Models of financing research: public funding mechanisms for universities in Flanders

This paper gives an overview of the models of financing research at universities in Flanders, Belgium. The Flemish government installed parallel mechanisms to distribute financial means for scientific research at the universities: research is supported via the allocation of block grants to the universities based on specific interuniversity allocation keys on the one hand and via project-based funding allocated on competitive basis by public funding agencies on the other hand. The composition of the allocation key of both the Special Research Fund and the Industrial Research Fund and the impact of the research performance-based parameters of these allocation keys on the research policy of universities and on the peer-reviewed assessment of the quality of research proposals submitted to the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders, one of the Flemish public funding agencies, are discussed

Benchmarking the business performance of departmental space in universities

Purpose and Theory: In UK higher education institutions, facilities management performance tends to be measured in space utilisation and space cost. A new approach uses the �return on investment� (ROI) concept of income generation to highlight space performance at faculty/department/building level. Design and approach: Using space data from several English universities and data envelopment analysis (DEA), six types of academic units (departments, institutes or similar) are compared in regard of their respective research and teaching income. This technique allows mapping out the total �envelope� with the best performers at the edge, showing what improvement/change would be needed for the others in the group to match their performance. Findings: This is a viable method of benchmarking and gives participating institutions better and more strategic and business-oriented feedback on the performance of their space envelope than mere cost comparisons. It can potentially inform strategic decisions about university estates. However, there are barriers to applying this approach: problems posed by issues of classification and diverse organisational structures can be overcome, but lack of collaboration of facilities/estates and finance directorates; lack of centralised, accurate and detailed data pose more serious challenges

The structure of the Arts & Humanities Citation Index: A mapping on the basis of aggregated citations among 1,157 journals

Using the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) 2008, we apply mapping techniques previously developed for mapping journal structures in the Science and Social Science Citation Indices. Citation relations among the 110,718 records were aggregated at the level of 1,157 journals specific to the A&HCI, and the journal structures are questioned on whether a cognitive structure can be reconstructed and visualized. Both cosine-normalization (bottom up) and factor analysis (top down) suggest a division into approximately twelve subsets. The relations among these subsets are explored using various visualization techniques. However, we were not able to retrieve this structure using the ISI Subject Categories, including the 25 categories which are specific to the A&HCI. We discuss options for validation such as against the categories of the Humanities Indicators of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the panel structure of the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH), and compare our results with the curriculum organization of the Humanities Section of the College of Letters and Sciences of UCLA as an example of institutional organization

UCL (University College London) Libraries Masterplan: Library Report to Estates Management Committee January 2008

This document is a Report from UCL Library Services to UCL on Master Planning activities and outputs which have been undertaken to quantify use and development of estate in UCL Library Services. Prioritised options have been identified for the UCL Main and Science Libraries, and for a new central site option. This work has also addressed the needs of UCL for long-term offsite storage, which concludes that UCL needs to retain its facility at Wickford for at least the next ten years

Webometric analysis of departments of librarianship and information science: a follow-up study

This paper reports an analysis of the websites of UK departments of library and information science. Inlink counts of these websites revealed no statistically significant correlation with the quality of the research carried out by these departments, as quantified using departmental grades in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise and citations in Google Scholar to publications submitted for that Exercise. Reasons for this lack of correlation include: difficulties in disambiguating departmental websites from larger institutional structures; the relatively small amount of research-related material in departmental websites; and limitations in the ways that current Web search engines process linkages to URLs. It is concluded that departmental-level webometric analyses do not at present provide an appropriate technique for evaluating academic research quality, and, more generally, that standards are needed for the formatting of URLs if inlinks are to become firmly established as a tool for website analysis

The English degree and graduate careers

This report provides English departments with information about the employment patterns and prospects of their graduates and suggests ways in which these might be enhanced. The report uses data gathered on English graduates three to four years after graduating. It shows that English graduates do take about four years to ‘find their feet’ on the career ladder, and that they do well in finding a job relevant to their qualification level compared to graduates in English-related fields or History. The report also examines how the skills of the English graduate are profiled by departments, by the English Benchmarking Statement, and by graduates themselves. These are compared to other disciplines to give some indication of the ‘strengths’ and ‘weaknesses’ of the English graduate

Evaluating a Department’s Research: Testing the Leiden Methodology in Business and Management

The Leiden methodology (LM), also sometimes called the “crown indicator”, is a quantitative method for evaluating the research quality of a research group or academic department based on the citations received by the group in comparison to averages for the field. There have been a number of applications but these have mainly been in the hard sciences where the data on citations, provided by the ISI Web of Science (WoS), is more reliable. In the social sciences, including business and management, many journals and books are not included within WoS and so the LM has not been tested here. In this research study the LM has been applied on a dataset of over 3000 research publications from three UK business schools. The results show that the LM does indeed discriminate between the schools, and has a degree of concordance with other forms of evaluation, but that there are significant limitations and problems within this discipline

The metric tide: report of the independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management

This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. The review was chaired by Professor James Wilsdon, supported by an independent and multidisciplinary group of experts in scientometrics, research funding, research policy, publishing, university management and administration. This review has gone beyond earlier studies to take a deeper look at potential uses and limitations of research metrics and indicators. It has explored the use of metrics across different disciplines, and assessed their potential contribution to the development of research excellence and impact. It has analysed their role in processes of research assessment, including the next cycle of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). It has considered the changing ways in which universities are using quantitative indicators in their management systems, and the growing power of league tables and rankings. And it has considered the negative or unintended effects of metrics on various aspects of research culture. The report starts by tracing the history of metrics in research management and assessment, in the UK and internationally. It looks at the applicability of metrics within different research cultures, compares the peer review system with metric-based alternatives, and considers what balance might be struck between the two. It charts the development of research management systems within institutions, and examines the effects of the growing use of quantitative indicators on different aspects of research culture, including performance management, equality, diversity, interdisciplinarity, and the ‘gaming’ of assessment systems. The review looks at how different funders are using quantitative indicators, and considers their potential role in research and innovation policy. Finally, it examines the role that metrics played in REF2014, and outlines scenarios for their contribution to future exercises

Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater: The Undesirable Effects of National Research Assessment Exercises on Research

The evaluation of the quality of research at a national level has become increasingly common. The UK has been at the forefront of this trend having undertaken many assessments since 1986, the latest being the “Research Excellence Framework” in 2014. The argument of this paper is that, whatever the intended results in terms of evaluating and improving research, there have been many, presumably unintended, results that are highly undesirable for research and the university community more generally. We situate our analysis using Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction and then focus on the peculiarities of the 2008 RAE and the 2014 REF the rules of which allowed for, and indeed encouraged, significant game-playing on the part of striving universities. We conclude with practical recommendations to maintain the general intention of research assessment without the undesirable side-effects