An integrated approach using DEMATEL, ANP and TOPSIS for evaluating research & development projects

Abstract

Research and development (R&D) projects should be one of the main dimensions of universities for providing academic development. It is also a core performance indicator for monitoring and ranking universities. For these reasons, usually there are many projects submitted to the institutions that fund R&D projects. Funding institutions should evaluate the submitted projects in terms of multi-criteria and select the suitable ones among them. Therefore multi-criteria decision making techniques can be implemented as a useful tool for these kinds of problems. In this study an integrated approach which includes DEMATEL, ANP and TOPSIS methods is used for evaluating and ranking projects. The criteria are determined by taking the Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Institute’s (TÜBİTAK) project selection procedures into consideration. DEMATEL method is used in order to detect the cause and effect interaction among main criteria. Then ANP method is implemented for calculating the weights of each criterion. Finally, TOPSIS method is applied for ranking the projects.