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…
Category: research evaluation
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…
There are four schools of thought on reforming peer review – can they co-exist?
Outlining their recent research into the different interests and commitments of groups looking to reform and improve scientific peer review, Ludo Waltman, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Stephen Pinfield, and Helen Buckley Woods identify four schools of though…
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…
By ignoring tacit knowledge, we can tell less than we know about research impact.
Impact case studies, such as those produced for the UK’s research excellence framework, often present neat linear impact narratives that reflect the transmission of explicit knowledge from the world of research to the world of practice. Vincent W Mitch…
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…
Why indirect contributions matter for science and scientists (II)
In their previous post, Leo Tiokhin, Karthik Panchanathan, Paul Smaldino and Daniel Lakens argued that the predominant focus on scientists’ direct contributions has detrimental effects on collaboration, well-being, and scientific progress more broadly….