Citation Counts: Are They Good Predictors of Rae Scores? A Bibliometric Analysis of RAE 2001

Citation counts are a reasonable proxy for peer assessment in some subjects, such as Biological Sciences, Clinical Sciences, Chemistry and Psychology; however, citation count are a weak proxy for a large number of disciplines, including fields within Biomedical related subjects and Engineering-related subjects.

Abstract

The question of how best to assess research performance is clearly of great\nconcern. In December 2007, HEFCE launched a national consultation on the future\nof Research Assessment, proposing that a Research Excellence Framework replaces\nthe current Research Assessment Exercise. Fundamentally the Research Excellence\nFramework involves a shift to metrics. Views on the effectiveness of metrics for\nassessing research are mixed, so in this report we seek empirically to explore\nthe question of whether metrics based on citation counts are strongly correlated\nwith peer review assessments of research quality. We use data from RAE2001,\ncovering all Departments and all Universities in the UK.