Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of policy engagement bodies set up within universities worldwide. The present study focuses on the British experience of this phenomenon but with relevance to other contexts. Multiple factors are at play to explain this growth, from the Research Excellence Framework impact agenda (which assesses and ranks the quality of research in UK universities and has been echoed in other countries) to universities’ renewed focus on their civic mission, and a growing demand within policy and practice circles for more research evidence. Based on interviews with senior staff and analysis of their websites and documentary outputs, this article offers a comprehensive catalogue of university policy engagement bodies across the UK, and classifies them into types based on their activities, outputs, impact, and staff. We enrich this categorization by examining the stories these bodies tell to explain how and why they have emerged, and the variable approaches they adopt as they seek to influence both academic and policymaking practices. In doing so, we develop a typology of university policy engagement bodies, and demonstrate how they seek to partake in changing the roles and identities of universities, and their relationship with policymaking.
{"title":"University policy engagement bodies in the UK and the variable meanings of and approaches to impact","authors":"Hannah Durrant, E. MacKillop","doi":"10.1093/reseval/rvac015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvac015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of policy engagement bodies set up within universities worldwide. The present study focuses on the British experience of this phenomenon but with relevance to other contexts. Multiple factors are at play to explain this growth, from the Research Excellence Framework impact agenda (which assesses and ranks the quality of research in UK universities and has been echoed in other countries) to universities’ renewed focus on their civic mission, and a growing demand within policy and practice circles for more research evidence. Based on interviews with senior staff and analysis of their websites and documentary outputs, this article offers a comprehensive catalogue of university policy engagement bodies across the UK, and classifies them into types based on their activities, outputs, impact, and staff. We enrich this categorization by examining the stories these bodies tell to explain how and why they have emerged, and the variable approaches they adopt as they seek to influence both academic and policymaking practices. In doing so, we develop a typology of university policy engagement bodies, and demonstrate how they seek to partake in changing the roles and identities of universities, and their relationship with policymaking.","PeriodicalId":47668,"journal":{"name":"Research Evaluation","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44193868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Horbach, Freek Oude Maatman, W. Halffman, Wytske M. Hepkema
Citing practices have long been at the heart of scientific reporting, playing both socially and epistemically important functions in science. While such practices have been relatively stable over time, recent attempts to develop automated citation recommendation tools have the potential to drastically impact citing practices. We claim that, even though such tools may come with tempting advantages, their development and implementation should be conducted with caution. Describing the role of citations in science’s current publishing and social reward structures, we argue that automated citation tools encourage questionable citing practices. More specifically, we describe how such tools may lead to an increase in: perfunctory citation and sloppy argumentation; affirmation biases; and Matthew effects. In addition, a lack of transparency of the tools’ underlying algorithmic structure renders their usage problematic. Hence, we urge that the consequences of citation recommendation tools should at least be understood and assessed before any attempts to implementation or broad distribution are undertaken.
{"title":"Automated citation recommendation tools encourage questionable citations","authors":"S. Horbach, Freek Oude Maatman, W. Halffman, Wytske M. Hepkema","doi":"10.1093/reseval/rvac016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvac016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Citing practices have long been at the heart of scientific reporting, playing both socially and epistemically important functions in science. While such practices have been relatively stable over time, recent attempts to develop automated citation recommendation tools have the potential to drastically impact citing practices. We claim that, even though such tools may come with tempting advantages, their development and implementation should be conducted with caution. Describing the role of citations in science’s current publishing and social reward structures, we argue that automated citation tools encourage questionable citing practices. More specifically, we describe how such tools may lead to an increase in: perfunctory citation and sloppy argumentation; affirmation biases; and Matthew effects. In addition, a lack of transparency of the tools’ underlying algorithmic structure renders their usage problematic. Hence, we urge that the consequences of citation recommendation tools should at least be understood and assessed before any attempts to implementation or broad distribution are undertaken.","PeriodicalId":47668,"journal":{"name":"Research Evaluation","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44109317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01Epub Date: 2022-02-17DOI: 10.1093/reseval/rvac003
Eugene I Kane, Gail L Daumit, Kevin M Fain, Roberta W Scherer, Emma Elizabeth McGinty
Background: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a revised, expanded definition of "clinical trial" in 2014 to improve trial identification and administrative compliance. Some stakeholders voiced concerns that the policy added administrative burden potentially slowing research progress.
Methods: This quasi-experimental study examined the difference-in-differences impact of the new NIH clinical trial definition policy on participant recruitment progress in grants funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
Results: 132 funded clinical trial grants were identified. While more grants were identified as clinical trials under the revised definition, the difference-in-differences in recruitment progress before and after the policy change was not statistically significant.
Conclusions: The revised NIH clinical trial definition had no clear effect on recruitment progress in newly-identified NIMH-funded clinical trials as compared to traditionally-identified clinical trials. Concerns that administrative delays and burden could impact study progress may be alleviated by these initial results.
{"title":"Evaluating the Revised National Institutes of Health Clinical Trial Definition Impact on Recruitment Progress.","authors":"Eugene I Kane, Gail L Daumit, Kevin M Fain, Roberta W Scherer, Emma Elizabeth McGinty","doi":"10.1093/reseval/rvac003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvac003","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a revised, expanded definition of \"clinical trial\" in 2014 to improve trial identification and administrative compliance. Some stakeholders voiced concerns that the policy added administrative burden potentially slowing research progress.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This quasi-experimental study examined the difference-in-differences impact of the new NIH clinical trial definition policy on participant recruitment progress in grants funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>132 funded clinical trial grants were identified. While more grants were identified as clinical trials under the revised definition, the difference-in-differences in recruitment progress before and after the policy change was not statistically significant.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The revised NIH clinical trial definition had no clear effect on recruitment progress in newly-identified NIMH-funded clinical trials as compared to traditionally-identified clinical trials. Concerns that administrative delays and burden could impact study progress may be alleviated by these initial results.</p>","PeriodicalId":47668,"journal":{"name":"Research Evaluation","volume":"31 2","pages":"249-256"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9558491/pdf/nihms-1840571.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33517102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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