Online, Continuous, Metrics-Based Research Assessment

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Description/Abstract

As predicted, and long urged, the UK's wasteful, time-consuming Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is to be replaced by metrics. RAE outcome is most closely correlated (r = 0.98) with the metric of prior RCUK research funding (this is no doubt in part a "Matthew Effect"), but research citation impact is another metric highly correlated with the RAE outcome, even though it is not explicitly counted. Now it can be explicitly counted (along with other powerful new performance metrics) and all the rest of the ritualistic time-wasting can be abandoned, without further ceremony. This represents a great boost for institutional self-archiving in Open Access Institutional Repositories, not only because that is the obvious, optimal means of submission to the new metric RAE, but because it is also a powerful means of maximising research impact, i.e., maximising those metrics.