Research assessment
Research assessment evaluates the quality, influence, or productivity of research to inform decisions about funding, hiring, promotion, or policy.
Peer review: Evaluation of scholarly work by people with relevant expertise before publication, funding, or another decision. Expert judgment is a central route for assessing research quality when metrics are insufficient.
Research funding: Financial support for conducting research, provided by governments, charities, institutions, or private organizations. Funders use assessments to choose projects, researchers, and institutions for limited resources.
Responsible metrics: Principles and practices for using quantitative indicators carefully in research evaluation. They respond to the risks of treating numerical indicators as complete measures of scholarly merit.
Publish or perish: A professional pressure to produce frequent scholarly publications to secure or advance an academic career. Publication-centered assessment can intensify this pressure and reward output volume.
Bibliometrics: The quantitative study of publications, citations, and other patterns in scholarly communication. Publication and citation data provide measurable signals used in research evaluations.
Academic tenure: A system of continuing academic appointment that typically protects a faculty member from dismissal without due process. Research records commonly inform tenure and promotion decisions.
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment: A 2012 declaration urging research organizations to improve how they evaluate research and researchers. It specifically rejects journal-based metrics as substitutes for assessing individual research contributions.
Matthew effect: A cumulative advantage process in which people or institutions with early success gain further recognition and resources. Assessment can amplify existing advantages when prior prestige influences later judgments and funding.
H-index: A citation metric assigning a researcher an index of h when h publications have each received at least h citations. It illustrates how a compact researcher-level score can combine output and citation counts.
Research policy: Public rules and strategies that shape the organization, conduct, and support of research. Governments use assessment evidence to allocate resources and set research priorities.