Short-term incentives of research evaluations: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework
研究了英国绩效研究资助体系中评估截止日期对学者发表行为的激励效应，发现截止日期前发表的论文引用更少、期刊影响因子更低，而截止日期后趋势逆转，表明评估截止日期可能抑制对研究质量和长期课题的投资。
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.