 Short-term incentives of research evaluations: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence FrameworkMoqi Groen-Xu, Gregor Bös, Pedro A. Teixeira, Thomas Voigt and Bernhard Knapp Research Policy, 2023, vol. 52, issue 6 Abstract: We document incentive effects of the evaluation deadlines in the UK’s performance-based research funding system. Studying 3,597,272 publications by UK researchers, we find that publications just before assessment deadlines obtain substantially fewer citations and are published in venues with lower impact factors. These trends reverse abruptly after the deadlines. We discuss different factors that contribute to this observation and provide evidence that evaluation deadlines are likely to set incentives against investment in research quality and long-term topics. We conclude that where such shifts in research incentives are not intended, they might require balancing by additional incentives for exploratory, long-term oriented research. Keywords: Research funding systems; Evaluation effects; Economics of science; Incentives; University (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:52:y:2023:i:6:s0048733323000136 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2023.104729 Access Statistics for this article Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier |
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