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The Evaluators’ Eye

Impact Assessment and Academic Peer Review

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Gemma Derrick

    1. Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

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  • Empirically analyses how academic peer review panels operate and assess research excellence and impact
  • Draws on in-depth interviews with applicants, organisations and panelists to explore peer review based research assessment
  • Examines the recommendations fuelling the wider adoption of impact criteria in peer review based research assessment processes

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Impact from the Evaluators’ Eye

    • Gemma Derrick
    Pages 1-19

  3. Peer Review of Impact: Could It Work?

    • Gemma Derrick
    Pages 21-55

  4. Evaluation Mechanics

    • Gemma Derrick
    Pages 57-94

  5. Introducing Impact to the Evaluators

    • Gemma Derrick
    Pages 95-130

  6. Peers, Experts and Impact

    • Gemma Derrick
    Pages 131-157

  7. Risking Groupthink in Impact Assessment

    • Gemma Derrick
    Pages 159-197

  8. Working Smarter with Multiple Impacts and One Eye

    • Gemma Derrick
    Pages 199-210

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 211-230
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Keywords

About this book

This book offers an empirical analysis of how academic peer review panels mediate the traditionally non-academic criterion of societal impact. The UK’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF2014) for the first time included an “Impact” criterion that considered how research had influenced society, beyond academia.  Using a series of interviews with REF2014 Main Panel A evaluators, the book explores how a dominant definition of Impact was constructed within panels and how this led to the development of strategies around valuing it as an ambiguous object.  By doing so, Derrick brings a unique perspective to Impact that is currently overlooked in the dominant Impact evaluation discourse. Through examining the evaluation procedure as a dynamic process it is argued that the best models, strategies and insights for Impact evaluation are those constructed in practice, within peer review groups.  By exploring the legitimacy of peer review as a tool to assess the societal impact of research, Derrick states that the future for Impact evaluation is not to seek alternative tools where peer review seemingly fails, but instead to highlight ways in which peer review panels can work smarter. The book will be essential reading for students, academics and policy-makers working in Education, as well as researchers interested in peer review processes and the research evaluation frameworks and audit exercises globally.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

    Gemma Derrick

About the author

Gemma Derrick is Lecturer in Higher Education and co-Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation at Lancaster University, UK.

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