Metrics or Peer Review? Evaluating the 2001 UK Research Assessment Exercise in Political Science

Linda Butler and Ian McAllister

Political Studies Review, 2009, vol. 7, issue 1, 3-17

Abstract: Evaluations of research quality in universities are now widely used in the advanced economies. The UK's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is the most highly developed of these research evaluations. This article uses the results from the 2001 RAE in political science to assess the utility of citations as a measure of outcome, relative to other possible indicators. The data come from the 4,400 submissions to the RAE political science panel. The 28,128 citations analysed relate not only to journal articles, but to all submitted publications – including authored and edited books and book chapters. The results show that citations are the most important predictor of the RAE outcome, followed by whether or not a department had a representative on the RAE panel. The results highlight the need to develop robust quantitative indicators to evaluate research quality which would obviate the need for a peer evaluation based on a large committee. Bibliometrics should form the main component of such a portfolio of quantitative indicators.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-9299.2008.00167.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:pstrev:v:7:y:2009:i:1:p:3-17

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1478-9299

Access Statistics for this article

Political Studies Review is currently edited by Matthew Festenstein and Martin Smith

More articles in Political Studies Review from Political Studies Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().