collaboration of the persons involved in the AAA process is decisive for implementing the AAA process successfully and generating maximum added value. Please contact the AAA team via the ticketing system if you have any questions or suggestions.