Structure function evolution at next-to-leading order and beyond

Results are presented of two studies addressing the scaling violations of deep-inelastic structure functions. Factorization-scheme independent fits to all ep and μp data on F2 are performed at next-to-leading order (NLO), yielding αs(MZ) = 0.114 ± 0.002exp (+0.006-0.004)th. In order to reduce the theoretical error dominated by the renormalization-scale dependence, the next-higher order (NNLO) needs to be included. For the flavour non-singlet sector, it is shown that available calculations provide sufficient information for this purpose at x > 10-2