Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/108707 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 8829
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
How should the productivity of research universities be measured? This task is difficult but important. The recent Research Excellence Framework in the UK, which was based on peer review, suggests that there has been a marked improvement in UK academic research in economics and in many other subjects. But is it possible to design an objective check on, and measure of, a nation's 'world-leading research'? Following a variant of a method developed in Oswald (2010), I examine citations data on 450 genuinely world-leading journal articles over the Research Excellence Framework period 2008-2014. The UK produced 54 of these articles, namely, 12%. This compares to 45 articles, namely 10%, using the same methodology over the Research Assessment Exercise period 2001-2008. I conclude that it is possible to produce an objective measure of world-leading research, and that UK economics did show a small improvement.
Subjects: 
economics of science
evaluation
European economics
United Kingdom
peer-review
Research Excellence Framework (REF)
citations
Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
JEL: 
J0
D24
I23
J24
O32
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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