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UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim?

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  • Steven Wooding
  • Thed N Van Leeuwen
  • Sarah Parks
  • Shitij Kapur
  • Jonathan Grant

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven Wooding & Thed N Van Leeuwen & Sarah Parks & Shitij Kapur & Jonathan Grant, 2015. "UK Doubles Its “World-Leading” Research in Life Sciences and Medicine in Six Years: Testing the Claim?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-10, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0132990
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0132990
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Lutz Bornmann & Rüdiger Mutz & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2010. "A Reliability-Generalization Study of Journal Peer Reviews: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis of Inter-Rater Reliability and Its Determinants," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(12), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Hicks, Diana, 2012. "Performance-based university research funding systems," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 251-261.
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    Cited by:

    1. Stephan B. Bruns & David I. Stern, 2016. "Research assessment using early citation information," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(2), pages 917-935, August.
    2. Gianni De Fraja & Giovanni Facchini & John Gathergood, 2016. "How Much Is That Star in the Window? Professorial Salaries and Research Performance in UK Universities," Discussion Papers 2016-13, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    3. Emma Terämä & Melanie Smallman & Simon J Lock & Charlotte Johnson & Martin Zaltz Austwick, 2016. "Beyond Academia – Interrogating Research Impact in the Research Excellence Framework," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(12), pages 1-18, December.
    4. V. A. Traag & L. Waltman, 2019. "Systematic analysis of agreement between metrics and peer review in the UK REF," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-12, December.
    5. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin & Adams, Jonathan, 2019. "Do altmetrics assess societal impact in a comparable way to case studies? An empirical test of the convergent validity of altmetrics based on data from the UK research excellence framework (REF)," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 325-340.

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