Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0

Author-Name: Erich Battistin
Author-X-Name-First: Erich
Author-X-Name-Last: Battistin

Author-Name: Marco Ovidi
Author-X-Name-First: Marco
Author-X-Name-Last: Ovidi
Author-Email: marco.ovidi@unicatt.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Author-Workplace-Name: Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Title: Rising Stars.


Abstract: We use the UK’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) to study the attributes
of top-scoring (four-star) publications in Economics and Econometrics. Although
official documents contain aggregate scores for each institution, we show how
these aggregates can be used to infer the score awarded by REF panellists to each
publication. We demonstrate that this score responds to journal prestige as measured
by the Thomson Reuters Article Influence Score. Several econometric analyses confirm
the limited contribution of other publication attributes, such as the citation counts, to
the awarded score, and publications in the top generalist and top-five economics journals
are unambiguously awarded four stars. We conclude that in large-scale evaluations
such as the REF, peer reviews and bibliometrics should be viewed as complementary
modes of assessment: the time-consuming task of peer reviews would be more costeffective
if targeted to publications whose quality cannot be unambiguously classified
using bibliometrics. 
Length: 55
Creation-Date: 2021-06
File-URL: http://dipartimenti.unicatt.it/economia-finanza-def106.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
File-Function: First version, 2021
Number: def106
Classification-JEL: H52 , H83 , I23 , I28. 
Keywords: Education Policy, Higher Education, Journal Ranking, Research Funding.
Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie1:def106