I'd like to congratulate the authors for working on this, a so urgently needed research. I hope that in their plans is the expansion of these methods to other SNI areas. I am a SNI-I member, 7-yr membership, area VI (biotech) and I concur with all these conclusions at personal experience level.
I'd like to share with them my own SNI opinion I recently published in my blog (http://bit.ly/2cujOvs); of course, it does not have the scientific rigor of this publication. However, it has 5k visits in a week, highlighting the interest on the topic.
I'd like to bring to the author's attention another evaluation at higher education, that is Perfil Deseable, administered by SEP-PRODEP, it is a peer-reviewed process, almost 60% of college professors comply with it, and is used together with other 25 parameters to evaluate and fund state universities; however is a very underfunded program, severely hurting its transforming power. Maybe SNI can learn a few things from that other system.
Finally, I'd like to add as proposal the strengthening of collective efforts rather than individual, more focus should be put in Institutes, Centers, and Colegios in 5-10-15 year timeframes with clear research goals. And also the expansion of levels at SNI. The University of California system has 10 steps of 5% salary increase, SNI only has 5 steps, one is a single-time membership (C, success or else) and only one is permanent (Emeritus), the salary increase is 45% between each!; this promotes selfishness, mafia behaviour, and many other terrible things.
Wishing you all the best, Julián Peña.