Reports from Digital Science. 1. Evidence for excellence: has the signal overtaken the substance?

[Jonathan Adams]

Evidence for excellence: has the signal overtaken the substance?

Jonathan Adams and Karen Gurney

https://www.digital-science.com/blog/posts/digital-science-launches-digital-research-reports

In this report, part of a new quarterly series from Digital Science, we ask
whether evaluation as a well-intentioned audit has been overtaken by
evaluation as marketing.

We analyse past submissions to the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
to reveal what people do compared to what they say. We find that
researchers submit journal articles in preference to the outputs that
elsewhere they say are central to their field, they skew their selection to
high-impact journals, and they submit pieces from such journals even when
they are not well cited and, sometimes, not even research papers.

We suggest that researchers believe that the ‘brand’ of a journal known to
have high average impact is a better proxy ‘signal’ than the real evidence
of excellence to be found in their other research outputs.

Dr Jonathan Adams

Chief Scientist, Digital Science

M/ +44 7964 908449
E/ j.adams at digital-science.com

Macmillan Publishers Ltd
4 Crinan Street
London N1 9XW, UK

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/research/research-intelligence-proof-is-in-the-numbers/411118.article

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