There has been a marked trend for the increased use of hyperbolic adjectives in academic writing in recent decades. Drawing on a study of REF 2014 impact case studies, Ken Hyland finds this genre to include even greater degrees of hype than research wr…
Category: research assessment
Can artificial intelligence assess the quality of academic journal articles in the next REF?
In this blog post Mike Thelwall, Kayvan Kousha, Paul Wilson, Mahshid Abdoli, Meiko Makita, Emma Stuart and Jonathan Levitt discuss the results of a recent project for UKRI that made recommendations about whether artificial intelligence (AI) could be us…
Reforming research assessment in Spain requires greater university autonomy
Following the publication of the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment under the auspices of the European Commission, countries across Europe are reconsidering their research assessment systems and policies and how they might align more closely to…
No Impact People? Reframing research impact in the social sciences
Responding to a call for renewed thinking about how we understand and measure social science impact by Ziyad Marar, Ron Kassimir, outlines how the way in which impact is figured in the social sciences is often dependent on those external to its product…
The next REF should place greater value on the ‘impact-in-process’ generated by co-produced research.
Impact has in the past two REF cycles established itself as an integral criteria of research assessment in the UK. However, the kinds of impacts that are valued and the ways in which the ‘reach’ and ‘significance’ of impact are interpreted by instituti…
Planning for Impact – A framework for achievable impacts in grant applications and impact statements.
Grant applications and impact statements for research projects are important points for researchers and assessors to consider the future impact of research and whether the proposed pathways to these goals are feasible. Drawing on evidence from REF2014 …
Do we need all the components of the Research Excellence Framework?
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is underpinned by three areas of assessment: outputs, impact and environment. However, discussing the findings of their recent research Mehmet Pinar and Tim Horne argue that these elements correlate to the extent…
Imperfect, boring, headed for change? 10 Ways to improve academic CV assessments
Academic CVs play a major role in research assessment and in shaping academic fields by sorting and selecting promising researchers. Their role in structuring and prioritizing information is therefore significant and has recently been criticised for fa…
Citation counts reinforce the influence of highly cited papers and nudge us towards undervaluing those with fewer.
In the context of everyday research assessment citation counts are often taken as a simple indicator of the influence of any particular paper. However, all citations are not the same and can be deployed to achieve different ends. Commenting on a recent…
2021 In Review: Measuring and Assessing Research
The second of this year’s annual reviews focuses on research assessment. Looking into the the quantitative and qualitative measures that govern and shape research, impact and the management of higher education institutions, this list brings toget…