Cargando…
UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim?
BACKGROUND: The UK, like some other countries, carries out a periodic review of research quality in universities and the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) reported a doubling (103% increase) in its “world leading” or so-called “4*” research outputs in the areas of life sciences and med...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2015
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4512718/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26204117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132990 |
_version_ | 1782382551293231104 |
---|---|
author | Wooding, Steven Van Leeuwen, Thed N. Parks, Sarah Kapur, Shitij Grant, Jonathan |
author_facet | Wooding, Steven Van Leeuwen, Thed N. Parks, Sarah Kapur, Shitij Grant, Jonathan |
author_sort | Wooding, Steven |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The UK, like some other countries, carries out a periodic review of research quality in universities and the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) reported a doubling (103% increase) in its “world leading” or so-called “4*” research outputs in the areas of life sciences and medicine between 2008 and 2014. This is a remarkable improvement in six years and if validated internationally could have profound implications for health sciences. METHODS: We compared the reported changes in 4* quality to bibliometric measures of quality for the 56,639 articles submitted to the RAE 2008 and the 50,044 articles submitted to the REF 2014 to Panel A, which assesses the life sciences, including medicine. FINDINGS: UK research submitted to the RAE and REF was of better quality than worldwide research on average. While we found evidence for some increase in the quality of top UK research articles, a 10-25% increase in the top 10%ile papers, depending upon the metrics used, we could not find evidence to support a 103% increase in quality. Instead we found that as compared to the RAE, the REF results implied a lower citation %ile threshold for declaring a 4*. INTERPRETATION: There is a wide discrepancy between bibliometric indices and peer-review panel judgements between the RAE 2008 and REF 2014. It is possible that the changes in the funding regime between 2008 and 2014 that significantly increased the financial premium for 4* articles may have influenced research quality evaluation. For the advancement of science and health, evaluation of research quality requires consistency and validity – the discrepancy noted here calls for a closer examination of mass peer-review methods like the REF. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4512718 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45127182015-07-24 UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim? Wooding, Steven Van Leeuwen, Thed N. Parks, Sarah Kapur, Shitij Grant, Jonathan PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: The UK, like some other countries, carries out a periodic review of research quality in universities and the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) reported a doubling (103% increase) in its “world leading” or so-called “4*” research outputs in the areas of life sciences and medicine between 2008 and 2014. This is a remarkable improvement in six years and if validated internationally could have profound implications for health sciences. METHODS: We compared the reported changes in 4* quality to bibliometric measures of quality for the 56,639 articles submitted to the RAE 2008 and the 50,044 articles submitted to the REF 2014 to Panel A, which assesses the life sciences, including medicine. FINDINGS: UK research submitted to the RAE and REF was of better quality than worldwide research on average. While we found evidence for some increase in the quality of top UK research articles, a 10-25% increase in the top 10%ile papers, depending upon the metrics used, we could not find evidence to support a 103% increase in quality. Instead we found that as compared to the RAE, the REF results implied a lower citation %ile threshold for declaring a 4*. INTERPRETATION: There is a wide discrepancy between bibliometric indices and peer-review panel judgements between the RAE 2008 and REF 2014. It is possible that the changes in the funding regime between 2008 and 2014 that significantly increased the financial premium for 4* articles may have influenced research quality evaluation. For the advancement of science and health, evaluation of research quality requires consistency and validity – the discrepancy noted here calls for a closer examination of mass peer-review methods like the REF. Public Library of Science 2015-07-23 /pmc/articles/PMC4512718/ /pubmed/26204117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132990 Text en © 2015 Wooding et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Wooding, Steven Van Leeuwen, Thed N. Parks, Sarah Kapur, Shitij Grant, Jonathan UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim? |
title | UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim? |
title_full | UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim? |
title_fullStr | UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim? |
title_full_unstemmed | UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim? |
title_short | UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim? |
title_sort | uk doubles its “world-leading” research in life sciences and medicine in six years: testing the claim? |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4512718/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26204117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132990 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT woodingsteven ukdoublesitsworldleadingresearchinlifesciencesandmedicineinsixyearstestingtheclaim AT vanleeuwenthedn ukdoublesitsworldleadingresearchinlifesciencesandmedicineinsixyearstestingtheclaim AT parkssarah ukdoublesitsworldleadingresearchinlifesciencesandmedicineinsixyearstestingtheclaim AT kapurshitij ukdoublesitsworldleadingresearchinlifesciencesandmedicineinsixyearstestingtheclaim AT grantjonathan ukdoublesitsworldleadingresearchinlifesciencesandmedicineinsixyearstestingtheclaim |