Reflecting on carrying out impact evaluation as part of the The Research for Health in Humanitarian crises programme, Cordelia Lonsdale and Gloria Seruwagi, discuss common challenges faced in evaluating impact, particularly when outcomes don’t co…
Category: research evaluation
The REF needs to trust academics
Discussing recent research into how the REF distorts research and academic publishing patterns in the UK Moqi Groen-Xu and Peter Coveney argue for a researcher, rather than a rules centred REF. All governance systems – states, parents, or research eval…
Submissions to REF 2028 should comprise at least 5% non-traditional outputs
The recent publication of a series of reviews and the early decisions for REF2028, has highlighted an increased focus on research cultures and environments that extend beyond traditional researchers and research publications. James Baker, Lyndsey Balla…
Although hard to define, Narrative CVs are changing how we think about researcher assessment
For their supporters, narrative academic CVs present a means to bypass aspects of a research evaluation culture that is overly focused on the volume and venue of publications. Drawing on a sample of work promoting this format, Frédérique Bordignon, Lau…
Does the REF add any value to UK research?
Since the UK decided to link research assessment to research funding, there have been critiques that the competitive nature of the REF assessment creates a winner takes all environment. Whilst this is difficult to assess, Banal-Estanol et al. use a nov…
Crucial! New! Essential! – The rise of hype in research and impact assessment
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…
When it comes to research culture, why do folktales carry more weight than evidence?
Academia is nominally an evidence-based profession, but when developing policy around academic careers and management, higher education institutions more often that not draw on individual experience and anecdote, rather than systematic knowledge. Discu…
Evaluating the emotional impact of art
Many research projects in the humanities and social sciences result in creative and artistic outputs, but whilst a sprawling and contested industry has emerged to monitor and evaluate written research outputs, the impact of visual art is less well unde…
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…