Category: research evaluation

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…

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…

Multilingualism is integral to accessibility and should be part of European research assessment reform

Developing research systems that promote diverse, multilingual and relevant research for different audiences is a key and often overlooked element in making research accessible. However, biases in traditional research assessment often place researchers…

What role should non-academics have in evaluating the potential impact of new research projects?

Non-academics with extensive experience of particular sectors and industries can provide unique insights into the potential pathways to impact for new research projects. Drawing on a quasi-natural experiment comparing assessment panels with and without…

How models change the world – and what we should do about it

Models that make predictions about the COVID-19 pandemic are complicated by the fact that people change their behaviour in response to these predictions. Lucie White discusses how we can deal with this, based on a recent paper with Philippe van Basshuy…

Can Twitter data help in spotting problems early with publications? What retracted COVID-19 papers can teach us about science in the public sphere

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought science into mainstream public and political debates in novel ways, notably through the widespread use of social media to share and discuss new findings. In this post, Robin Haunschild and Lutz Bornmann discuss their r…