2023/03/20 by Moqi Groen-Xu, Gregor Bös, Pedro A. Teixeira +2 · 1 voice
Decision Sciences · Medicine · #Health and Medical Research Impacts #Meta-analysis and systematic reviews #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · doi:10.1016/j.respol.2023.104729
openalex publication_date 2023/03/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
We document incentive effects of the evaluation deadlines in the UK’s performance-based research funding system. Studying 3,597,272 publications by UK researchers, we find that publications just before assessment deadlines obtain substantially fewer citations and are published in venues with lower impact factors. These trends reverse abruptly after the deadlines. We discuss different factors that contribute to this observation and provide evidence that evaluation deadlines are likely to set incentives against investment in research quality and long-term topics. We conclude that where such shifts in research incentives are not intended, they might require balancing by additional incentives for exploratory, long-term oriented research.