Study calls for responsible academic research assessment

Phys.org  October 4, 2024
In their study a team of researchers in the UK challenged mainstream thinking that academic judges are best suited for evaluating research outputs. It aimed to inspire methods to utilize metrics effectively, considering the diverse communities requiring clear evaluation criteria. The research team used data from the UK’s 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) to examine the interplay between metrics and expert judgment in evaluating research outputs from 108 institutions, covering 13,973 publications in business and management—one of the evaluation’s largest and most heterogeneous fields. They showed that the strong association between journal rankings and expert evaluations has not changed, despite institutional endorsements of DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment). Additionally, they found that this correlation was strongest for the most prestigious journals. The implications of these findings were profound: they enhanced understanding of the use of metrics in research evaluations post-DORA and highlighted potential constraints in the deployment of responsible assessment… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE